Origin on the Cold War in the period 1945 to about 1952 - Essay Example

First, it is important to note that after World War II, the Big Three met at the Yalta Conference on April 12th, 1945. The Big Three allied leaders included the Soviet Leader, Joseph Stalin, the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The purpose of the Yalta Conference was to institute arrangements for a postwar world order, given that the world had just come from World War II. Although the leaders arrived at a contradictory consensus on the need for respect, democracy throughout Europe, and the recognition of a de facto Soviet Union sphere of influence throughout eastern Europe.

It is also at this Yalta Conference that these Allies made final touches on plans to divide Germany according to separate zones of occupation. This development portrays the US and the Soviet Union as being in charge of the world affairs, since Britain’s superpower had atrophied, following its heavy involvement in World War I and II. This means that the US and the Soviet Union had a strong sway on the pattern international relations and global politics would take. Thus, it is impossible to absolve them of the guilt of spreading the East-West conflict.

In another wavelength, the events that took place on July 16th, 1945 and August 6th 1945 also helped exacerbate East-West tension. Particularly, on July 16th, 1945, American scientists successfully tested the first atomic bomb in New Mexico, Alamogordo. Later on, on August 6th 1945, Enola Gay, a US bomber detonated the atomic bomb, Little Boy in Hiroshima. This event is important since its instant devastation shocked the world and ushered in the nuclear age. Later on August 1945, Bockscar, an American plane dropped an atomic bomb Fat Man, on Nagasaki.

This helped embolden the Soviet Union’s resolve to enter the nuclear arms race. Although the US intended to use these incidents as incentives to end World War II and dominance in world politics and foreign policy, yet the Soviet Union followed the act closely by detonating its first atomic bomb at the Semipalatinsk Test Site which is at Kazakhstan. This move by the Soviet Union did not only end America’s monopoly of atomic weapons, but also set off a chain of reactions. In 1952 for instance, this arms race became so intensive, as the US assembled and tested its first thermonuclear bomb.

America and the Soviet Union’s culpability is seen in the fact that they acted on the manner they perceived each other, just as the theory of constructivism in international relations posit. In this case, the Soviet Union and the United deemed security as a competitive value and a relative concept wherein the realization of security for a state portended the forfeiture of security for the other state. It is because of this suspicion that the former Secretary of State for the US, John F. Dulles announced the adoption of Massive Retaliation as a foreign policy, on January 1954.

The essence of this policy was that any significant act of attack or aggression by the Soviet Union was to be met with massive nuclear response. This fuelled the acrimony between the Soviet Union and the US since it is against this backdrop that America and the Soviet Union began to engage in Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). Wendt points out that the animosity that continued to fester between the US and the Soviet Union may have further been underpinned by the pursuit of ideas that are based on realism.