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Argumentative Essay On The Cold War

3019 Words13 Pages

Arthur Schlesinger Jr, states that ‘the Cold War in its original form was a presumably mortal antagonism, in the wake of the Second World War, between two rigidly hostile blocs (1967, 22).’ The quote embodies the power struggle that was played out between America and the Soviets during the post war era. Historians and theorists have been drawing from ideologies and different international world orders to help gain an accurate understanding of the origins of the Cold War. In a bipolar world, as described by Waltz, neither major power seeks approval with one another; they just have to cope with one another, however within great-power politics who is threatening who can create feelings of uncertainty between them and then a Cold War is born (1988, 622). The orthodox argument makes the claim that the United States was responding to the threatening nature of the USSR, despite trying to integrate …show more content…

The aid program that developed through this ‘was portrayed as part of the global struggle between democracy and dictatorship (Kissinger, 1994, 117).’ The Truman Doctrine was symbolic as it marked the feeling the Soviets as the menacing opposition, and insisted that the US ‘would act only in cases where her vital interests were at stake (Drockrill, 1988, 41).’ As a foreign policy decision, it is not directly clear how the United States would benefit from spending $400 million to aid Greece and Turkey, apart from containing the further spread of Communism. Gaddis, a Cold War revisionist, discusses the economic foreign policy decisions by arguing that America’s actions ‘approximated the Leninist model of imperialism (2007, 172),’ and that is using aggressive means in order to push its capitalist

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