Who is to Blame for the Cold War?

The two major adversaries of the Cold War entered that period of a global political stalemate as allies in the fight against fascism and German expansionism under Hitler. In 1945, the United States and Soviet Union, along with fading power Britain, met in Yalta to draw up a postwar plan for the division and reconstitution of Europe. The Soviets would be in charge of the East, while the Americans and British would be in charge of Western Europe and the Balkans. This division and reconstitution was both symbolized and concretized by the division of the city of Berlin. Ultimately, the divergent and oppositional political and economic ideologies of these countries proved irreconcilable and presented an impossible obstacle toward rebuilding Europe in any way that mirrored its pre-war state. Although the Cold War is most often presented in terms of a military and political debate, it is just as much, unsurprisingly, an economic event.

The old world order of powerful European countries had been all but demolished by the ravages of World War II. With the collapse of the economies of the former European power structure and the resulting division of Europe into separate reconstructive zones, the communist Soviets and capitalist Americans each sought to rebuild the continent in a way that reflected their own political and economic ideologies. For the United States, this required that the emerging countries adopt strategies of free trade and an increased dependence on America as it positioned itself as the premier power on the world stage. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, encouraged economic development that was centrally planned and was formed with the concept of satellite communist countries. This concept of Soviet expansionism as they began to turn their eye to include not just Europe but also Greece, Turkey and Iran has for decades been turned into dogma that they are entirely to blame for the Cold War. A revised look at history suggests a much more ambiguous explanation, however.