The Origins and Causes of the Cold War: A Historical Perspective

This essay explores the origins and causes of the Cold War between the followers of capitalism and socialism. It discusses the role of USA and Soviet Russia, the ideological differences, and the impact of World War 2 on the cold war.

Running head: HISTORY ESSAY
History Essay
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1HISTORY ESSAY
Introduction
This essay focuses on the perspective of the Cold war that took place in the twentieth
century between the followers of capitalism and socialism or communism. The origins of the
cold war should be traced in this essay. It should be mentioned that initiatives of the American
President Harry Truman. Harry Truman had the belief or confidence that he could turn into a
world leader one day. This belief had the main origin of the cold war.
Origin of the cold war
The cold war had begun between the countries supporting the communism i.e. Russia and
China and the country supporting capitalism i.e. USA (Davis). In the case of the international
affairs China had declared that they would support the Soviet Russia because their ideologies had
matched. The international affairs went in the way that USA had supported the Chinese
nationalists during the time of the Chinese Civil war. Washington did not agree to cut off the
deep friendship with the Taiwan nationalist government. This is why USA proved to be a great
threat to the People’s Republic of China (Ross). This is why China joined hands with Soviet
Russia. On the other side, Harry Truman was very much on the sprees of winning the possession
of the countries that followed the communism. In this context, the Chinese and Soviet leaders
came close and signed the Sino-Soviet treaty. Their motive was to establish friendship, alliance
and mutual assistance in the year 1950 (Mingst and Ivan).
Soviet Russia was a great superpower in the world during time. This is why they had
supported China with the arms and ammunitions, air support, food and economic supply. This
happened during the Korean War. This is why the USA began to fear the PRC. Then they began
to collect economic and military strength so they could confront with the forces of Russia and

2HISTORY ESSAY
PRC. Actually the main initiative for the Cold War was taken by the Capitalism believers USA
that was being led by Harry Truman. The relationship between USA and Soviet Union of Russia
began to go down. The relationship between USA and Soviet Union became so bad that the US
delegates had been compelled to say that ‘World Communism is like a malignant parasite which
feeds on only parasite tissue’. They were also hard to remark that the Russian nationalism led by
Marxism had been very difficult to digest indeed. This cold war was generally a great struggle
between the capitalist and communist countries (Mingst and Ivan). No direct war took place
between them but there was a ideological difference between them. This is why it was always
called the ‘cold war’. This cold war had continued for some decades. The incident of the fall of
the Berlin Wall took place in the 1989 and USSR ceased to exist in the 1991. They were broken
into small countries. Thus the victory of the world capitalism was confirmed (Nye and Joseph).
World imperialism and World War 2
The relationship between the world imperialism and World War 2 had a deep inter-
relation indeed. All the colonial countries were left devastated after the show of power by USA
in the war. After the world was finished, the entire Europe was destroyed indeed. USA became
the superpower in the world (Spykman). The Western European colonies did not have the proper
resources to maintain their colonies anymore. This is why USA took this upon them and they
decided to redesign this entire thing. The days of being involved in colonial conflicts was almost
finished (Spykman). This is why Western Colonialism began to be controlled by USA. They
took the responsibility of building Japan and Europe again. This was their motive to capture the
Asian and European market to a large extent. Thus they began to show their skills and proving
themselves as the single most powerful country in the world. Then they realized their fierce
opponents in this quest were the Russian communists (Ferguson). The ideological difference

3HISTORY ESSAY
between these two countries had begun and this gave rise to the cold war. They began to make
the people understand that the capitalist economy would be the driving force of the world.
Conclusion
This essay can be concluded in the way that the difference between the ideologies of
communism and capitalism had paved the way for the cold war. This would be very important to
mention that USSR became a complete obsolete notion and USA proved them as the largest
superpower in the entire world. This is why the western imperialism had been the root cause of
leading to the cold war that began after the Second World War.

4HISTORY ESSAY
References
Davis, Lynn Etheridge. The Cold War Begins: Soviet-American Conflict Over East Europe.
Princeton University Press, 2015.
Ferguson, Niall. The war of the world: Twentieth-century conflict and the descent of the West.
Penguin, 2012.
Mingst, Karen A., and Ivan M. Arreguín-Toft. Essentials of International Relations: Sixth
International Student Edition. WW Norton & Company, 2013.
Nye, Joseph S., and David A. Welch. Understanding global conflict & cooperation: intro to
theory & history. Pearson Education, 2014.
Ross, Robert S. China, the United States and the Soviet Union: Tripolarity and Policy Making in
the Cold War: Tripolarity and Policy Making in the Cold War. Routledge, 2016.
Spykman, Nicholas J. America's strategy in world politics: the United States and the balance of
power. Routledge, 2017.