01 - Emergence of Bipolarity after 1945

Hwa Chong Institution (College) Paper 1 Theme I: Understanding the Cold War, 1945 -1991 Why and when did the Cold War start? 1   Objectives:  Analyse the origins of the conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union  Evaluate the causal relationships that underpinned the continu ed discord between the two superpowers Why and when did the Cold War start? What was the Cold War? Let’s try and work it out using the sources below: Political cartoon published in Canada in 1949 When you look at this political cartoon, what comes to mind? Questions about the source should include the following: Who wrote this? What is he/she trying to say? When was this written? Where was it written? Why was this written? How accurate is this? Information and interpretation of the political cartoon: This political cartoon was drawn by John Collins, a cartoonist for the Gazette, a conservative English-Canadian paper.1 It was published in 1949 and reflects the change in relations between the East and the West from 1945 to 1949. The supposed overture of friendship by the Western Powers has clearly been rejected by the East, as depicted in the cartoon by the arm wrestling of the two sides, where the USSR has apparently failed the test of friendship and created the tense, competitive situation in 1949 – the Berlin Blockade. The Atlantic Pact, written on the “West” side refers to the agreement that established the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the Iron Curtain written on the “East” side is a demonstration of their defence of the strength of communism.                                                               1 http://www.mccord-museum.qc.ca/scripts/explore.php?Lang=1&tableid=11&elementid=82__true&contentlong

Hwa Chong Institution (College) Paper 1 Theme I: Understanding the Cold War, 1945 -1991 Why and when did the Cold War start? 2   The following is an excerpt from US President Harry S. Truman’s address to Congress on 12 March 1947. The Truman Doctrine, as it came to be known, was th e first implementation of the containment foreign policy. “At the present moment in world history nearly every nation mus t choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one. One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, f reedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression. The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio; fixed elec tions, and the suppression of personal freedoms. I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes.” After the reading these 2 sources, come up with a definition of the Cold War.

Hwa Chong Institution (College) Paper 1 Theme I: Understanding the Cold War, 1945 -1991 Why and when did the Cold War start? 3    The term “Cold War” was first used by the British writer Georg e Orwell in 1945 to deplore the worldview, beliefs, and social structure of both the Soviet Union and the United States, and the undeclared state of war that would come to exist betwee n them after the end of World War II.2 “The atomic bomb,” Orwell found, may be “robbing the exploited classes and peoples of all power to revolt, and at the same time puttin g the possessors of the bomb on a basis of equality. Unable to conquer one another they are likely to continue ruling the world between them.” 3 Historians first took up the term “Cold War” in the late 1940s when attempting to explain how the wartime alliances between the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union had collapsed. In the first post- war decade, the term was mostly used by American historians as a synonym for which they saw as Soviet leader Stalin’s confrontational policies from the latter stages of World War II on. The Soviet Union waged cold war against the West (meaning, mostly the United Sta tes and Britain) while the West was seen as defending itself and the values it believe d in. The Cold War, in other words, was imposed on the rest of the world by the Soviet leader and the tyrannical Communist system he had created.  Throughout the Cold War, the main view of the conflict among h istorians both in the United States and Western Europe remained coloured by the anti- Stalinist approach. Deeply influenced by the wars against other authoritarian governments (Germany, Japan and Italy) that had just ended, this orthodox Western interpret ation of the causes of the Cold War contains both a definition and timeline. The Cold War means a period of Soviet aggression that was initiated by its growing power in the latter stages of the war and which had become doctrine in 1947. Most early historians, not only in the United States but also in Western Europe, believed that this period would last as long as the Stalinists were in command in Moscow. Though in no way uncritical of Western polic ies – both the United States and Britain were often blamed for not confronting Soviet policies strongly and early enough on the main issues and the inflexibility and lack of cooperation on minor points – the anti-Stalinist interpretation places the blame squarely on the Soviet Union, and from the early 1950s, on what is termed “Communist ideology” (meanin g in most cases the anti-capitalist agenda of the Soviet state).                                                               2 The Cambridge History of the Cold War, Volume 1, Michael P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (eds.), p. 3. 3 George Orwell, “You and the Atomic Bomb”, Tribune, 19 October 1945.

Hwa Chong Institution (College) Paper 1 Theme I: Understanding the Cold War, 1945 -1991 Why and when did the Cold War start? 4    The change from emphasising Stalin to emphasising Communism as the main cause of the Cold War can be easily seen as part of the rollback of the wartime cooperation between Right and Left inside the West itself. While the Cold War was initially viewed as a security emergency, by the 1950s, it had become a battle of g lobal alliances and of political ideas. Wartime cooperation had been an aberration, ma ny historians working in the 1950s thought. The normal pattern was one of confrontation between Communism and its enemies, as had been the case in the interwar period. E ven among the left-wing historians writing on the Cold War in the 1950s – more in Europ e than the United States – the breakdown of the wartime alliance had become a confrontat ion of superpowers, each imposing its will and their political systems in Europe.  With the expansion of the Cold War to the Third World in the 1 960s – and especially with the American defeat in Vietnam – radical historians in the West gained a wider audience for their critique of the US role in the conflict. Still stayin g within the original political agendas of interpretation, these critics argued that the United States, with its increasingly global anti-collectivist agenda, had caused and perpetuated the Cold War to at least as high a degree as the Soviet Union had. To some of them, the Ame rican government’s motives were driven by the economic needs of the United States as the global capitalist superpower. To others, Vietnam proved that the United States wa s simply not suited to pursuing change abroad, and that it should rather concentrate o n a progressive political agenda at home, rectifying injustices based on race, gender, ed ucation, and income levels.4  By the mid-1970s, as superpower détent