Was The Cold War Inevitable

Before all, one must understand that although Stalin and Roosevelt were wartime allies, WWII was won “by a coalition whose principal members were already at war—ideologically and geopolitically if not militarily—with one another.”(Gaddis 6). The United States and the Soviet Union had completely different ideologies: one was a capitalist nation while the other was a communist one. Although they were allied during the war against Germany, Stalin never trusted Roosevelt. The American president failed to realize that “in Stalin’s eyes, he was not all that different from Hitler, both of them being heads of powerful capitalist states whose long-term ambitions clashed with those of the Kremlin.”(Taubman 36). Roosevelt was naïve in the sense that he thought that Stalin saw the world his way and understood the domestic policies in the United States. He failed to realize that Stalin was nothing but a totalitarian dictator

The depth of its hostility however was not to be anticipated—it was caused by poor diplomacy on both sides, misperceptions, and miscommunications. During World War II, there was a multi polar balance of power with seven major powerful states. After the war, the balance of power structure was left with only two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. It was obvious that neither of these two powers would allow one to dominate Europe over the other. Since both states wanted either economic or territorial expansions, they were bound to come into conflict. Their conflicting interests and opposing ideologies also was a sort of approach that made the Cold War inevitable. Although the U.S. and the Soviet Union were wartime allies, their ideologies and geopolitical goals were always in conflict with each other. Once the war against Germany was won, Russia wanted spoils for basically winning the war for the rest of the Allies, while the U.S. wanted to establish open international economic and political systems. This difference made it inevitable for the Soviet Union and the United States to engage in Cold War. However, the depth and the intensity of the hostility between the two superpowers were not inevitable. Due to poor diplomatic decisions and misperceptions on both sides, the extent of the rigid hostility drastically escalated. Had the United States followed Kennan’s advice and responded more firmly to Stalin’s pragmatism plus tried a more sensible negotiation and communication with the Soviet Union, the hostility would have not reached the extent it did in the early