International Relations

When a state is threatened by the possibility of a new emerging power, a rational decision to react is necessary, but not always can it be considered a decision made in free will. Instead such a decision is forced by the new threat. In the case of the Cold War, the Soviet Union tried to advance their weaponry by making advances toward nuclear missiles. While this new threat to the balance of power was unfolding across the globe, the United States had just become a new super power virtually overnight during and after the World Wars. These obvious rifts skewed the balance of power scale which led to the inevitable conflict of the Cold War. I will now argue from the perspective of the Realist as to why both nations and why the resulting war was an inevitable reaction by two states that wanted a sense of unthreatened national security while fostering their ideals of foreign relations as pertains to their views of ideal government.

The Soviet Union's response to the United States as a superpower was expected. The Soviets attempted to seize an opportunity to create nuclear weapons. This advancement would have both enhanced their national security and created a new foreign policy. The foreign policy of the Soviet Union was one that would have spread spheres of influence throughout the world. Their ideological conflict with the United States shaped their view of national security. The Soviet Union tried to create buffer zones throughout Eastern Europe by creating small collective agriculturally based economies of small Eastern European countries. In a major way, the United States' practice of containment further spurred the Soviet views of Communism within countries like North Korea and China. Since both the United States and the Soviet Union had been superpowers, conflict was inevitable starting with West Berlin and the Korean War.

In West Berlin, Stalin realized that this small city of democracy would prove detrimental to his communist occupation in Germany. He ordered a blockade of the railways and roads in West Berlin in an attempt to weaken the democratic occupations of the United States and Britain. Stalin then was able to control travel on land into the city. He wanted to eliminate United States' influence of democracy in the city that was surrounded by the communist East Germany.

The feelings of the Soviet's decision makers sided more with a policy of national security, and as a result, the foreign policy of the Soviet Union sided with more of a defensive take on foreign relations. "Though there is no question about the horrendous repression Stalin imposed on his own people, his foreign policy may well have been motivated by a desire for security rather than conquest" (Schrecker). Stalin's foreign policy was one of paranoia.

"Whoever occupies a territory also imposes on it his own social system. Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach. It cannot be otherwise." -- Stalin

He constantly felt threatened for his ideas of communism, and in many ways he was. During the Korean War, the United States and Soviet Union met again on the battle field indirectly fighting each other's views of ideal government. North Korea and China, who were both communist countries, wanted to take on the occupation of South Korea. American policies of containment fought against the spread of communism even though the United States did not want to actually invade a communist country. The Soviets defended their view of communism, and in order to gain more power, they had to spread their idea of communism to other countries like those of Eastern Europe and South Korea.

The Soviet's foreign policy was one of interventionism and expansionism (Fischer, p.19). Within their policy of expansionism, the Soviets controlled the governments of other small countries and used them as buffer zones. Also the Soviets stepped into the role of the aggressor