The Cold War and the Direct Approach of "The Politics of Strength"
Abstract
In 1947 the Cold War broke out over which system -- the American democratic, capitalist system or the Soviet Union's communistic command economy -- would reshape Europe and the world. In that year, with its brutal imposition of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union made clear that it had no intention of acceding to the United States' postwar vision for Europe and the world. However, 43 years later the Cold War seems to have come to an end with the Soviet Union removing its "iron curtain" from Eastern Europe and last week's historical reuniting of Germany. Has the Cold War really been won, as so many politicians and commentators would have us believe, and if so, how? With hindsight one can see that a direct "hot" war was never a feasible way for the United States to achieve its victory in the Cold War. Having dismissed that possibility, it is tempting to argue that the West won its partial Cold War victory via an indirect approach, such as that outlined by the British military strategist B.H. Liddell Hart. It is the author's contention that the West won the Cold War battle of the two antagonistic political/economic systems in Eastern Europe, and that this victory was achieved via a direct, albeit noncombative, approach that centered on the "Politics of Strength." This strategy involved a fundamental recognition by the United States that its postwar prosperity would depend on a revitalized Western Europe and that it could ill-afford to retreat again into semi-isolationism. It had two main components: containment of Soviet expansionism, and turning Western Europe into a potent political/economic magnet as George Kennan envisioned in 1948 that could act upon the Achilles heel of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union: extremely inefficient and unproductive command economies. The combination of these two factors eventually wore down the Soviet Union and led it to jettison its resource-draining Eastern European yoke.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Oct 09, 1990
- Accession Number
- ADA437612
Entities
People
- Prescott Wurlitzer
Organizations
- National War College