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Onset of cold war

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Who do you think was responsible for the onset of the cold war, America,Britain or the Soviet union?

Doing a piece on this and was just wondering peoples views on the matter.

It's very debatable, Churchill's Iron curtain speech in America after he left power was an important deciding point i think, it annoyed the soviet union however it didn't impact upon the american people as much as Churchill would have wanted to, President truman at the time attended the speech but after the america people didn't like what they heard he distanced himself from the speech.

It did though show people that the soviet union was a power that was a threat, there was also the issues of berlin that arose then and the east-west conflict.

Comments

  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I don't think Churchill's speech caused the cold war as much as defined the positions of the US and the USSR. I think long before this point the state of mutual stalement that became the 'cold war' was already in place.

    To be honest I think decision to actively use nuclear weapons in a convential conflict created the cold war. Once the bombs had been dropped then the state of perpetual stalement continued to exist between America and the USSR (and I don't see the UK or any other nation as being relevant in any way to the cold war, the power of other nations being dwarfed by the two superpowers).

    So I think the division of Europe between the US and the USSR defined the borders of the conflict and that Truman knew exactly what he was doing when he showed the scale of a possible conflict to Stalin. Once that happened the possibility of a conventional war become remote.

    Of course the war was hardly 'cold' either - there's no lack of misery and wars caused across the world as a result of the fighting between the two sides in many parts of the world, from Latin America to Korea to the jungles of Vietnam.

    If there's two people responsbile, thankfully given the alternatives, for continuing the cold war then it's probably Kennedy and Krushkev (ignore the spelling there) - reading up on the Cuban Missle Crisis it's terrifying just how close that was to all out war.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    a lot of people who study foreign policy seem to argue that nobody was really respocible for it, it was just inevitably going to happen in a bipolar power structure.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    No black or white answer is there. If WW1 had never happened which was caused by that duke visiting somehwere or something then russia wouldn't be communist, and then there'd be no USSR, etc.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    ShyBoy wrote: »
    which was caused by that duke visiting somehwere or

    Archduke Ferdinand and Sarajevo.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    To be honest its hard to see any other outcome. Roosevelt certainly felt he could do business with Uncle Joe, but in retrospect that's naive.

    The Berlin Blockade, the crushing of all dissent in Eastern Europe and the imposition of Communist government and Soviet unwillingness to allow any sort of free passage in the Eastern bloc showed the Western leaders that WW2 had not changed the nature of the Soviet system (and many people didn't yet know the full truth of the gulags or the genocide and forceable deportation of the remaining Sudenten Germans).

    The Soviet leaders felt that there only long term chance of survival was to slowly expand communism's power - not in direct conflict, but by salami slicing. And they needed to repress any dissent at home by imprisonment, torture and death if neccessary.

    You can list 101 things the West did wrong and point to hundreds of morally ambigous episodes, but all that does it change the intepretation from being one between white and cblack, to being one of grey and black.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Jim V wrote: »
    To be honest I think decision to actively use nuclear weapons in a convential conflict created the cold war. Once the bombs had been dropped then the state of perpetual stalement continued to exist between America and the USSR (and I don't see the UK or any other nation as being relevant in any way to the cold war, the power of other nations being dwarfed by the two superpowers)..

    Except it wasn't until 4 years later the Soviet Union exploded its first bomb.

    The reason WW3 didn't being after WW2 was war weariness, both amonst leaders and led. To get to Berlin the Soviets had lost 7million soldiers (and about 20 million civilians). They were dependent on allied supplies and whilst they'd made a showing against a Germany with no aircraft and running out of tanks and fuel, the West didn't have those deficiencies and any continuation would have been a disaster.

    The British and American's just wanted to go home. There was major discontent amongst troops in europe about going to fight the japanese (who were hated). So any decision to invade the Soviet Union wasn't going to be popular (when we'd been lauding up good ol' Uncle Joe whilst ignoring the 20-30million he killed).

    On atomic/nuclear weapons you can see three distint strategic phases during the cold war. The first and shortest was that nuclear weapons didn't fundamentally change anything - they were an operational level weapon, but the real fighting would be done, as it always had been, by the PBI and the calvary (albeit in tanks). This view was still believed by MacArthur in Korea, though not by Truman, which is why MacArthur had to go.

    The second was mutually assured destruction. Ground troops in this were a flimsy barricade. If the balloon went up they're role was to hold the line long enough for there to be either a ceasefire or a decision to go nuclear (knowing the other side would do the same).

    By the late 70s/early 80s people were starting to question this. Did the Soviets actually believe we would choose better dead than red (and to be fair plenty of senior US and UK generals and officials thought that in the worst case we would surrender). If the Soviets didn't believe we would use nuclear weapons what use were they?

    The answer was the concept of winning a nuclear war. The Soviets might not believe we would go nuclear to destroy the world rather than loose it. They might believe we'd go nuclear if we thought we could win it.

    The rest is history. The Soviet Union had believed that's history was on it's side and that the Western democracies were weak and enfeebled. Once it dawned on them that this wasn't true and that there were plans if they did decide to drive Westwards to win the Soviet system started to unravel, destroyed by its own internal contradictions as well as external pressure.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    J wrote: »
    There are keft brain people and right brain people. What is within can always been seen without, in our works.
    Personaly I'd rather be a no brain person. It's like a frickin thorn of crowns these days.

    1) I have no idea what you're talking about.

    2) Are you Hindu?
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Except it wasn't until 4 years later the Soviet Union exploded its first bomb.

    The reason WW3 didn't being after WW2 was war weariness, both amonst leaders and led. To get to Berlin the Soviets had lost 7million soldiers (and about 20 million civilians). They were dependent on allied supplies and whilst they'd made a showing against a Germany with no aircraft and running out of tanks and fuel, the West didn't have those deficiencies and any continuation would have been a disaster.

    I'm not sure that's completely accurate. I think (but feel free to say I'm wrong), the Russian / Soviet war machine had picked up towards the end of the war and was the largest army on the planet, and was rapidly improving technologically as well.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    ShyBoy wrote: »
    I'm not sure that's completely accurate. I think (but feel free to say I'm wrong), the Russian / Soviet war machine had picked up towards the end of the war and was the largest army on the planet, and was rapidly improving technologically as well.

    It was better than it was in 1941 (and the Germans were worse). But they were tired. Even a country as large as the USSR doesn't shrug of 7m dead. And whilst its tanks and artillery were good they lacked the logistics. They relied on US and British trucks, watches* and radios.

    That's not to say they couldn't have gone on. If the Nazis hadn't surrendered the Soviets could have carried on fighting. But its one thing to fight an enemy who himself is collapsing and short of supplies, another one to fight one who has several thousand bombers, fighter-bombers and as much artillery as you do.

    * try timing an artillery barrage without one.
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