Why did the tension go the way that it did – hard-line anti-communism on the part of the successive American foreign policy proving triumphant(I will delve further into the triumpantism theory a bit later) over an over-stretched Soviet foreign policy and not into an all out nuclear disaster. Many attribute the outcome to the crystal ball effect. Imagine that in August 1914 the Kaiser, the Czar, and the Emperor of Austria-Hungary looked into a crystal ball and saw a picture of 1918. They would have seen that they had lost their thrones, their empires had been dismembered, and millions of their people had been killed. Would they still have gone to war in 1914? (Nye 1999 p135) Nuclear deterrence had a varying degree of psychological effect on those facing attack. They definitely knew the consequences if there was a nuclear explosion on their soil. This was an explosion 20 times more massive than all the fire power used in World War II. If you every move on an international level is based on a risk analysis, of how your enemy will retaliate than a lot of aggression might be avoided. During the Vietnam War the Americans choose not to use any form of nuclear weapon for fear that this might irreversibly set a new standard on what is acceptable in warfare. Nuclear attack also brings in a moral judgement that is attached with pre-emptive or offensive use of nukes.

Neorealists argue that the end of the Cold War is most likely to bring the return of instability to Western Europe which could lead to a major war. It threatens to be a repetition of the first half of the twentieth century. Peace in Europe during the Cold War rested on two pillars that made up the balance of power between the United Sates and the Soviet Union. They were, first, bipolarity with its stable distribution of military power and, second, the large arsenals of nuclear weapons almost entirely monopolized by those superpowers. With the revival of multipolarity, however, instability and insecurity is sharply increased. At the root of all this is the anarchist structure of the international system. According to neorealist John Mearsheimer, “anarchy has two principal consequences. First, there is little room for trust among states…Second, each state must guarantee its own survival since no other actor will provide its security’ (Mearsheimer 1991, p148)

Many attribute the end of the Cold War to the destruction of the Berlin Wall and also the lack of Soviet force to prevent this from happening. The Americans emerged triumphant from the duel of wits, but why?

Later in the game, around the 1960s and 70s, a group called the revisionists saw the conflict in a different light. Logically one extreme view will give birth to another opposing equally extreme view, this one being that the start of the Cold War was to be blame totally on the Americans. Revisionists claim that after World War II historians are not being fare to the Soviet condition and the situation Stalin was in. The world powers could not accurately be described as bipolar considering the Soviet’s where only hurt by the war whereas the Americans had much to gain. Also the Americans were the only one to control the Atomic bomb and they were ready to share this information. Revisionists can also claim that after the war the Soviet policy was more of an repairing phase to provide damage control for the 30 m

Some topics in this essay:
Cold War, War II, Soviet Union, John Mearsheimer, Berlin Wall, Emperor Austria-Hungary, Czechoslovakia Finland, Fidel Castro’s, Kenneth Waltz, United Soviets, cold war, world war, nuclear weapons, war ii, world war ii, soviet union, international relations, foreign policy, war united, soviet foreign policy, bipolar powers, cold war united, 1970s 1980s, europe cold war,