Origins of Cold War
Origins of Cold War
The Cold War's origin is still the subject of contentious debate, with some revisionist historians placing it as early as the 1919 Allied intervention in the Russian civil war. While this school identifies the Cold War's principal cause as Soviet insecurity, more traditional scholars focus on Moscow's aggressive post-World War II foreign policy.
During the war, Soviet action presaged its postwar stance: Soviet troops, which had entered Iran with British forces in 1941 to forestall Axis influence, refused to withdraw in accordance with the agreed timetable.
A junior American State Department official provided that first widely accepted outline of a coherent American policy. George Kennan's 1947 article in Foreign Affairs, “Sources of Soviet Conduct,” crystallized American policy in the early Cold War. Kennan held that, just as a shark must move forward or die, Moscow was compelled to expand to justify domestic totalitarian repression. If the West prevented ...