Cold War

heyllllooooooA 'cold' war is defined as 'a state of rivalry and tension between two factions, groups or individuals that stops short of open, violent confrontation. (American Heritage Dictionary, 2000) Throughout history, the cold war has been an everlasting quarrel in reasoning which country was to blame for the outbreak and whether the war was predestine due to prior conflict. "The cause of the Cold War was the totalitarian nature of the Communist system itself." There are many historians who argue it was in fact The United States of America who was to blame, and juxtaposed to this, the Soviet Union was to blame. The cold war was the consequence of fundamental friction between the USA and Soviet Union. It is a war that is seen by many as inevitable as there was tension developed during and after the Second World War. The focal issue was the two clashes of Communism and Capitalism, which nearly turned this war into a 'hot' war.

This essay attempts to exemplify how The Cold War was in cooperation an inevitable outcome of the ideological disparities that existed between the US and Russia, and partly as a direct result of American paranoia surrounding the secretive Soviet state, combined with the mutual fear and misconceptions that were torn between the two nations. It can be established that data points to a strong desire on both the Soviet and American sides towards a mutual end-of-war agreement. However, Soviet belief that there could be no long-term harmony between communist and capitalist systems, combined with American fear that the Russia only planned to use its friendly governments in Eastern Europe to spread Communism.

There are three sections of historians when it arrives on opinions on the Cold War; the Traditionalists, the Revisionists and the Post-Revisionists. Each party has their own, distinctive opinion on who was actually to blame for the Cold War and whether or not it could have been prevented. Traditionalists are historians who believe that the Soviet Union was to blame, Revisionists, who believe that the United Stat