Origins of the Cold
War
Chapter 1
"I
know from experience that the leaders of the armed forces
can be very persistent in claiming their share when it comes
time to allocate funds. Every commander has all sorts of very
convincing arguments why he should get more than anyone else.
Unfortunately there is a tendency for people who run the armed
forces to be greedy and self--seeking. They're always ready
to throw in your face the slogan "If you try to economize
on the country's defenses today, you will pay in blood when
war breaks out tommorrow." I am not denying that these
men have a huge responsibility, and I am not impugning their
moral qualities. But the fact remains that the living standard
of the country suffers when the budget is overloaded with
allocations to unproductive branches of consumption. And today
as yesterday, the most unproductive expenditures are all of
those made on the armed forces." Krushchev
- 1970
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This next section
will begin with the origins of the Cold War and the development
of the four pillars of American foreign policy beginning from
1943 to 1949. A special focus will be placed on the nature
of the alliance albeit the system, and convergence of the
powers, the states and their separation into two camps upon
establishing a New World Order in the international
system. The failure to deal with the Soviets, after Roosevelt,
a major discontinuity emerged in American foreign policy in
this regard; rather the focus was on meeting the threat of
Soviet expansion head on, rather than plans for mutual reconciliation.
Rather the vision of huge Soviet Occupying armies poised to
take Europe by storm by the fissioning of the European political
heartland after the rise of totalitarianism became the view
that was the rallying call for continued mass mobilization.
America at this time knew that the dissolution of Fascist
Germany was imminent and it was presumed that Eventually a
military alliance structure would need to fill that gap caused
by the eventual collapse of fascism that could also contain
the Soviet expansion threat caused by the political vacuum
in Europe.
One could argue
that The Cold War began with death of Roosevelt. He envisioned
a world order run by four policemen, the US, Britain, China
and the Soviet Union, all providing collectively for world
security. It was during this pivotal war period that the Alliance
maintained consensus of aims and nowhere in modern history
except at this time would individuals play such a a major
role in the systematic reorganization of the balance of global
power. Besides Roosevelt the other key players were Winston
Churchill and Josef Stalin. These state leaders maintained
an uneasy alliance, through various international Charters
and agreements and they sought political stability in a matter
suited towards their own individual state security aims. However,
when Roosevelt died all attempt at cooperation with the Soviets
were ended.
As a world figure,
Churchill wanted to reconstruct the old balance
of power in Europe while recognizing America's newfound
power, as leading or co-joining that coalition with Britain.
Britain wanted desperately to preserve its colonial possessions
but this was not a systemic reality. Much of the early Cold
War period was marked by British liquidation of its colonial
territories in the Third World and the Soviet's supporting
those nationalist uprisings in order to create spheres of
influence and incorporate alliances in territories perceived
to have geo-strategic interests to the US and England. According
to the West this was a direct threat and challenge to the
Bretton
Woods Agreements, the matter in which the post war
economic map of Europe was to be drawn, and this inexorably
tied its fate to Asia of which more will be discussed later.
Stalin
was a realist who incorporated Marxist Leninist
models while relying on the ideology of utopianism to unify
his country and monopolize total state control over his populace
by nationalizing the limited means of production that existed
in the hands of individual entrepreneurs and directing that
capital into the hands of a newly created centralized Leninist
bureaucracy solely under his control. Stalin was a key figure in Soviet history,
because on the one hand sought to maintain traditional Tsarist
Russia foreign policy aims he also incorporated Communism
as the official ideology of the State. Stalin envisaged expansion
into to Eastern Europe so as to create a security belt from
any further threat of future European invasion. At the Yalta
conference as WWII was still being waged Stalin gave notice
of his intention to occupy Poland in order to prevent further
encroachments from the Germans who had previously used the
country to launch an invasion into the Soviet Union. Historian
Walter Lefeber describes Stalin's key goals in establishing
a sphere of control in Poland.
"Having been invaded four times since 1914 and having
suffered the destruction of much of the western Soviet Union,
he added, the Soviets wanted puppet regimes in all contiguous
countries and a guaranteed freedom from danger to recover
and industrialize."(American Age, 438)
Stalin as did Churchill viewed
the alliance as temporary unlike Roosevelt who envisioned
cooperation and eventually including China who at the time
was still occupied by the Japanese and undergoing a Civil
War between Nationalist and Communist War Lords. To Stalin
the world was an unstable place, by the nature of his ideology,
and the image of the world that he presented to his people,
there could never be true peace, between capitalism and communism
and rather the current compromise was forged out of necessity.
Stalin also relied on crisis to maximize his authority relying
on the historically characteristic Russian Tsarist image of
the savior/sovereign autocrat. According to many diplomatic
theorists Stalin was able to secure far to many concessions
from Roosevelt and the effects of which were perceived to
be detrimental to following US Administrations.
***
The
Creation of the Pillars
Between 1944-1954
the four pillars of American foreign policy developed in response
to the unstable alliance with the Soviets during the War.
These pillars were not at all fixed and after a while some
basic tenets such as deterrence became irrelevant, in the
face of total nuclear war. However, this period represents
a major discontinuity in American History in that America
was now committed to a very active role in foreign affairs.
Indeed the US would have a major card to play in shaping the
post war world. A description of the four pillars shall now
follow.
The first pillar
was deterrence and it was based on four things. It assumed
that the threat of nuclear war was imminent. Thus many
scenarios were conjured up in US and Soviet policy think tanks
on how best to use nuclear weapons in order to maximize advantage.
While the Soviets did not detonate their first Atomic bomb
until 1949, a Russian spy, Klaus Fuchs was a member of the
Manhattan project and actively assisted the Soviets in atomic
design protocols. The second form of deterrence was the requirement
for massive stockpiling of nuclear weapons. The third
form of deterrence was the willingness to use nuclear weapons
at all levels of engagement. Ultimately Deterrence while touted to be a stabilizing force
predicated on the notion that the threat of mutual annhilation would bring about compromise,
the long term effect of this policy was an increase in Nuclear Weapons proliferation around the world.The final commitment was to stay
technologically ahead. Later on as previously mentioned deterrence
became the first pillar to erode as one might imagine.
The second pillar
was containment through alliance. The goal of this
was to contain Soviet expansionism, either in its ideological
or territorial form. Out of this pillar emerged the institutions
of NATO and among others CENTRO and SEATO.
This was the most expensive of the four pillars.
The third pillar
was commitment to intervention. This meant that US
foreign policy, in an effort to contain the Soviet threat
would engage the enemy, anywhere, either through direct combat
or combat via proxy through a series of limited engagements
throughout the Third World. Containment of the Soviet threat
created a US policy of intervention into the political systems
of the countries of the Third World where nationalism was
rampant after the decay of colonialism. Intervention in
these countries was deemed imperative in order to prevent
the spread of Soviet Marxism a favorite tool utilized by many
Nationalists hoping to seek political and economic independence
from the dominate western economic capitalist system. It was
this pillar that gave rise to the Truman Domino theory an
ideology characteristic of Third World Intervention and culminated
in US policy being ideologically committed to a losing cause
in Vietnam.
The Fourth Pillar
was the establishment of a "liberal" economic international
world order. This had been a long established program
of which Stalin had been present at its creation. This new
World Order was conceived at the Bretton Woods agreements
where the uneasy alliance had endeavored to create a multi-polar
world. However, though, through a policy of mutual distrust,
and ideological incompatibility, Stalin withdrew from the
conference and closed his markets to the west. Bretton Woods
created the IMF and the World Bank. It was the function of
these international agencies to loan money to embattled countries,
to prevent a potential future war that would disrupt the Free
Trade system, and that the economic incentive of cash loans
would overwhelm the desire for regional power brokers to carry
vendettas that could lead to future world wars. According
to the architects of the Bretton Woods agreements, Keynes
and White, War represented a failure of the economy
and as such the IMF and the World Bank were perceived as stabilizing
buttresses that could contain and transpose the threat of
war into the realm of international commerce.
The central factor
of this pillar that is still with us today is the concept
of free trade. Free trade involved lowering tariffs
and among other things a balance of trade favorable to the
capitalist system. Secondly Free Trade relied on the free
convertibility of currencies. Thirdly, in the beginning, free
trade relied on fixed monetary exchange rates; since it was
viewed that major monetary fluctuations could stall the free flow of trade. The goal
was for economic stability, no country could without first
consulting the IMF could devalue its currency. The US one
could argue now emerged with a willingness to manage the international
system something in the past it had not shown willingness
to do before. Also America maintained willingness to station
troops throughout Europe, to safeguard European futures in
terms of a ready supply of export credits and circulation
of US dollars as the international monetary standard in the
Bretton woods system. Simple economics would later graft European
and American ambitions into an international military force
structure called NATO.
The Man From Independence, Missouri
 Harry
S. Truman comes on to the scene after Roosevelt's death and
immediately as a result of personality conflicts with Stalin
the Man from Missouri would not compromise with the Soviet
dictator. The Soviet's in turn refused to cooperate with the
Bretton Woods agreements, --the said agreements constituting
a new economic dimension to the US's diplomatic position on
free trade after W.W.II to the present. Truman enjoyed enormous
power in Western Europe after the Allied occupation. In 1946
as the Allies were rebuilding Germany's 4 occupation zones
Truman called for a merger of all four Zones. The Soviet's
refused.
Prior to this
in 1944 at the Pottsdam conference the Allied forces had agreed
to 4 occupation zones of Germany. In part this was
a departure from the Yalta
conference in which an economically hind and quartered
Germany would have intensified the political vacuum in Europe.
Germany had been the center of Industrial production in Europe
and the leaders of the Alliance with the exception of Stalin
realized that a debilitated Germany stripped of its production
capabilities could only be maintained by force, and that eventually
Europe would have to rely on a prosperous re-developed German
Nation. In the end
the Pottsdam conference created two zones of occupation with
West Germany going over to the West and East Germany going
over to the Soviets. However, a key concession one at Pottsdam
was Stalin's ability to carve out territory in Poland and
merge it with this newly created East German block. According
to Walter Lafeber, Truman recognized that the Pottsdam conference
settled 3 important factors, concerning the fate of Germany.
Two of these factors were in accord with American policy objectives
and the third suited Stalin's notion of a security buffer
zone.
"Pottsdam in truth settled three key German problems:
dismemberment went forward; reparations from the western zones
to the Soviet Union were stopped, and over Truman's and Atlee's
objections, Stalin insisted that the new Poland have German
territory."(American Age)
In 1946 the US suspends dismantling
of German industry in its zone. By the latter half of 1946
the US and Britain agree to merge their occupation zones and
by 1947 the French agree to do the same
The economic foundations
for w. European stability were predicated upon military intervention,
and economic restructuring of European capital by the US to
resuscitate a war ravaged W. European economy. Hence, the
first major exercise of the second pillar of US foreign policy
was first articulated in the formation of the European Welfare
state as a means to keep Europe from aligning with the USSR.
This economic containment plan was known as the Marshall plan.
According to Russia this was the second offensive act of the
cold war, by the US, the first act being the detonation of
the Atom bomb at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Some Cold War theorists
have pointed to this act as the US's first excercise of atomic
diplomacy and a warning to Stalin that occupation of Japan
would not paralell soviet gains in eastern europe.
For more information
on the Truman debate, concerning the question of using the
atom bomb as the precusor phase to atomic diplomacy,
please click
here!
The
Marshall Plan: A Cold War Call to Arms
 The
Marshall Plan was created to aid the war torn countries
of Europe and rebuild their industry and other domestic infrastructure
destroyed by WWII. The Plan was proposed for two reasons.
The first reason was for humanitarian reasons and the second
reason was to combat Soviet influence from entering impoverished
regions where poverty would be a fertile breeding ground for
Soviet Marxist ideology. France was a good example of this
in that after having been ravaged by the NAZIS a large communist
party had managed to unify many of the partisans under common
opposition to the economic chaos that ensued. With the Truman
Doctrine of containing Soviet expansionism the Marshall plan
provided the economic financing for rebuilding of domestic
infrastructure, and as such the policy platform included all
of Europe to be rebuilt and reintegrated under a US dominated
capitalist system. Here
again the Domino theory underlined the need for this program
in that if Europe fell to Soviet Communism the US dependant
upon Europe for export of its surplus production would lose
such a vital market, and would be dragged into another great
depression, or worse a revolution. Historian Walter Lafeber
on Paul Nitze, a member of Truman's State Department, summed
up the administrations view of the economic crisis in Europe
and the potential for the demise of the newly constructed
balance of power if the US did not act quickly with a plan
for economic recovery.
"The
most dangerous problem as Nitze and other business leaders
saw it, was not the threat of soviet invasion, but a European
economic collapse that could turn the pivotal region toward
socialism, paralyze the US economy, and threaten the entire
Capitalist system."(American Age, 479) Hence the economic well
being of Europe was tied to America's conceptions of security
in this respect.
The Marshall plan accomplished
two objectives. One it allowed the US economy that had been
mobilized for the war effort, the trappings of which included
a huge surplus of goods to be exported over to Europe as
loans with the promise that Europe would rebuild and recover
and consequently American investment would flourish. Furthermore,
America had to get rid of its surplus after the war or it
would face a recession of its own. The second objective to
the Marshall plan allowed the US government and its constituent
business networks considerable oversight into the affairs
of European governments, which amounted to easing tariff restrictions
and ending all thoughts of implementing central economic
planning, beyond the confines of benign Keynesian
economics, the other option being the mercantile command
economy the tool and method of the Soviet economic system.This
effectively distanced the Soviet's from the Marshall plan
and at the same time attempted to establish a third pole in
Europe to offset the dangerous extreme nature of the bipolar
system. The overall effect of the Marshall plan was the creation
of the Cold War, where the Soviet's sealed their borders to
Western trade and developed their own economic recovery plan
for their client states.
Stalin could not have accepted
the Marshall plan and remained in power for long. The Marshall
plan would have given the United States a major share in
reorganization of Russian economic and monetary policy.
The structure of the Soviet state saw itself as independent
of capitalism and incompatible with capitalist directed globalism
and its ensuing interdependent market structures.
The Soviets viewed the system of balance of power in
colonialist terms and Marxism taught them that imperialism
from the West first comes by the establishment of western
market contacts, whereby the economic integration with the
stronger or more industrialized nation would create a marginalizing
effect on the sovereignty of the nonwestern state and reduce
it to peripherary status.
****
Michael
J. Hogan of the Corporatist school of Diplomatic History has
argued that the Marshall Plan created a stable region in Western
Europe. The Marshall plan he argues had continuity with Roosevelt's
own New Deal program for American economic recovery. He also
argued that the Marshall Plan endeared a system of collective
stability, and that such economic recovery could only occur
through capitalism, and specifically the plan relied on Keynesian
deficit spending through government capital flows to stimulate
economic recovery.
"Marshall
planners used the New Deal as a blue print in their struggle
to assure international stability through the spread of liberal
capitalism. Economic assistance provided the means for
rebuilding a balance of power in Europe by establishing an
organization that could simultaneously contain the Soviet
Union in Eastern Europe and reintegrate Germany into an economically
interdependent and politically stable Western Europe." (America
in the World, 263)
An
equally influential theorist John
Lewis Gaddis argues that Corporatist theory places too
much emphasis on domestic factors of production and not to
geopolitical interests. Gaddiss faults Stalin as being the
cause of the Cold War due to the constraints of his bureaucratic
management style that required a constant state of paranoia
and aversion to all things western and that ideology of totalitarianism
was paramount in Stalin's dealings with the west. Furthermore
at times the US did not solely act according to the dogma
of free trade when it blocked Japan's attempts to resume normal
trading relations with China. This was presumed necessary
in that geopolitical interests were paramount in containing
the newly constituted expansionistic Chinese Communist state.
Both
Hogan and historian Melvyn Leffler
agree that the Marshall plan accomplished what its chief aims
were at that time and that intensification of Cold War Conflicts
were residual, and rather reflected overarching ideological
policy concerns arising out of the attempt to preserve 'peace'
through economic recovery and expansion. (America in the World,
265)
Thus,
US policymakers viewing the successes of the Marshall plan
in Europe tried to implement similar measures in the Third
World though not as grand in duration and this led them to
conflict with the Russians and later the Chinese in Korea.
The prewar mobilization of the US economy created a system
in which surplus goods could be sold directly to Europe and
later to the Third World.. This surplus included military,
industrial and agricultural hardware, and foodstuffs produced
by a WWII war machine that was not going to go away soon.
The implementation of the Marshall plan also caused the Soviet's
to retreat to their own economic bloc as well as an attempt
to blockade Berlin, the first military action of the
Cold War.
***
US foreign policy in 1946 focused primarily on Europe and
not Asia. In light of this it is not hard to imagine that unqualified
personnel in Asia paralleled qualified personnel in place in
Europe. US foreign policy had two key directives during
this time. The first one was to establish security in the new
international system, i.e., a European American Alliance of
established trade networks and at the same time to maintain
political security in the developing bipolar world. Not only
did the US focus on Europe more than Asia had to do with more
with Anglo and other ethnocentric and economic affiliations
then the political and economic instability offered by Asia
which at the time had little to offer other than endless civil
war.
The political reality was posed to US policymakers
as well as to its Allies that the amount of Red Army occupation
troops poised to overrun Europe in comparison to allied troops
stood at a 30-10 ratio. Walter Lafeber describes how the US
viewed Soviet political expansion into eastern and central
Europe by virtue of their occupying forces being put in place
after W.W.II and how the US viewed the Soviet's interpretation
of spheres of influence and the resulting creation of satellite
client states as constituting a Military and ideological threat
to capitalism and the new emerging US-European security arrangement.
"Moreover
not only were the Red Army's divisions concentrated in Eastern
Europe, but large communist parties in war devastated France
and Italy were poised to seize power. Byrnes [secretary of
state] and Moltov [Russian foreign minister] fought bitterly…until
they finally agreed on peace treaties for Finland and Italy
that the Americans liked and for Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria
that the Soviet's could accept."(American Age, 468)
The
Paper Tiger
In Asia Roosevelt's
vision of the fourth policeman, China was undergoing Civil
War. US General Hurley who had been stationed in China
maintained that US foreign policy objectives would best be
served if the US backed Chiang Kai Shek's Nationalist faction
as opposed to the communist faction backed by Mao Tse Tung
who was affiliated and perceived to be a potential soviet
puppet. Hurley is inexperienced in the state of domestic Chinese
politics and his sole mission is to keep the Soviets out of
China.
Truman sends General George C. Marshall
to work out a truce settlement with Chiang and Mao. The US
congress earmarks 800 million dollars for Chiang's regime
and Chiang wastes no time in using the money to fight Mao.
At the same time the Nationalist government was rife with
corruption since it was entirely headed by Chiang's relatives
who embezzled as frequently as modern day Chinese light up
cigarettes. The result was skyrocketing inflation. In some
places people could be seen with wheelbarrows carting around
worthless currency to the markets to buy just bread in the
waning days of Chiang's inept regime.  Mao
ends up defeating Chiang due to the Nationalist army having
ill trained and disloyal troops in the face of Mao's fanatically
loyal troops. This was a major failure in US foreign policy.
The US had an opportunity to bring Mao under a western orbit
and due to ethnocentrism and western aversion to all
things vaguely Marxist, despite Mao's Chinese socialism more
or less being in tune with mercantilist fascism and so America
lost China and she became aligned with Russia.
Later China would emerge into a regional power that
would attempt to challenge Soviet hegemony. The US would counter
this Sino-Soviet rivalry by relying on a strategy of detente.
This Foreign policy blunder
would later set the tone for the limitations of US power in
Korea.
***
"To
attribute this to inadequate foreign support, I said, was
to miscalculate entirely what bad been going on in China and
the nature of the forces involved. The almost inexhaustible
patience of the Chinese people had ended. They had not overthrown
the Government. There was nothing to overthrow. They had simply
ignored it. The Communists were not the creators of this situation,
this revolutionary spirit, hut had mounted it and ridden to
victory and power." -Acheson-
 Dean
Acheson, Truman's Secretary of State established the US's
diplomatic objectives as they would be exercised throughout
the Cold War. Acheson was a self-described realist.
He believed that Stalin could only be negotiated with through
"positions of strength." Acheson had helped write the
Bretton Woods accords and viewed peace with the Soviets could
only be achieved if the Soviets agreed to the Bretton Woods
agreements. When the Soviet's refused Acheson began to call
for massive US military mobilization. Historian Walter Lafaber
asserted this point succinctly:
"Americans
had to either find open markets and liberal international
trade or they would find themselves facing the economic horrors
of the 1930's. Since the Soviet's refused to join the Bretton
Woods system, Acheson turned to reliance on military power."(American
Age, 466)
Acheson also placed little faith in the
power of the UN, which he viewed as a mere forum.
With the creation of the United Nations
a world forum was created which consisted of a General Assembly
and a Security Counsel the latter of which consisted of five
permanent members and two alternate members among the G-7
industrialized nations. The Security counsel functioned on
the principle of the unit veto system. At times this unit
veto system could be skirted in favor of US objectives. For
example the with the later Korean conflict, the UN security
counsel authorized the US engagement in Korea with the Soviets
absent from the council on that day because they were protesting
China's exclusion from the member body since the Nationalist
government in Taiwan was the only legally recognized sovereign
body outside of China.
The
Tehran Conference
During W.W.II in 1943
the Tehran Conference underlined the process of troop
withdrawals from occupied areas in the oil rich Middle East.
Later in 1946 British and American troops had withdrawn from
these regions when Stalin decided to claim the Iranian republic
as a Soviet client state. A second war almost ensued. Originally,
it was the British who had created the partition of Persia
into Iran and Iraq and now they along with the US were not
about to allow the Soviet's to effectively install their own
puppet regimes in order to nationalize those oil fields under
Communist control. The US and its allies realized that nationalization
of these oil fields would cause the price of oil world wide
to skyrocket. The US response was an appeal to the United
Nations and the UN threatened invasion of Iran. This was forestalled
when the pro- west faction of the Iranian government executed
the Soviet puppet Iranian "Tudeh" party leaders.
The Tehran Conference
also became pivotal with the notion of Turkey and its strategic
position on the Bosphorous. During the Tehran conference
Churchill had promised Stalin access through the straits as
well as limited control. However, when that issue was brought
before Truman, he maintained that any, "..island waterways
bound by more than two states be placed under international
control."(American Age, 469). It was at this point that Acheson's view on
the necessity to deal with Stalin from "positions of strength"
came to be characterized by Truman's new emerging containment
doctrine, the Domino theory. Deterrence was the first
measure of response when Truman ordered the US Navy aircraft
carrier, the USS Roosevelt to remain permanently in the Mediterranean.
Stalin responds to this by withdrawing from all overt participation
in any Bretton Woods Agreements, and closed his borders to
all western trade. Stalin then began a massive armament campaign
and a policy of a coup entente in the Third World.
Chapter
2
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