Iron Curtain: Origin of the Cold War

Most broadly, perhaps, the two views batch be seen as corresponding to the "Hellenic" and "Hebraic" strands in Western thought. The balance-of-power doctrine is consistent with what Carl Gustavson (1955, p. 5) calls a historical-minded mode of thought. The taste is on continuity of historical experience, and on a "value-free" perspicacity of the conflicting ideologies; it is a way of thinking that comes down from Thucydides. By contrast, the ideology-driven conflict has Biblical overtones of the climactic conflict of good and brutal (it is significant that evangelical Protestants, taking a more explicitly religious world-view than most Americans, are among the most supportive of " coolness War politics").

It should be noned that these two views of the rimed War are complementary rather than contradictory. It is possible to represent that, while balance-of-power considerations made a state of tension mingled with the U.S. and the Soviet Union inevitable, ideological enmity greatly exacerbated this tension, round what might accept been an uneasy peace into the Cold War.

A contrast could be drawn, for example, to the marine

competition between the U.S. and Great Britain by and by universe of discourse War I. The war left the two navys close to equal, and a conflict over dominance at sea could have been a natural balance-of- power outcome. Indeed, a naval arms race quickly heated up between these powers. But the Americans and the Briti

Thus, we whitethorn comfortably ask why the Cold War did not come out to peter out after 1953? After three historic period of collective leadership in the Soviet Union, Krushchev - in retrospect, something of a proto-Gorbachev reformer - rose to ascendancy. Underneath his considerable bluster, he appears to have been genuinely committed to "peaceful coexistence" as he silent it - an understanding not inconsistent with a peaceful, managed, great-power rivalry (Graebner, 1976, pp. 125-38).

Thus, the evolution of British-American relations after World War I was from wartime associate to latent rivals, and then to somewhat wary quasi-partner.

After World War II, in contrast, the evolution of Soviet-American relations was from wartime allies to potential rivals, and then to deeply committed opponents. The Cold War did not have to begin the moment World War II was over. Americans could have somewhat reluctantly accepted Churchill's lead in acknowledging a tacit Soviet " landing field of influence" in turn for Soviet acceptance of a Western "sphere of influence" (Halle, 1967, p. 66). American commitment to a fully single-handed Poland was not, by itself, enough to counter the even stronger American commitment to returning to some kind of normalcy."

into the Cold War in full force; that came only with a gradual serial publication of events - the coup in Czechoslovakia, the Berlin blockade and airlift, the stationing of American B-29 "atomic bombers" in England, the first Soviet nuclear test, and so on.

In this respect, we may make the bench mark for the end of the Cold War a speech, as we marked its beginning with Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech. The benchmark we may choose is Lyndon Johnson's March, 1968 speech in which he withdrew from the American presidential race. He withdrew because the Vietnam war, of which he was regarded as author, had become to the American electorate a burden to escape as gracefully as possible, not a Cold War commitment that must(prenominal) be carried through. From that time fo
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