Historians have disagreed about the role of Soviet expansion in the origins of the Cold War. What is your view about the role of Soviet expansion in the origins of the Cold War?

The ideal that Soviet expansion caused the Cold War is the traditional view of its origin, with Orthodox historians like George F. Kennan attributing the prolonged conflict to “an expansionist Soviet Union… and a paranoid dictator bent on world domination.” In The Long Telegram, a report that Kennan wrote after being commissioned by Freeman Matthews, he observes that “Soviet efforts… abroad [are] directed toward… revolutionary upheavals within the various capitalist countries”. Though Kennan’s long diplomatic history with the USSR gave his views legitimacy and influence, he “overestimate[s] Moscow’s ability to dominate and manipulate foreign Communist parties, as well as the influence of these parties in countries lacking a Red Army presence.”  A key example of Kennan’s overestimation is China. Mao Zedong had used the Soviet Union for military aid, which was needed for the PLA to win the Chinese civil war, and money to reconstruct China. Once he achieved these aims, Stalin had little influence on domestic Chinese policy as Zedong deemed himself “the leader of Asia’s communists”.  In keeping with the Soviet security-through-expansion foreign policy, Stalin only helped Chinese and Korean communists in order to implement a buffer zone between itself and Japan because Siberia had fallen prey to Japanese aggression twice in 25 years. This was much like their desire for a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. Such an unfounded evaluation of Soviet objectives for expanding discredit The Long Telegram’s outlook, and the orthodox historiographical view more generally, of the role of Soviet expansion in the origins of the Cold War. Kennan would admit this 10 years after the article’s publication, when he conceded that “the image of a Stalinist Russia poised to attack the West, and deterred only by our possession of nuclear weapons, was largely a creation of the Western imagination.”  Paterson’s The Origins Of The Cold War fares far better as he acknowledges the validity of orthodox and revisionist outlooks regarding Soviet expansion, discussing both Stalin’s “heavy-handed[ness]” and the Kremlin’s “security fears.” Furthermore, in alignment with post-revisionist consensus, Paterson argues that both the United States and the Soviet Union were engaged in the competitive “building of spheres of influence.” This mainly differs from the orthodox perspective because it attributes blame to the US for its expansion also rather than just that of the Soviets. Washington’s sphere of influence was far more expansive. This is because their military strategists became convinced that true security required an international defence, leading defence officials of the Roosevelt and Truman administrations to advocate a global network of US-controlled air/naval bases. A sense of how extensive US military bases requirements can be gleaned from a 1946 list of ‘essential’ sites compiled by the State Department which include; The Azore islands, Burma, Canada, Cuba, Ecuador, Fiji, French Morocco, Greenland, Iceland, Liberia, New Zealand, Panama and Peru. Ultimately, in Paterson’s list of the Cold War’s causes - which includes “decolonisation, civil wars, economic crises and power vacuums” - Soviet expansion lies nowhere in sight. This contextualises the role that Soviet expansion plays for post-revisionists regarding the Cold War’s origins as its absence in Paterson’s list shows that he did not feel it was significant in causing the Cold War. Although this conclusion places too much emphasis on characteristics of the post-war international system, it is more valid than the arguments presented by Kennan and Alperovitz as Paterson appreciates the validity in opposing historiography and incorporates it into his own outlook. Consequently, the post-revisionist view – that Soviet expansion’s role in the Cold War’s origins was negligible - is the most convincing one.