International Relations

When a state is threatened by the possibility of a new emerging power, a rational decision to react is necessary, but not always can it be considered a decision made in free will. Instead such a decision is forced by the new threat. In the case of the Cold War, the Soviet Union tried to advance their weaponry by making advances toward nuclear missiles. While this new threat to the balance of power was unfolding across the globe, the United States had just become a new super power virtually overnight during and after the World Wars. These obvious rifts skewed the balance of power scale which led to the inevitable conflict of the Cold War. I will now argue from the perspective of the Realist as to why both nations and why the resulting war was an inevitable reaction by two states that wanted a sense of unthreatened national security while fostering their ideals of foreign relations as pertains to their views of ideal government.

The Soviet Union's response to the United States as a superpower was expected. The Soviets attempted to seize an opportunity to create nuclear weapons. This advancement would have both enhanced their national security and created a new foreign policy. The foreign policy of the Soviet Union was one that would have spread spheres of influence throughout the world. Their ideological conflict with the United States shaped their view of national security. The Soviet Union tried to create buffer zones throughout Eastern Europe by creating small collective agriculturally based economies of small Eastern European countries. In a major way, the United States' practice of containment further spurred the Soviet views of Communism within countries like North Korea and China. Since both the United States and the Soviet Union had been superpowers, conflict was inevitable starting with West Berlin and the Korean War.

In West Berlin, Stalin realized that this small city of democracy would prove detrimental to his communist occupation in Germany. He ordered a blockade of the railways and roads in West Berlin in an attempt to weaken the democratic occupations of the United States and Britain. Stalin then was able to control travel on land into the city. He wanted to eliminate United States' influence of democracy in the city that was surrounded by the communist East Germany.

The feelings of the Soviet's decision makers sided more with a policy of national security, and as a result, the foreign policy of the Soviet Union sided with more of a defensive take on foreign relations. "Though there is no question about the horrendous repression Stalin imposed on his own people, his foreign policy may well have