Did Cold War Confrontation Become Inevitable - 764 Words

No. 1051142 Essay in response to Question 6: When, if ever, did Cold War confrontation become inevitable? Crossing the Threshold: the Inevitability of the Cold War Cold War confrontation became inevitable at 7:00 a.m. on August 29, 1949. However, before embarking on detailed examination as to the date at which the threshold of Cold War inevitability was crossed, it’s necessary to first solidify our understanding of why the threshold was crossed. While it may be easy to assume that the world entered an inescapable trajectory toward Cold War on the day in September of 1864 when Karl Marx appeared at St. Martin’s Meeting Hall to address the assembly of the International Workingmen’s Association, analyzing the Cold War through a lens of opposing ideologies does not provide a satisfactory historical perspective that is reconcilable with later events. It is our belief that the Cold War, in fact, represented the apex of a bipolar stalemate and could have existed even in the absence of an ideological hinge. The threshold of inevitability should, therefore, be seen as that date on which the power of the United States and Soviet Union achieved equilibrium, while the relative power of the rest of the world’s major states faded into shadow. Ideological Views on Cold War Origins The dominant viewpoints that ascribe an ideological inevitability to the Cold War can generally be divided into three camps: Orthodox, Revisionist, and Post-Revisionist. The Orthodox perspectiveShow MoreRelatedThe Cold War And The Soviet Union1462 Words   |  6 PagesWhen the term â€Å"Cold War† was popularised to refer to post-war tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, interpreting the course and origins of the conflict became a source of heated controversy among historians. 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