Date of Award

3-1982

Degree Type

Master's Essay - Restricted

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

History

Abstract

Two of the most important aspects of the Cold War were its impact upon the conduct of foreign policy and its dramatic influence on domestic politics. In the immediate postwar years, foreign affairs fell within the virtually exclusive domain of a strong executive whose initiatives were challenged less effectively by Congress. Foreign policy was conducted on a global scale, based on one overriding assumption--that the Soviet Union was responsible for orchestrating and exploiting political change through violence and revolution. This was in turn based on a perception of the Soviets, held by U. S. policymakers, which had not changed fundamentally since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. The Soviet Union was dedicated, by Lenin's interpretation of Marx, to extend the Russian Revolution throughout the world and eventually replace bourgeois Western capitalism with the classless state. For U. S. policymakers, the Soviet Union's emergence as a strong military power after 1945, and with nuclear weapons after 1949, gave an added urgency to the perceived Soviet threat. No longer was "Uncle Joe" Stalin's Russia, once a great ally, seen by policymakers as a nation-state with legitimate security concerns, but rather as a revolutionary and subversive power that initiated and directed radical and revolutionary change around the globe as part of a grand strategy to undermine democratic capitalism and, in the process, overthrow the West.

Comments

A Master's essay submitted to the Faculty of the Department of History in candidacy for the Degree of Master of Arts, Department of History, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Download

Share

COinS