Why the Cold War occurred and most nations were involved

By Oliver Green

There are three fundamental factors that have to all be present at once for a war of any kind to take place. Firstly you have to have political/ belief and or economic systems that are diametrically opposed to one another. Secondly, there has to be the political will on one side or both to want to deliver war to the other, which is usually caused by severe or prolonged economic hardship, lack and dysfunction. Thirdly, the opposing side or sides must have the capabilities to either deliver war to the other, or credibly be in a position to threaten to do so through intimidation.

The Genesis of the Cold War lies in the altered Geo-Political World Order created by the Second World War and its outcome. Prior to World War II, only the first two of these factors were present as far as the Soviet Union was concerned. Firstly, there was the political will on the part of the Soviets to impose their Communist ideology upon the rest of the world, as Communism is a totalitarian all or nothing ideology, which preaches an idiosyncratic destiny of worldwide revolution to overthrow Capitalism, Democracy and all other political systems that are not Communist! This was made worse by the idiosyncratic belief of the Soviet form of this ideology to have to expand and convert the rest of the world into its system to ensure itself of long term sustainability, as its main founder Lenin had acknowledged that they had gone against Karl Marx’s natural progression model, which involved moving from Feudalism to Capitalism and then to Communism once the Capitalists had been given the time to generate the level of wealth required for redistribution. Then the workers could rebel to bring about a temporary autocratic Communist system to bring about the promised Utopia and worker’s paradise that would replace it.

But they acknowledged that they had chosen to skip the Capitalist stage of Marxism and take the Russian Empire straight from Feudalism to Communism virtually overnight, and justified this decision by relying on their new Soviet Union of being able to in time bring the rich Capitalist nations of the world into the Soviet Union, which would then provide them with the wealth to distribute among the proletariat once the Bourgeois Capitalists in the west had been overthrown. Therefore, for Western Capitalism and Democracy to thrive would become an intolerable and complete contradiction to Soviet political legitimacy. So in effect the Soviet interpretation of Marxism made long term collaboration and coexistence between Capitalism and Communism impossible, and turned any interaction between the two into a zero sum game, which meant therefore that prior to World War II, the first two out of the three factors required for war that I mentioned were already in place.

However, the third one wasn’t as the Soviet Union did not have the military and strategic capabilities to directly threaten western democracy, but Nazi Germany and Militarist Japan did, and they were the pressing and far greater Geo-Political and strategic threats that we had to deal with at the time. Whereas, Stalin did not pose a direct threat to the western democracy, and only ended up on the same side as us through a combination of ideological and strategic policy decisions on Hitler’s part, as there wasn’t much else to differentiate these two tyrants. However, after the Second War this was no longer the case, as the Soviet victory on the eastern front had turned the Soviet Union into a military superpower with a firm foothold in eastern and central Europe, with designs on any nation that wasn’t Communist. This meant therefore, that the new Bipolar Geo-Political World Order that had emerged from the Second World War had created a zero sum game in which it was not possible for the vast majority of the world’s nation to be neutral, because any nation that wasn’t Communist was automatically an affront and enemy of the Soviet Union, and had to either submit to Communism or side with the west and engage in the conflict for its own survival, which is why most of the nations of the world were involved in one form or other.

But the Soviet Union was constrained from causing a direct hot third world war with the west, due solely to the development of Nuclear Weaponry and the capability of global mutually assured destruction. This meant that the Soviet Union and the West were left with no option but to engage one another in a long and protracted Cold War of political subversion, opposing strategic alliances, indirect proxy conflicts, nuclear brinkmanship, and arms racing. To illustrate the true scale of the Cold War and why just about every nation was involved, I’ve compiled an analysis of all the nations involved and which political blocs/ alliances they fell into.

The nations involved in the Cold War;

When thinking about the opposing power blocs of the Cold War, most people tend to just think of NATO and the Soviet Bloc. But there were in fact four US led collective defence pacts around the world, which were established and grew throughout the Cold War period. So in order to identify which countries were officially involved in the Cold War, I’ll list the member nations of each bloc or defence pact in turn, so as to identify which countries were militarily and or politically engaged in the conflict.

Firstly, I’ll list those on the communist side starting with the Soviet Bloc, which was comprised of;

Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Albania, Eastern Austria, East Germany, and also Yugoslavia from 1945 to 1948. Then there were the other politically independent Communist States that were not part of the Soviet Union or left it after a time, they included:-

China, Mongolia, Ethiopia, South Yemen, Cuba, North Korea, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and also Yugoslavia from 1948 to 1992.

Now I’ll list those on the Western side led by the United States, starting with NATO;

(North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) itself, which was founded in 1949 and grew to include:-

The United States, Great Britain, France, Canada, West Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Turkey, Norway, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Denmark and Iceland.

Then there was the Rio (Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance) led by the United States, which was ratified in 1947 and grew to include most of the nations of South and Central America, and was comprised of:-

The United States, Brazil, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Jamaica, Costa Rica, Panama, The Bahamas, Haiti, The Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, and Cuba as well which was expelled in 1962.

There was also the ANZUS (Australia, New Zealand, and United States Security Treaty) Pact which was ratified in 1951 and led by the United States to include;

The United States, Australia and New Zealand.

Finally there was also the Southeast Asia Collective Defence Treaty which came into being in 1954 being led once again by the United States to became the SEATO (South East Asia Treaty Organisation) the following year, and came to include:-

The United States, Britain, France, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, South Korea, Pakistan, Thailand, the Philippines and Bangladesh when it was East Pakistan until 1971, but left when it became Bangladesh. In the addition, the United States also had a number of informal cooperative and mutually assistance arrangements with Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Morocco.