"The end of World War II marked one of the most dramatic and significant transformations of the global power structure in modern history." [1]

An advertisement campaign conducted under the auspices of the Hoover Institute contends that we are the targets of Soviet disinformation about the genesis of the Cold War.

The truth is far more complex, and intriguing, than this advertorial would suggest. Various international relations schools have re-assessed the Cold War's "consensus history" [2] in recent years and found it wanting. [3] This debate about past historical orthodoxies and disinformation campaigns has also coincided with renewed fears that the nation-state is in decline [4] and the transition of Russia from command to a Mafiocracy free-market economy.

This debate, which has divided political science scholars, goes beyond claims by the Hoover Institute of Soviet disinformation. It reminds us that the world is veiled by the conceptual schema that we project onto it, schema that shapes the unfamiliar. By creating a snapshot of history from diverse sources, we can penetrate the meaning of anomalous events and the disconnected "causal chains" which create the metapatterns of history.

Conservative scholar Edward Luttwak perceptively summed up this decisive 1990s values-shift: global politics was now "the logic of war in the grammar of commerce." [5] Cold War dichotomies such as interventionist/isolationist, realist/idealist, hawk/dove, and multilateralist/unilateralist seemed no longer applicable. Ideological Bi-polarists including John Gaddis, Richard Rosecrance, and Arthur Stein have contrasted their views with Kenneth Waltz's neo-realist school.

In what William D. Jackson described as a "new vogue in counter-factualism," [6] key Cold War genesis flashpoints were re-evaluated, notably the Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam conferences, which had laid the groundwork for the postwar peace settlements, and the Soviet blockade of West Berlin (1948-1949).

More complex contemporary sociopolitical realities and the shift from revisionist to post-revisionist scholarship (which is different to historical revisionism) have led scholars to suggest more ambiguous psychohistorical motives. Historical perspectives that had been intermingled with personal reflections gave way to heightened awareness of what Geoffrey Warner described as ex post facto 'contamination.' [7]

Richard Ned Lebow observed that these conflicting theories and debates are really about "different points of entry into a problem that requires a complex and multi-layered explanation." [8]

Warren Appleman Williams acknowledged early that the usual explanation was ineffective: "Russia is to blame. That represents the easy, nationalistic solution to all questions about international affairs." [9] However, Jean Kirkpatrick preferred to re-state the traditional views of the Cold War's beginnings: it "was a direct result of successive Soviet governments' policy of using force to extend and preserve power in Eastern Europe." [10]

The Cold War's Initial Phase

Zbigniew Brzezinski alluded to military strategist Karl von Clausewitz in order to explain the geo-political strategy underlying the Cold War's first phase, which lasted from 1945 until after Josef Stalin's death in March 1953. The initial battle was "for control over the European landmass, and eventually, even for global preponderance." [11]

Brzezinski further argued that the Berlin Blockade (1947-48) "was perceived as the beginning of a Soviet westward push, meant to force the West not only out of Berlin itself but also out of Germany." [12]

In a persuasive article, General John Ikenberry argued that for the US, there were in fact two post Second World War settlements. Firstly, deteriorating relations with the Soviet Union led to the deployment of "containment", which was based on the balance of power, nuclear deterrence, and political and ideological competition. Secondly, the mutual distrust between the "Strange Alliance" at Yalta (February, 1945) and Potsdam (July, 1945) was also a "reaction to the economic rivalry and political turmoil of the 1930s" (which had threatened the liberal democratic order). [13]

Whilst Stephen Ambrose and Douglas Brinkley simply declared that Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe "destroyed the Grand Alliance and gave rise to the Cold War," [14] David F. Rudgers offered more historical depth and an acknowledgment that macro-systemic forces were responsible.

"By late 1946, the increasing communisation and Sovietization of eastern Europe, the civil war in Greece, Soviet pressure on Turkey and Iran, and the activism of Soviet-oriented communist parties in economically prostrate western Europe ended hopes for a co-operative postwar European settlement and raised the spectre of the USSR as a threat to US security. The February 1948 communist coup in Czechoslovakia had a galvanic shock on policy makers." [15]

In contrast, Richard Ned Lebow's analysis of American domestic political explanations is revealing of the gulf between doctrine and social reality, and also how international relations debates unfold as epicycles within epicycles. Both Stalin and Truman, Lebow contended, may have provoked the Cold War to solidify their domestic authority, or analysts in their respective administrations may have provoked confrontations to advance their political interests. The 'Military-Industrial Complexes' of both superpowers profited from the conflict and may have kept it alive for economic and political reasons. Stalin's paranoia and fear of an expansionist Europe may have ignited conflict. Or the whole re-assessment might be an exercise in constructivism and what individual scholars make of motivation and history. [16]

Sergei Kortunov has argued that these traditionalist analyses of Russia's role in the early Cold War are incorrect. [17] Instead, the Cold War was really "a total rejection of the Soviet state as a historical and geo-political phenomenon, and, above all, as a successor to Russian history." [18] The Yalta and Potsdam agreements, not Eastern Europe, was its genesis: "The Cold War [was] the result of a "hot" war – World War II . . . not a confrontation between the "free world" and "totalitarian communism" (the liberal theory) or a class struggle between world imperialism and the "buttress of peace and socialism" (a mirror-like Soviet outcome)." [19]

The Art of the Long View

Ideological and historical factors for the Soviet decision to invade Eastern Europe, and why Soviet leadership feared that US neo-globalism was an ideology to export the counter-revolution, must be considered.

Germany's defeat created a power vacuum, claimed John Spanier, that replayed the post Napoleonic Wars struggle for geo-political supremacy. [20] Meta-political historian Arnold Toynbee argued that because Russia saw itself as the true Jerusalem (the Third Rome), the Cold War would continue ad infinitum, and also be shaped by a polarised Third World. [21] The Soviet High Command was searching in the early Cold War years for controllable constructive societal transformations.