Ideology & the Cold War

Ideology & the Cold War

We will analyse the article written by Mark Kramer and published by Cambridge University Press about the role Ideology played in creating, alimenting and ending the Cold War. Here, Kramer is trying to evaluate the importance of Ideology in shaping US and Soviet foreign policy. This article is intended for more advanced readers, but that are not specialists, as the author still explains each event he talks about in detail while still using complex language.

The article is a pure reflection the author is having about the subject; he doesn't quote any other works but still does refer to multiple other documents. In this article, the author tries to stay neutral about whether or not Ideology is the what shaped these two countries' foreign policy. In other words, he is giving us a lot of information about the different views specialists have about this topic but stays outside of the debate. The only moment the author gives an opinion is when he states that "it is safe to conclude that the defining features of Soviet Communism were responsible for policies that helped sustain the fierce bipolar confrontation from its inception in 1945 until its unexpected end in 1989." (p.576). But even here we sense that he doesn’t want to give to push readers into making hasty conclusions.

This work helps us understand and evaluate different major events of the Cold War, letting us forge our own opinion about the motives that pushed the two different countries to act as they did. This notably that’s to the fact that the author is willing to provide us with all the different analysis that experts have made of the subject. The article does spur up some questions. After reading all the different ways of analysing the situation of the time one can only ask himself these questions: Was Communism necessary for the existence of the Cold War? Was the US fighting for freedom or global hegemony? Could the Cold War have stopped earlier?