Dear scottie...

I'm gonna chit chat 'bout the causes of the cold war now. I am planning on rearanging this into a more exciting, interesting form later. These are just my thoughts and Fact Findings up to this point.

The cold war was an interesting period of time because of how convoluted its causes were. The U.S. had Just finished working with the soviets to defeat germany and Japan, and suddenly diplomatic tenstions were high again. The Cold War was basically the tension resulting from our responce to communist ideals. The wierd thing about this war is it is one of the few that we decided to fight based on our beliefs. This is dangerous. Fighting for belief has always been a downfall for countries. An example would be Nazi Gemany. Germany need not have ever attacked the U.S.S.R. It did so because

A): Germany for the most part hated socialism

B): Germany actually believed it was doomed to rule the world no matter what.

The Cold War was different because both sides fought for Ideals in the X files, U.S. agend Kennan explained soviet beliefs and strategy:


The Soviet Union perceived itself to be at eternal war with capitalism;

Socialism and social democracy were perceived as enemies, not allies;

The Soviet Union would use controllable Marxists in the capitalist world as allies;

Soviet aggression was not fundamentally aligned with the Russian people's views or with
economic reality, but rather in historic Russian xenophobia and paranoia;

The structure of the Soviet government prohibited an objective or accurate picture of either internal or external reality.

The U.S. responded with it's own set of beliefs to counter these:

TheU.S. perceived itself to be at eternal war with communism;

Good Socialism was automatically worse than bad capitalism.

When truman got the Long Telegram (X files), He made that first ideal true by establishing the Truman Doctrine, which would mean that the U.S. would do anything it could to help another country escape from communism . This resulted in a quadrupled defense budget after the Korean war. Government taxation expanded monumentally in order to fuel the american Championing of capitalism. The second Ideal was proven by our support of Capitalism in China and Vietnam. For both of these peoples Capitalism had failed but the U.S. still sided with Capitalistic/Fascist leaders.

Pragmatism in war aint pretty, but it works. The cold war was dangerous because the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were both willing to put what was good the human race aside to fight for the cause of comparitively petty economic systems. This idealism almost led to the end of the world as we know it.