Since the beginning of the Cold War to our modern day society, historians have failed to derive a consensus on what was responsible for the outbreak of the Cold War. Whether it be Soviet-blaming traditionalists, US-condemning revisionists, or the more moderate post-revisionists, not one interpretation has reached a universal agreement. At the center of such competing interpretations lie Campbell Craig and Dale Copeland, two historians who have divergent views regarding the beginning of the Cold War. Craig argues the traditionalist view: that an increasingly hostile Soviet Union resulted in the start of the Cold War. Copeland falls into the post-revisionist realm, believing that geopolitical factors and strategic realities were the primary cause of the Cold War. However, his post-revisionist argument is nuanced in that he argues that the US holds primary responsibility for the Cold War because it was the first state to shift to hardline policies of eight militaristic actions through containment after WWII. With a more holistic analysis of US and Soviet foreign policy goals and US policy-driven actions, Copeland makes the more convincing argument that the US’s insecurities about its decline and a rising Soviet state caused it to act first in a self-preservationist calculation of preponderance.
Craig’s argument centers around the idea that the Truman administration anxiously interpreted Soviet intentions as a threat to US security, which justified US actions due to the threat posed by the Soviets. He argues that the “belligerence and aggressiveness of the Soviet Union under its tyrannical leader” left the US no choice but to righteously defend its interest. Craig cites three Soviet actions that caused the Truman administration to adopt a confrontational position towards the Soviet Union (including Stalin’s speech incendiary of capitalism, the discovery of a Soviet spy ring in the US, and Kennan’s letter explaining that the Soviet Union believed that the West was their eternal adversary and thus should be destroyed). Craig further argues that the insecurity caused by those three events was further stoked by the new realities of the 1947 timeframe, namely that the USSR was the only nation post-WWII that posed a formidable challenge to the US.5 However, his argument relies on the idea of a potential Soviet threat and the future actions the Soviet Union might take, as opposed to concrete ones that the nation had already taken. To the contrary of Craig, Copeland looks more holistically at the plethora of factors that come into play, arguing that the Cold War began for “systemic, realistic reasons” and “geopolitical considerations and strategic realities”.
The crux of why Copeland makes a stronger argument than Craig is because Copeland better explores the reasons for the preponderance that the US had to take in light of perceived Soviet intentions. He argues that the US’ primary foreign policy objective was to “maintain a preponderant position”, or a dominant status in terms of influence on the world’s stage. This objective of preponderance resulted in Truman’s shift to a containment policy despite his awareness that such a policy would likely spark an arms race between the US and the Soviet Union. Given the US’ goal of preponderance, none of the Russian actions that Craig refers to would be enough to fully trigger the Cold War. The Soviet Union was the main US adversary and was ideologically opposed to the US’ democratic values; as such, the US was always incentivized to push back against the Soviet Union.
In light of such a goal of preponderance, spurred by uncertainty on Soviet intention, the US took eight interlocking aggressive containment actions in 1945. These containment actions were all quite militaristic, intense, and encroaching on Soviet sovereignty (for example, the surrounding of the USSR with US air and naval bases to project military power, and the restriction of Soviet naval access to the Mediterranean and North Sea despite recognition of Soviet legal rights). In implementing this policy, an important aspect of Truman’s calculus was that even if the Soviets chose not to cooperate with this policy, the US preferred a Cold War with all its “attendant risk of inadvertent escalation”, implying that the US was the instigator of the war. Even before these containment actions, Copeland argues that the 1945 detonation of bombs in Japan aimed to signal to the Soviet Union that the US was the stronger military power, which would act as a deterrent to prevent Soviet aggression in Manchuria and Northern China. Importantly, all these US actions occurred in 1945, predating the three Soviet actions Craig specifies which occurred in 1946. Consequently, the actions that Craig specifies could not have started the Cold War, and instead may have been reactionary to the US’ containment policy.
Finally, Copeland more convincingly negates Craig's argument by proving that Stalin and the Soviet Union, had no reason, absent provocation, to be hostile to the US and wage the Cold War. Stalin wanted good relations with the West out of simple geopolitical self-interests. To rebuild his war torn nation, Stalin needed loans, reparations from Germany, and peace in the near term; strong relations were thus necessary in this process. Soviet hostility would decimate relations with the West and deck all prospects of rebuilding. As a result, the Soviets had no reason to be confrontational and adopt a policy that would start the Cold War, unless the US fomented them to do so; the Soviets merely reacted to the intensity-stoking actions of the US.
While Craig characterizes the Soviet Union as a harsh, anti-capitalist nation with the goal of destroying America (the adversary to communism), Copeland gives comprehensive proof that Stalin had no incentive to wage the Cold War for his national interests of rebuilding a war torn Soviet Union. Copeland lays out a clearer case, with more comprehensive information and stronger US and Soviet actor analysis given their foreign policy goals. Thus, Copeland’s argument is more convincing: that the US’ fear of declining and the fear of a rising Soviet state ultimately led the US to take the first action in a cycle of escalation that would later ensue.