“After World War II, the United States started the race for economic and political world dominance, thus creating the framework for the cold war to develop.” To what extent do you agree with this statement?

Tensions between the East and the West existed since 1917 when the Bolsheviks came to power. Nevertheless, the Cold War started only after the end of World War II when the interests of the two countries were juxtaposing. Between 1945 and 1948 increasing tensions between the two sides created small conflicts, which would later degenerate. Even though mutual fears and the search for security were reasons that raised the tensions between the East and the West, the desire of the United States of economic growth and political control over Europe was the main factor that played into the start of the Cold War.

The two sides feared each other for different reasons. The USSR was threatened by the economic dominance of the United States in Europe, which would have left them without any allied, communist, country. On the other hand, the leaders of the United States feared that communism would spread into the capitalist states in Europe and Asia. This would oppose their interest as the communist countries are against the “open door policy” which was the basis of the trade for the US. Moreover, due to these fears, both states were in the search of security; for USSR their security meant having a buffer zone between them and the west constituted by the countries in the Eastern Europe. In the case of the United States security meant having open markets with which to trade, this way their economy would not suffer. According to orthodox historians, such as Kennan, USSR and its expansionist policies are to be blamed for the breakdown of the East-West relations due to the threat to the security of the US created by these policies. On the other hand, the idea of the US having the blame for the Cold War, is more believable due to their necessity to have open markets and free trade with the European countries, and that they were a much more powerful country compared with the USSR. Their military and economic strength could have been able to control the Soviets but due to their aggressiveness they forced the Soviets to fight back and strengthen their powers. This claim is supported by the argument made by the revisionist historian William Williams that the US wanted to use their advantage of having monopoly on the atomic bomb and their strength in industry to have control over the world. Moreover, what accentuated the conflict and brought it to a national scale was the use of propaganda. Both states were portraying the other as the worst version possible while portraying itself from its ideals, which were not respected. Therefore, the mutual fears and search of security were just the framework for creating the conflict.