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What are some arguments by William Appleman Williams that the US initiated the Cold War, and their implications?
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William Appleman Williams argued that the US initiated the Cold War to secure European markets for its goods, rather than for humanitarian reasons. He noted the Soviet Union's need for Eastern European buffer states after WWII and saw NATO as a threat. Williams viewed US containment strategies as economically driven, akin to supporting dictators in Latin America. He suggested that US military spending aimed to sustain economic growth, ultimately leading to the Cold War's end with the Soviet Union's collapse.
William Appleman Williams was one of the early revisionist historians of Cold War historiography. In his work, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, Williams argues that it was the US who was the instigator of the Cold War. He argues correctly that the US was driven to keep Europe open not for humanitarian reasons; rather, the US needed European markets for its goods. This meant keeping the Soviet Union in a smaller role. Williams argues that the Soviet Union was severely weakened by World War II and that it needed to maintain Eastern European satellites as buffer states in order to protect it from the West. Williams also argued that the Soviet Union felt threatened by the formation of NATO in 1949 and that this led to the Soviet Union forming the Warsaw Pact. To Williams, the United States was the instigator of the Cold War, a war generated for economic...
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reasons and as a justification to continue to grow the US's military-industrial complex.
Williams's work was written at a time when most contemporary historians viewed the Cold War as a war of good versus evil, with the US playing the role of the good guys. Williams looks at US containment strategies as ways to maintain markets rather than crusades for freedom. Williams would note that the US backed rightist dictators in Latin America in a similar fashion to Stalin's backing of leftists in Eastern Europe.
The U.S. and Soviet Union backed their own pet groups throughout the developing world during the twentieth century. Both sides spent trillions of dollars on aid and weapons for groups in Vietnam, Korea, Latin America, and Afghanistan in addition to vast sums in their respective nuclear arsenals—enough weapons to destroy the world many times over. Williams and other revisionists would state that this military spending was part of the US's goal to continue to grow its economy in the name of fighting the Soviet boogeyman. The Cold War finally ended under the Reagan administration when Soviet spending could not keep up with US military spending. This led to the collapse of the Soviet Union; however, relations between the US and Russia are still tense.