What was the reason for the Cold War?

The United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union were the primary victors of World War II. After the war the United States and Great Britain quickly developed into democratic market societies. They had nothing to fear from communism. Communism is a non-viable form of society. It is only used as a revolutionary tool by societies that are in the early stages of oligarchic development. Unfortunately, the Western Powers did not understand that.

In the decades following World War II, there were at least a hundred countries that were in the early stages of oligarchic development. Many of these countries flirted with the idea of adopting communist revolution. The United States and Great Britain were horrified at the prospect of large parts of the world going over to communism.

The Soviet Union was the world’s only prewar communist state. It thought that communism was a great idea and encouraged the rest of the world to adopt it. The result was a kind of deadly serious, Great Power game, where the Soviet Union tried to promote communist revolution, and the Western Powers tried to prevent it. This game which seemed so important at the time was actually a fantasy. In reality, the Soviet Union could not benefit from communist revolution in other countries, and the Western Powers could not be harmed by the spread of communism.

We can now use 20/20 hindsight to look at some of the important events of the Cold War and see how badly they were misunderstood at the time.

1. During World War II, the Soviet Union occupied Central Europe as part of its counter offensive against Germany. After the war, it refused to withdraw its troops from most of this area. Instead, it remained in occupation and set up communist governments. There was probably a great deal of popular support for communism in Central Europe in 1945, but after a few years of Soviet occupation, this support rapidly declined. By 1950 most of the occupied countries were tired of communism and Soviet domination. The Soviets, however, refused to withdraw and insisted on keeping the unpopular communist governments in place.
   
   The United States believed that this was an example of communist expansion by military force. It is what started the Cold War and convinced the Western Powers that communism must be contained or destroyed.
   
   In reality, the Soviet occupation of Central Europe was not the beginning of an effort to conquer the world for communism. It was an instinctive defensive measure. The Soviet Union had just suffered a devastating invasion from German armies based in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania. Fascist governments in most of these countries had supported this German invasion. The Russians had been almost annihilated by this invasion, which had started less than 500 miles from Moscow. They were absolutely determined that this would never happen again. To make certain of that, they would occupy Central Europe and force any invaders from the west to start at least 1000 miles from Moscow and fight their way through Central Europe to get to the Soviet border. No amount of military bluster from the West could force the Russians to give up this defensive security zone. The threat of military force only convinced them of the necessity to maintain their occupation.


2. The communist revolution in China in 1949 was considered to be a personal betrayal by many Americans. The United States had supported the independence and unity of China as far back as the 19th century when Great Britain, France, and Germany wanted to divide it up and add it to their colonial empires. We had supported China during the Japanese aggression of the 1930s and throughout World War II. Now it had gone over to communism and formed an alliance with the Soviet Union. They quickly began executing landlords and aristocrats. The Great Leap Forward of the 1950s and the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s were incomprehensible to most Americans. All of this was accompanied by ferocious anti-American propaganda.
   
   The United States did not understand how this could have happened. Communism was supposed to be a replacement for capitalism in much more developed countries. How could it seize control in China? How could it turn the Chinese people against their best friend, the United States.
   
   In reality, communism has only been adopted by undeveloped countries in the early stage of their oligarchic experience. China hoped to use the central planning feature of communism to rapidly develop the nation and bring it into the 20th century. That was the reason for the campaign against the landlords, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution. The intention was to wipe away the traditional aristocratic institutions of the past, and force march the peasants into the modern industrial society of the future. The totalitarian structure of communism was believed to be the best way to achieve this social and economic revolution as quickly as possible.
   
   The anti-American aspect of Chinese communism was a direct result of the secret war that the American military and the CIA had fought in China from 1945 to 1949. The United States had provided massive aid for Chiang Kai-shek in his efforts to defeat and destroy communism. This intervention could not possibly prevent the 700 million people of China from doing what they wanted. Its only result was to turn them against the United States.


3. In 1950 communist North Korea launched an attack to seize control of South Korea. The United States was certain that this was another example of communist aggression. Communist armies were on the move to seize control of a non-communist nation. This was considered to be proof that aggressive expansionist communism was determined to conquer the world. American leaders believed that this was just an opening gambit and that soon Soviet armies would be attacking Western Europe.
   
   In reality the North Korean attack had just one purpose and that was to reunify the Korean nation. During World War II, the United States had tried to get the Russians to attack the Japanese colonies of Manchuria and Korea. Roosevelt had promised Stalin that if he launched such an attack the Soviet Union could occupy northern Korea after the war. The Russians refrained from such an undertaking as long as they were still fighting Germany, but after the Germans surrendered, Russian armies moved east and in August 1945 launched a devastating attack that quickly destroyed large Japanese forces in Manchuria and Korea. After the war, the Soviets occupied northern Korea while the United States occupied the south.
   
   The Russians established a communist government in North Korea, which quickly became very popular. At that time many ex-colonial nations believed that communism was the wave of the future and the fastest way to develop a modern industrial state. The Americans had put an aristocrat in charge of the South Korean government, which developed into an oppressive and unpopular oligarchy. In the late 1940s there were many pro-communist strikes and riots in the South. At least a third of the South Korean people favored communism over their own corrupt oligarchic leadership.
   
   The North Koreans were fully aware of the pro-communist sentiment in the South. They felt that it was their patriotic duty to reunify the nation and liberate the South from capitalist oppression. It was strictly a limited war for national reunification. Kim Ill Sung had to ask the Russians many times for permission to launch it. They reluctantly agreed on the condition that it would be over very quickly, and that it would not cause trouble between the Soviet Union and the United States.
   
   The United States does not seem to understand the awesome power of nationalism. This is strange. If a group of foreign powers ever managed to divide the United States into separate nations, the American people would never rest until they reunified their country.


4. Immediately after Japan surrendered, Ho Chi Min announced the independence of Vietnam. Ho liked the United States and based his Declaration of Independence on the original American document from 1776. But Ho was a communist as well as a nationalist and the United States did not like communism. The Americans asked the French to reestablish their imperial control over Vietnam rather than see it become independent as a communist country.
   
   The French fought for many years to regain control of Vietnam but were unable to do so, even with the Americans paying most of the cost. After a major defeat in 1954, they wanted out. The Americans hated to see a communist Vietnam, but they had just finished the Korean War and were unwilling to take on a new war in Vietnam. A compromise was reached at a conference in Geneva. Vietnam would be temporarily divided. Ho Chi Min would set up a communist government in the north, and the Americans would establish a non-communist government in the south. In two years there was to be a nation-wide election and whichever side won would become the government of a unified Vietnam. Ho reluctantly agreed to these terms only because he was certain of victory in the election.
   
   The Americans found an aristocrat, Ngo Dinh Diem, to lead the southern government. He set up an oligarchic government, began persecuting communists, and refused to hold the elections that would reunify the country. He was firmly backed by the United States in these actions. The Vietnamese in the north were outraged by this betrayal. They could see no other course of action except to return to war to reunify their nation.
   
   It soon became evident that the government in the south was unpopular and would quickly lose unless it was supported by American troops. The United States did not want to fight, but for some strange reason believed that it was critically important to maintain a non-communist Vietnam. It gradually took over more and more of the war. By 1967 there were more than a half million Americans fighting in Vietnam.
   
   The United States never had any chance to win the Vietnamese War. The simple truth is that the majority of the people in South Vietnam did not want to be citizens of South Vietnam. They wanted to be citizens of a united Vietnam, and they wanted their national hero, Ho Chi Min, to be the leader of the nation. No amount of American blood, courage, and sacrifice could change that. As far as the Vietnamese were concerned, the war was not primarily about communism. It was about nationalism and national unity.

There was never any reason or requirement for the United States to fight a war against communism. Because of its very nature, communism is self-limiting. It can not produce enough food to feed its own population, and it is absolutely terrible at producing decent housing and consumer goods. Communism has only one use and that is revolution. It is good at overthrowing aristocrats and oligarchs. This was reason enough for some countries to try communism, but not for it to last or become dominant. Even as a tool of revolution, it has limited success. After communism is ended, the oligarchs come back. This has been amply demonstrated in Russia.

In the spring of 1973, I told my History professors at Michigan State University that sometime in the next 10 to 15 years there would be revolution in the Soviet Union and communism would be thrown out. They thought I was some kind of an idiot. It was very clear to me that communism was not working, but the rest of the world insisted on believing that communism was a very powerful force.

Throughout the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and 80s the United States continued to fight communism. There were secret wars in China, Laos, Cambodia, Guatemala, Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, the Congo, Mozambique, Angola, and Afghanistan. In the 1970s and 80s, the United States supported death squads in much of Latin America. Communists, socialists, and assorted liberals were arrested and killed by military dictators and oligarchic governments.

All of these countries were in the early stage of oligarchic society. They were going to have civil wars, revolutions, anarchy, and dictators, but there was no need for the United States to participate in any of this violence. American intervention only made the violence worse. The anti-communist crusade cost the United States trillions of dollars and the lives of tens of thousands of its young men. There was no return on this investment. The United States gained nothing from the entire effort.

Most Americans believe that the Cold War was necessary and that it was a great success. They think that American intervention saved the world from communist domination. This is an extraordinary example of the power of myth and the ability of people to delude themselves. Communism is totally incapable of producing wealth and prosperity. This fact alone means that it cannot survive in the modern world. No country wants to be poor.

Communism did not collapse in the Soviet Union because of the arms race or American intervention. It self-destructed because the Russian people grew tired of being poor.