Wednesday, August 14, 2019

What are the main origins of the Cold War and why? Essay

The Origins of the Cold War are widely regarded to the relationships between the Soviet Union and the allies (the United States, Great Britain and France) during the period of 1945–1947. Those events led to the Cold War which lasted for over half century. The first origin must be the beginning of Russian Revolution. In WWI, the US, Britain, and Russia had been allies until the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in November 1917. Then, Russia withdrew the WWI and turned into communism. Later, Soviet Russia found it was isolated in international diplomacy as what said by Leader Lenin that ‘the Soviet Union was surrounded by a â€Å"hostile capitalist encirclement’. Moreover, the ideologies of the USA and the USSR are opposite since that time. The Soviet Russia sought to establish a socialist economy, in which the market economy would be abolished. It placed the interests of Soviet Russia ahead of those of any person or group of persons. And, the working class was the only one class ruled the basis of the Soviet state. By the contrast, the USA, like other capitalist countries, believed in the free market system and industries were owned by the individuals. Because they against each other’s policies, the seed of hostil e was planted and grew up overtime. After the WWII, the USA and the USSR are the only two superpowers left in the world. The other European powers were weaken a lot during the war. Although the USSR’s economy was not as strong as USA’s, its Red Army was the most powerful one with the largest scale in the world. The tendency of polarization was always regarded as the basic condition to form the Cold War by experts. Another important factor that led to the formation of the Cold War was the policy of balance. For example, the pattern of direct opposition, the USSR introduced the Warsaw Treaty Organization after the USA became the leader of NATO, both of them were military organizations against each other. Besides these, in the 1940s, there were several events could be known as the origins of the Cold War. In February 1946, George F. Kennan’s Long Telegram from Moscow helped articulate the growing hard line against the Soviets. The telegram argued that the Soviet Union was motivated by both traditional  Russian imperialism and by Marxist ideology; Soviet behavior was expansionist, posing a threat to the United States and its allies. Later writing as â€Å"Mr. X† in his article â€Å"The Sources of Soviet Conduct† in Foreign Affairs (July 1947), Kennan drafted the classic argument for adopting a policy of â€Å"containment† toward the Soviet Union. On March 5, 1946, the ‘iron curtain’ speech that given by the Churchill stated that the world was divided into two groups, leading by the USA and the USSR. Nowadays, many historians regarded this speech as the beginning of the Cold War. In summary, the ideology was the core reason for the start of the Cold War. The USA and the USSR untrusted and fear the power of each other, so they used policies to maintain their own statuses and gain more interest for themselves.

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