The Role Of The United States During The Cold War

Essay 1
Octavian Stoch

The former Soviet Union is the chief reason for the onset of the Cold War, as a result of their aggressive actions they forced the United States to protect their own interests and therefore world peace. However, in order to see why the Soviet action constituted United States intervention we must take a look back at the end of World War II, the Yalta Conference. This meeting was to begin the long process of the rebuilding of Europe and the establishment of free elections in previously occupied territories to determine what democratic institution would be installed . Where the Capitalist nations and the Communist nation of Soviet Russia differed was their definition of democracy. Not one month after the Yalta Conference,
I. P. Trainin would clearly outline Soviet definition of democracy within the journal “Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo” to be fundamentally different than the Capitalist view of democracy. The biggest and most important difference would be the government ownership of all property. This economic policy goes against everything that Capitalist America stands for: the private ownership of property. Stalin and the Soviet Union saw American democracy as hypocritical.
For example: the American freedom of speech is not really fully and completely free, it is merely a tool for the bourgeoisie a.k.a. the corporations to fulfill their own interests such that whatever happens it will not chiefly conflict with their interests. This seems a trifling detail but it’s crucial to understanding an inkling of just how the United States felt about the Soviet Union. The United States was well aware of what the Soviet Union thought and proclaimed, that their freedom of speech was of false pretense. And that all the essential decision making is in essence not made by anyone but the
bourgeoisie. Stalin knew about the development Atomic bomb before it was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and he wanted the Soviet Union to share in that knowledge with the Capitalist nations. In a speech delivered to a meeting of Voters in Moscow, Stalin once again would blame monopolistic capitalism for the outbreak of the Second World War. The blaming of monopolistic capitalism is clearly a finger pointed at the United States, Great Britan and France for spreading the very system that Marxism states that hold the very elements of such military and economic crises. The very success of the Soviet Red Army only bolstered Stalin’s hold over the Soviet Union. As a result the Communist Party’s plans must be changed in order for the peoples living conditions to greatly increase. Even the great atomic bomb of the United States that ended World War II should not be kept a secret from Stalin. While we never gave nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union they had spies within the Manhattan Project which would give enough classified information to their scientists in order to build their very own nuclear weapon . The very idea of such destructive power in the hands of the Soviet Union rightfully shook Washington to its very core and began to seed the fears that would begin the Cold War. The “Iron Curtain” that fell over Eastern Europe showed the capitalist nations that the Communist Parties all over the globe were mobilizing in their global takeover of governments.
The Iron Curtain in question was referred to in Winston Churchill’s famous speech at Westminster College in which he warned the World of the coming dangers of the Communist Party. While we welcomed Russia’s right to secure her western border as to prevent another attack directly upon her own soil, the governments of the Eastern European nations were, for the most part, police states that are governed by the local Communist Parties while receiving orders from the Kremlin. This along is another violation that is added onto the already expansive list of violations that the Soviet Unions has done in spite of the Yalta Conference. The Soviet Union is also exerting their totalitarian tendencies even under the once independent and free nation of Czechoslovakia in which they are not allowed to trade with any Capitalist nation and thus have no true democratic government. Again, this violates another stipulation of the Yalta Conference which the people have a right to free elections in order to choose their own democratic governments and not have it be shoved down their thoughts through the enforcers of a police
state. The United States decided to change their policy from one isolationism to going directly to the source of the problem: Germany, but the Soviet Union’s solution is to keep Germany beneath the heel of the Red Army. This is only enhanced by the fact that while the United States wants to demilitarize Germany in order to prevent them from causing another world war while the Soviet Union wants to keep Germany on it’s knees. Coming back to the end goal of the reconstruction of Europe, it cannot be done as long as the epicenter of the industry of Europe namely Germany is suffering from an inflated economy and ravaged lands. [990]