The debate of this question is whether ideological concern was the dominant factor which

shaped the superpowers actions and their implemented decisions, thus escalating the
development of the Cold War, or were there any other factors which shaped the superpowers
actions and their implemented decisions, thus escalating the development of the Cold War. The
question assumes that ideological concern was the most dominant factor which shaped the
superpowers actions and their implemented decisions, thus escalating the development of the
Cold War. However, it is too simplistic to ideological concern was the sole dominant factor which
shaped the superpowers actions that led the escalation of the development of the Cold War.

The first reason why ideological concern was a very most dominant factor which shaped the
superpowers actions that led the escalation of the development of the Cold War was because
the desire to spread the ideology directed both US and USSR policy, and in so doing caused
them to perform actions that were naturally offensive to the other superpower, whether it was
knowingly done or otherwise.

Furthermore, both sides believed that they held the key to the future happiness of the human
race. By imposing on other countries to spread their ideology, their ideological differences
widened more and more into open hostility. Hence when one rival believes that the other
implements policies too zealously to spread either democracy-capitalism or communism, the
other would be unwilling to concede and would respond similarly as well. Hence, the US and
USSR eventually found the other party a hindrance to achieving their aim, and therefore wanted
to remove the other party, leading to even more signs of open hostility, developing the Cold War
in the process.
Evidence and Evaluation:
Evidence for this can be seen in the chain of events after the Greece Crisis in 1947 beginning
with the decision by the Soviets not to restrain the Greece Communists from continuing their civil
war, although it was in their ability to do so. If security was the only consideration of the Soviets,
then forcing the Greeks to cease and desist would have made the most sense, since it would
signal Soviet adherence to the Percentages Agreement with Britain, which was crucial to winning
Western acceptance of Eastern Europe as the Soviet buffer zone as a reciprocal action. If power
was the main focus, then direct Soviet intervention and domination of the Greeks would have
made the most sense, since the Soviets were able to accomplish all that easily, since they
outnumber both American and British forces in Europe, and American troops numbers were still
winding down in 1947. However, the need to secure its ideological influence played a role in
causing the Soviets to vacillate between both views, since the Greek Communists were willing
supporters of the USSR, and to dominate them would convince others that the Soviets were
dictators, but to reject the Greek Communists outright would have dealt the expansion of
Communism a severe blow, since the USSR, the de facto patron state of communism would
have shown its weakness and lack of desire to spread the ideology. Whatever the intention of the
Soviets, it remains true that their action, which was motivated by ideological concerns, played a
prominent role in provoking the Americans against them and widening the rift between the
superpowers because the Americans felt provoked enough to implement the Truman Doctrine
and the Marshall Plan, which represented what was effectively an unlimited commitment by the
Americans to defeat the Soviets, raising the tensions between the superpowers still further.
Alternative Evidence and Evaluation
Evidence can be seen in the American decision to offer the Marshall Plan to Eastern Europe in
the hope of inducing them to align themselves with capitalism. Cannot be seen as a merely
economic act, because although Eastern Europe was an excellent source of natural resources,
the countries with the most industrial know-how were Germany, France, and Britain, hence it
would have made more sense to develop them first, rather than make a grab for countries which
were already under intense Soviet domination anyway. This decision by the government to
support undermining the Soviets economically is better understood if one accepts that the
Americans did believe their ideology of capitalism to be superior to communism, and were
infused with a desire to prove Communism wrong. This ideological act by the Americans
offended the Soviets so badly that they rapidly enforced their hold on Eastern Europe, beginning
with the ouster of the Czech PM in 1948, and in the process, further widened the rift between
both powers, and developing (by worsening) superpower tensions, and had the effect of finalizing
the bloc formation which was taking place between the superpowers, because from this time
forth, Eastern Europe was now finally firmly dominated by the Soviets, with no hope of any
independent action whatsoever, and Western Europe is now firmly integrated with the West via
the Marshall Plan.
GA (S2):
The second reason why ideological concern was a very dominant factor which shaped the
superpowers actions that led the escalation of the development of the Cold War was because it
tainted the views of both superpowers so deeply that misperceptions and mistrust of one
anothers ideology easily intensified the tensions between the two superpowers by stripping both
the USA and USSR of the ability to understand and empathize with each other.
Elaboration:
Hence by having misperceptions and mistrust of one anothers ideology, both superpowers
became afraid and insecure of its own standing and then implemented even more policies to
keep themselves safe. Escalation of development of Cold War came when both superpowers
were too engrossed in protecting oneself and had tend to undermine the other party, putting the
other party always at disadvantage even if it meant showing hostility and intolerance against the
other party, increasing tensions drastically between both superpowers.
Evidence and Evaluation:
Evidence which supports this view is found in the way the Americans persistently chose to view
the Soviets as being rabidly expansionistic despite facts that imply the opposite. For instance, the
Americans chose to see the Soviets as being rabidly expansionistic and Communism as being
generally monolithic despite the fact that the Yugoslavs under Tito have broken from the Soviet
bloc, and was in fact receiving Marshall Plan aid. Despite that, many Americans still persisted in
believing Communism to be monolithic and Soviet-controlled soon after China turned
Communist, refusing to accept that the Chinese could actually have chosen to be Communist on
their own accord, and in the process expelling these knowledgeable people from government
service during the Red Scare and leaving the intolerant and most rabidly communist politicians
in power.
Alternative Evidence and Evaluation:
Soviet perception of the West were so tainted by their belief of an inevitable apocalyptic
showdown with the Capitalist world that they obsessively chose to maintain a strong military and
obtain a nuclear deterrent, even though such a research was prohibitively expensive. However,
the Soviets still chose to seek a nuclear deterrent, and in 1949, succeeded in exploding an
atomic device merely 4 years after the Americans, with all their economic advantages, did.
American insecurity because of this incident can be seen in the fact that NSC-68, which was
signed in 1950, recommended that the Americans continue stockpiling atomic devices, which
shows that the Americans believed the Soviets would do the same, even though they knew that
the Soviets were paying a heavy economic price to do so, which would be difficult to sustain
indefinitely. These evidences show us that ideologically-colored misperceptions played a huge
role in developing the Cold War, since it caused both parties to overreact to the actions of the
other.
Conversely, there are factors which one of them might be the important factor for shaping the
development of the Cold War.
GA (C1)
The first reason why ideological concern was not the most dominant factor which shaped the
superpowers actions that led the escalation of the development of the Cold War because both
superpowers, being ambitious, were both concerned with obtaining superiority and prestige over
the other, and hoped to transform, if possible, the bipolar system they were in into a unipolar
system where the other rival (either US or USSR) was defeated.
Elaboration:
To achieve this, they sought to use their superior power to influence others to join them. This
fierce competition developed the Cold War into a zero-sum game where the superpowers sought
every advantage, even symbolic victories to prove they were stronger and superior to their rival,
even if victory was not possible in the short term.
Evidence and Evaluation:
Evidence supporting this argument is Salami Tactics which aimed to extend Soviet hegemony
over Eastern Europe and expand Soviet control and dominate in the area; totally secure Eastern
Europe from Western influence. This shows that they were expansionistic, and implied that their
real aim was to divide and conquer process of threats and alliances to overcome opposition for
political / power gains. By trying to overcome opposition through all means, even brute force, the
Soviets showed that they earnestly desired power and were willing to use all possible methods to
achieve it. This developed the Cold War because the West now saw the Soviets as a distinct
threat, and reacted harshly, causing the Cold War to be distinctly bipolar, at least in Europe.
Firstly the Americans were now amenable to extending their influence in Europe, and the West
Europeans, especially Britain, actively sought American involvement to counter the rise of the
Soviets in Europe, given their pitiful economic condition because of the exertions of WWII, this
eventually resulted in the formation of NATO in 1949, which included the Americans and much of
Western Europe.
Alternative Evidence and Evaluation:
In the same way, the Americans, too showed that power was a major consideration in their plans,
and that they, too wanted to make sure that they were always more powerful than the Soviets.
We know this because the Americans frequently responded to provocations from the Soviets
through aggressive over-reactions. For instance, in response to Soviet aggression in Greece and
Turkey, the Americans declared their decision to support ANY COUNTRY facing the threat of
aggression, and not only did that, but went one step further, and threatened the Soviets control
of Eastern Europe by effectively attempting to bribe the Eastern European states into joining the
West through its use of Dollar Diplomacy via the Marshall Plan. Furthermore, after the Berlin
Blockade ended, the Americans retaliated by announcing their intention to form West Germany,
and strengthen it economically in the process, even though the initial agreement between the
West and USSR was that Germany should be weakened. This was also accompanied by the
formation of NATO, which potentially threatened the Soviets since it allowed them to attack the
Soviets if an excuse can be found to claim that the Soviets attacked, harmed, any single
signatory of NATO, even though the USA itself was not harmed. This potentially allowed the
Americans to use their powerful nuclear arms against the USSR as long as a casus belli could be
found, however flimsy it was, and showed how determined the USA was to challenge the Soviets
in the arena of power.

GA(S2)
The second reason that rivals, or even surpasses ideological concern as the most dominant
factor which shaped the superpowers actions, and hence, the development of the Cold War is
the irrational need for security, which made the superpowers more aggressive in their actions,
while simultaneously causing them to feel unjustifiably threatened by the other side.
Elaboration:
Therefore, the superpowers came up with policies and actions to secure what they felt to be their
own immediate and urgent non-negotiable interests and needs, even if it meant risking the ire of
the other superpower, and making long-term conflict a definite reality, or risking a prohibitive
short term cost.
Evidence and Evaluation:
Evidence supporting this argument is the fact that the Soviets chose to purse the use of Salami
Tactics against Eastern Europe even though they were aware that it was breaking the Agreement
of Liberated Europe which they had signed at Yalta, and that the Americans, their rival, were
displeased with it, and possessed the means to devastate them in retaliation through the
monopoly of the atomic bomb. For them to have begun attempting it at the height of their
prowess during the Potsdam Conference, and not when American demobilization was well
underway suggests that the Soviets were desperate to secure their own survival at the soonest
possible time, even if it meant taking on heavy risks to secure it, since the atomic bomb can
destroy cities, but a USSR without a buffer zone would always be vulnerable to national
destruction by any power coming from the West, as the Germans so aptly demonstrated in
WWII.
Alternative Evidence and Evaluation:
The desire for security by the Americans, too, can be seen in the fact that they justified their
proclamation of the Truman Doctrine on the basis that international aggression is a threat to their
national security, and backed it up with action first with the formation of NATO in response to
the Berlin Blockade, and then with the approval of the NSC-68 recommendations, such as the
stockpiling of atomic weapons, in response to Communist aggression in Korea. This shows us,
therefore, that security, too, played an important role in the decision making process of the
Americans. Furthermore, not only did it play an important decision-making role, it also played a
big role in causing the Soviets to react. For instance, the usage of the Marshall Plan, which was
envisioned concurrently with the Truman Doctrine, was countered by the formation of
COMECON, a economic assistance plan to Eastern Europe which was akin to the Marshall Plan.
Hence, security concerns can be seen as a significant factor developing the Cold War.

Conclusion:
Summarizing the strengths of both sides:
In conclusion, this essay sought to decide whether ideological concern was the most dominant
factor which shaped the superpowers actions and their implemented decisions, thus escalating
the development of the Cold War. While the challenging side had a few strong arguments such
that other factors such as power struggle between the two superpowers and the need for security
had also escalated the Cold War, which was compelling as preserving the nations or states own
prestige and glory and protecting its own people, its own interest and its survival were crucial that
motivated the superpowers to stamp out one another. They aimed for a unipolar world. However,
the supporting side had more compelling arguments such that ideological-based economic
interests, determination and aggressiveness to spread their respective ideology and the
misperceptions and mistrust had caused the superpowers to implement policies and determine
their actions.
Explaining the trump card why one side rules the day:

This had shown the power of ideology over minds and mindsets which influenced people to the
extent of making decisions and justified their actions, be it political, power, military, security, or
economic in nature. Furthermore, although the scope of this essay is primarily from 1945 to
1950, one must remember that the respective ideology that both superpowers adopted were
inveterate long before World Wars started, and had a far more profound influence in Cold War
developments than this essay could explore.
Stand:
Hence, this essay concludes ideological concern was the most important factor which shaped the
development of the Cold War.

In A Nutshell

The Cold War, a hostile rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, lasted from the
late 1940s until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The war was "cold" only in that the
United States and USSR never fought each other in a direct military confrontation, but both
superpowers threatened each other with nuclear annihilation and participated frequently in "proxy
wars" by supporting allied nations in numerous "hot" wars in places like Korean, Vietnam),
and Angola. The Cold War defined both countries' foreign policies through the second half of the
twentieth century, as Americans and Soviets competed for allies to maintain and widen their
respective spheres of influence around the world. Each side viewed the Cold War as a battle
between civilizations; in the worldwide clash between American capitalism and Soviet
Communism, only one could prevail. For more than forty years, the Soviet-American conflict
hung heavy over global affairs, shaping the world with massive military buildups, a never-
ending nuclear arms race, intensive espionage, and fierce technological competition as each
side tried to gain the upper hand in preparation for thethermonuclear "hot war" all humans feared
would someday come.

Why Should I Care?

The joyous victory celebrations that marked the end of World War II had barely ended before that
war's greatest victorsthe United States and Soviet Unionfound themselves locked in a
terrifying new conflict.

How did one-time allies turn so quickly into mortal enemies?

What would happen if the Soviet-American "Cold War" turned hot?

Could human civilization survive a clash of superpowers in an age of nuclear weapons?

These were the questions that haunted American life in the second half of the twentieth century,
as the Cold War shaped every aspect of American societyits politics, its military and diplomacy,
its education system, its culture, even its highway system.

We now know, of course, that despite occasional flare-ups, the Cold War never escalated into an
apocalyptic World War III. The decades-long standoff between American capitalists and Soviet
Communists ended peacefully, with the sudden dismantling, from within, of the Soviet empire
after 1989. America prevailed.

But just because the long conflict ended happily doesn't mean it should soon be forgotten. The
lessons learned while staving off nuclear holocaust during the Cold War may yet prove vital to
the survival of humanity on this planet.

The Big Picture: Who, What, When, Where & (Especially) Why

In 1945, the United States and Soviet Union were allies, jointly triumphant in World War II, which
ended with total victory for Soviet and American forces over Adolf Hitler's Nazi empire in Europe.
Within just a few years, however, wartime allies became mortal enemies, locked in a global
strugglemilitary, political, economic, ideologicalto prevail in a new "Cold War."

How did wartime friends so quickly turn into Cold War foes?

Who started the Cold War?

Was it the Soviets, who reneged on their agreements to allow the people of Eastern Europe to
determine their own fates by imposing totalitarian rule on territories unlucky enough to fall behind
the "Iron Curtain?"

Or was it the Americans, who ignored the Soviets' legitimate security concerns, sought to
intimidate the world with the atomic bomb, and pushed relentlessly to expand their own
international influence and market dominance?

The tensions that would later grow into Cold War became evident as early as 1943, when the
"Big Three" allied leadersAmerican PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Josef Stalinmet in Tehran to coordinate strategy.
Poland, which sits in an unfortunate position on the map, squeezed between frequent enemies
Russia and Germany, became a topic for heated debate. The Poles, then under German
occupation, had not one but two governments-in-exileone Communist, one anticommunist
hoping to take over the country upon its liberation from the Nazis. Unsurprisingly, the Big Three
disagreed over which Polish faction should be allowed to take control after the war, with Stalin
backing the Polish Communists while Churchill and Roosevelt insisted the Polish people ought to
have the right to choose their own form of government. For Stalin, the Polish question was a
matter of the Soviet Union's vital security interests; Germany had invaded Russia through
Poland twice since 1914, and more than 20 million Soviet citizens died in World War II. (The
Soviets suffered nearly sixty times as many casualties in the war as the Americans did.) Stalin
was determined to make sure that such an invasion could never happen again, and insisted that
only a Communist Poland, friendly to (and dominated by) the Soviet Union, could serve as a
buffer against future aggression from the west. Stalin's security concerns ran smack into Anglo-
American values of self-determination, which held that the Poles ought to be allowed to make
their own decision over whether or not to become a Soviet satellite.
At Tehran, and at the next major conference of the Big Three at Yalta in 1945, the leaders of the
US, UK, and USSR were able to reach a number of important agreementssettling border
disputes, creating the United Nations, organizing the postwar occupations of Germany and
Japan. But Poland remained a vexing problem. At Yalta, Stalininsisting that "Poland is a
question of life or death for Russia"was able to win Churchill's and Roosevelt's reluctant
acceptance of a Communist-dominated provisional government for Poland. In exchange, Stalin
signed on to a vague and toothless"Declaration of Liberated Europe," pledging to assist "the
peoples liberated from the dominion of Nazi Germany and the peoples of the former Axis satellite
states of Europe to solve by democratic means their pressing political and economic problems."
The agreements allowed Churchill and Roosevelt to claim they had defended the principle of
self-determination, even though both knew that Poland had effectively been consigned to the
Soviet sphere of interest. The provisional Communist government in Poland later held rigged
elections (which it, not surprisingly, won), nominally complying with the Declaration of Liberated
Europe even though no alternative to Communist rule ever really had a chance in the country.

In the end, the Yalta agreements were not so much a true compromise as a useful (in the short
term) misunderstanding among the three leaders. Stalin left happy he had won Anglo-American
acceptance of de facto Soviet control of Eastern Europe; Roosevelt and Churchill left happy they
had won Stalin's acceptance of the principle of self-determination. But the two parts of the
agreement were mutually exclusive; what would happen if the Eastern Europeans sought to self-
determine themselves out of the Soviet orbit? Future disputes over the problematic Yalta
agreements were not just likely; they were virtually inevitable.

And the likelihood of future conflict only heightened on 12 April 1945, when President Franklin D.
Roosevelt unexpectedly died of a brain hemorrhage. Vice President Harry S. Trumana former
Missouri senator with only a high-school education, who had served just 82 days as vice
president and had not been part of FDR's inner circlesuddenly became the President of the
United States. Truman, who may not have ever known just how much Roosevelt had actually
conceded to Stalin at Yalta, viewed the Soviets' later interventions in Eastern Europe as a simple
violation of the Yalta agreements, as proof that Stalin was a liar who could never be trusted.
Truman quickly staked out a hard-line position, resolving to counter Stalin's apparently insatiable
drive for power by blocking any further expansion of the Soviet sphere of influence, anywhere in
the world. Under Truman, containment of Communism soon came to dominate American foreign
policy. The Cold War was on.

So who started the Cold War?

In the early days of the Cold War itself, American historians would have answered, nearly
unanimously, that the Soviets started the Cold War. Josef Stalin was an evil dictator, propelled by
an evil Communist ideology to attempt world domination. Appeasement hadn't worked against
Hitler, and appeasement wouldn't work against Stalin either. An innocent America had only
reluctantly joined the Cold War to defend the Free World from otherwise inevitable totalitarian
conquest.

In the 1960s, a new generation of revisionist historiansdisillusioned by the Vietnam War and
appalled by seemingly endemic government dishonestyoffered a startingly different
interpretation. In this revisionist view, Stalin may have been a Machiavellian despot but he was
an essentially conservative one; he was more interested in protecting the Soviet Union (and his
own power within it) than in dominating the world. Americans erroneously interpreted Stalin's
legitimate insistence upon a security buffer in Poland to indicate a desire for global conquest;
Americans' subsequent aggressive efforts to contain Soviet influence, to intimidate the Soviets
with the atomic bomb, and to pursue American economic interests around the globe were
primarily responsible for starting the Cold War.

More recently, a school of historians led by Yale professor John Lewis Gaddis have promoted
what they call a "post-revisionist synthesis," incorporating many aspects of the revisionist critique
while still insisting that Stalin, as a uniquely powerful and uniquely malevolent historical actor,
must bear the greatest responsibility for the Cold War.

In the end, it may be that "Who started the Cold War?" is simply the wrong question to ask. World
War II destroyed all other major rivals to American and Soviet power; the US and USSR emerged
from the conflict as the only two nations on earth that could hope to propagate their social and
political systems on a global scale. Each commanded powerful military forces; each espoused
globally expansive ideologies; each feared and distrusted the other. In the end, it may have been
more shocking if the two superpowers had not become great rivals and Cold War enemies.

---------------------Marshall Plan/Truman Doctrine---------

Kennan's doctrine became official United States policy on 12 March 1947, when President Harry
Truman gave a well-publicized speech to announce the "Truman Doctrine." "We shall not realize
our [foreign policy] objectives," he said, "unless we are willing to help free peoples to maintain
their free institutions and their national integrity against aggressive movements that seek to
impose upon them totalitarian regimes. This is no more than a frank recognition that totalitarian
regimes imposed on free peoples, by direct or indirect aggression, undermine the foundations of
international peace and hence the security of the United States." Though the Truman Doctrine,
construed in the narrowest sense, only applied to crises then unfolding in Greece and Turkey, in
practice it committed the United States to a global policy of containment by pledging American
resources towards halting the spread of Communism anywhere in the world.

In support of Truman's policy of containment, Secretary of State George C. Marshall put forth
the Marshall Plan. Marshall feared that European nations, which had experienced so much
destruction in World War II, might fall into economic crisis and thus become susceptible to
Communism. He therefore proposed a massive program of financial assistance for European
nations struggling to rebuild from the war. Marshall emphasized that the assistance was available
to all nations, but structured the program so that the Communist nations of Eastern Europe would
have no realistic prospect of participating. (The Marshall Plan required any interested nation to
open its economy up to foreign capitalist investment, and the Soviets and their allies could not
allow that without undermining Communism itself.) Charging that the aid program would violate
national sovereignty, Soviet Foreign Minister V.M. Molotov walked out of the Marshall Plan
conference and withdrew the entire Soviet bloc from participation. However, sixteen Western
European nations accepted the aid. As American leaders had hoped, most of that aid money
ended up returning to the US as the Europeans used it to buy imported American goods.
Therefore, the Marshall Plan was both good diplomacy and good business; it helped Europe
recover from World War II and cemented alliances with the United States while also boosting the
American economy. The Marshall Plan may have been the most successful foreign policy in
American history.

In 1950, Truman's National Security Council issued a report, known a NSC-68, that broadened
the scope of containment by emphasizing use of the military to limit Communist expansion. "It
was and continues to be cardinal in this policy," the report read, "that we possess superior overall
power in ourselves or in dependable combination with other likeminded nations. One of the most
important ingredients of power is military strength." NSC-68 called for a massive military buildup
with sharply increased peacetime military spending.