ABSTRACT
Astatic power declines but a dynamic power expands. Is this state-ment a sophism, in other words false, or does it reveal the under-lying causes of the monumental conflict which engulfed the Soviet Union and the United States for over four decades after 1945? Both America and Russia were revolutionary powers. They possessed universal visions of how to improve the lot of humankind. From a Marxist perspective to be a static power meant that one’s state was in decline. The goal of communism required an expansionary policy and this would continue until the goal of a communist society worldwide had been achieved. Likewise the United States understood that its prosperity depended on what happened outside its borders. President Harry Truman put it very succinctly: ‘If communism is allowed to absorb the free nations then we would be isolated from our sources of supply and detached from our friends. Then we would have to take defense measures which might really bankrupt our economy, and change our way of life so that we couldn’t recognize it as American any longer’ (Leffler, 1992: 13-14). Was this just rhetoric to gain popular support for higher taxes to fund the Marshall Plan, extend military help to states facing a communist threat and promote business opportunities abroad or was it a core belief of the Truman administration? The thrust of this book is that the Americans linked liberty, justice and freedom to a liberal market economy and the right of the individual to self-betterment. By the same token, a communist society was collectivist. The Soviet version had almost eliminated private property and private trade. The state dominated the economy. A small group of decision makers enjoyed the right to decide how the economy developed. In ideology, there was a ruling party and a ruling ideology. This party had a monopoly of political power. No dissenting voices were permitted. Where the American way was pluralistic and there were myriad economic decision makers, the Soviet way was to mobilise the population from the top down.
