Review of Literature and Study on Origins of "Cold War"

The study of the origins of the Cold War has often been heavily influenced by ideology and one's own standpoint at the outset, and the "absence" of the U.S.S.R (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) in Western studies of Cold War history and its dominant position in the socialist’s side have made the issue seriously polarized. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, both Western and Chinese academics have tried to break away from the ideological influence in the academy and attempt to make a comprehensive assessment of the Cold War with a global perspective and a relatively objective view.


Introduction
The study of Cold War history is a research field that emerged after World War II along with the East-West Cold War led by the U.S. and the Soviet Union, and has become one of the most prominent studies in world history. After entering the 21st century, the research on the history of the Cold War has developed significantly, and the basic issue in the field of research, "the origins of the Cold War," has also seen a lot of new results. By searching in CNKI, recent achievements in reviews of origins of the cold war can be found, such as the Review on the Symposium on the Origins of the Cold War and International Relations and A Review of New Research on the Origins of the Cold War. However, since most of the authors are senior and highly professional scholars and researchers, their reviews are at a high level, so it is difficult for beginners to understand and digest the contents of their reviews. Therefore, this study intends to make a brief compilation of the origins of the Cold War in the hope that it will be helpful to beginners. Through the search on the CNKI, it can be concluded that both in China and abroad, the research on the "origins of the Cold War" has been on the rise since the beginning of the 21st century. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the declassification of Soviet archives, the open-access of some U.S. archives, and the expansion of research perspectives, research on the history of the Cold War in the new century has been revitalized with the emergence of new materials and new methods. To summarize the main achievements of research papers related to the "origins of the Cold War" in recent years, this paper employed simple big data method to briefly analyze the research on the origins of the Cold War since 2010.

Big data Analysis of Studies Since 2010
The figure below shows the buzzwords and heated topics of studies on the origin of the Cold War since 2010.
As can be seen, in addition to the main two sides of the Cold War being the top buzzwords (the United States and the Soviet Union), Gaddis has also become an important part of the research. The origins of the Cold War mostly revolve around the policies and international relations of the two sides, while there are also many studies from the angles of geographical and country histories of Europe and Asia. In addition, based on the statistics, it is found that there are also many treatises on how to teach the origins of the Cold War in history teaching research. According to the word cloud of heated topics and the basic situation of the research on the origins of the Cold War, this paper mainly focuses on the research results contributed by American historians and China mainland scholars, and further reflects and summarizes the achievements.

Viewpoints from the Schools of American Historiography
As one party of the Cold War, the United States has a wealth of research on the Cold War. The author finds that American scholars' research on the origins of the Cold War often start from different perspectives, resulted from different research theories and paradigms relied upon. The following is a brief description of the schools of thought on the history of the Cold War in the United States.
The historiography of the Cold War in the US can be divided into two parts: the old cold war history and the new cold war history, and the former can be further categorized as orthodoxy school, revisionist school, and post-revisionist school.
Orthodoxy School (from the 1950s to 1960s). The interpretation of the origins of the Cold War by this school is consistent with the official standpoint of the country, with proponents being mostly national leaders and officers who formulated policy against the Soviet Union, such as Harry S. Truman. The orthodox view is that the Soviet Union was the primary party responsible for the outbreak of the Cold War and should be held accountable for its origins, while the United States responded to Soviet expansion as necessary. In the United States, this view began in the late 1940s and became dominant in the study of Cold War history in the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1950s in particular, the rabid anti-communist wave represented by the "McCarthy Doctrine" took this claim to the extreme.
Revisionist School(from the 1960s to 1970s). Revisionists believe that the United States was the culprit in the origin of the Cold War. The United States sought to preserve and develop the capitalist world system and establish its domination through military power, which was the root cause of the Cold War, and the United States forced the Soviet Union into the conflict. Within the school there are moderates and radicals. The representative scholars include Gar Alperovitz, whose representative work is Atomic Diplomacy.
Post-Revisionist School (from the 1970s to 1980s). The post-revisionist school integrates the views of both the orthodoxy school and the revisionist school, suggesting that the problem is not to hold one side responsible, but to analyze the real causes of the Cold War: the U.S.-Soviet Cold War was the result of the interaction of their respective ways of behavior and domestic politics, the character of their leaders, etc. The political vacuum and the presence of a large military force in Central Europe made it the center of diplomatic attention and the focus of superpower conflict in the post-war age. The U.S. and Soviet leaders in the early period both pursued dogmatic policies and looked to both sides for the causes of the Cold War. Moreover, they expanded their studies to Europe and Asia, exploring the role of countries such as Britain, China, and North Korea in the Cold War.
New Cold War History (since the 1990s). With John Lewis Gaddis as its representative, this school focuses on a new spatio-temporal framework, the use of multilateral archives and sources, and a rethinking of the role of ideology. There are 3 main points why Chinese scholars are more interested in John L. Gaddis: the importance of Gaddis's position and philosophy in the post-revisionist school and the new Cold War history studies; Gaddis's writings, i.e., book reviews; and the use of Gaddis's Cold War historiography on international relations theory , which is introduced subsequently.
John Lewis Gaddis, Robert A. Lovett Professor at Yale University, is a well-known Cold War historian and grand strategy researcher. He was onced hailed as the "Dean of Cold War Historians" by The New York Times. He is also a representative of post-revisionists and new cold war history.
John Lewis Gaddis also prposed a lot of significant theories, elaborated as below. In terms of methodology, his research on the history of the Cold War has shifted from being guided by international relations theory to a historical approach. Before the 1990s, Gaddis advocated an interdisciplinary perspective. He explored ways to combine international relations theory and diplomatic history research, and theoretically analyzed the U.S. "containment strategy" and the Cold War process. Based on these findings, he proposed the "long peace" after the Cold War.
Besides, his Grand Strategies (see Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy during the Cold War) are based on the realists' international relations theories and logic of neo-realist power structures. Besides, With reference to the theoretical models of symmetry and asymmetry, the theoretical analysis framework of Grand Strategies is constructed, namely, the analytical framework of "symmetric containment" and "asymmetric containment".

Research Perspectives: Beyond the U.S. and U.S.S.R
Although the U.S. and U.S.S.R were the main parties in Cold War, the influence created was worldwide. In recent years, with the rise of postmodernist thinking and emergence of outstanding scholars in the study of Cold War history in various countries, there has been a gradual increase in the the study of countries other than the U.S. and U.S.S.R perspective in the origins of the Cold War, including the origins of the cold war in Asia , the Britain's role in the Cold War , the origin of the Cold War and its connection with Italy , the origin of the cold war in Northern Europe , etc.

Research Conducted by Scholars from the Mainland of China
Amongst the scholars from the mainland of China, there are mainly four theories accounting for the origin of the Cold War, which are analyzed respectively as follows.
The U.S. Hegemony. Scholars in approve of this theory actually hold similar views with revisionists from the U.S., but they are from the socialists' view, which demonstrates their own ideology. This theory believes that the root cause of the tensions in the Cold War was the United States' pursuit of a hegemonic global strategy, for which it must bear primary responsibility. The Cold War was conceived and launched by the United States, and the Soviet Union was only a passive responder. This view had long been the mainstream view in China's academic circles.
U.S.-Soviet Resonance. Advocates of this theory argue that the Cold War is contributed by two parties, so it is the result of the mutual influences between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. The two parties resonated and interacted on issues in Eastern Europe, Germany, the Black Sea Straits, Iran, and East Asia, and their conflicts intensified. From the perspective of the USSR, Stalin's main goal was to harness Soviet strength after World War II to establish a socialist world system in opposition to the capitalist world system, rather than to set off a worldwide socialist revolution. The United States, however, mistakenly saw this as a global expansion of communism and developed a hard-line policy of total containment of the Soviet Union, which led to the outbreak of the Cold War. To a certain degree, it is resulted from the superpower policymakers' misjudgment of the post-World War II world situation and each other's behavior. In this sense, both the USSR and the United States were equally responsible for the outbreak of the Cold War [10] .
Co-actions of Multiple Factors. Some scholars believe that the origin of the Cold War is quite complex, and the Cold War should be regarded as the result of multiple factors. There were a lot of factors at that time which contributed to the Cold war. For example, the cooperation between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R during the World War II had already foreshadowed the conflicts between them; the US government's global strategy aimed at dominating the whole world; The deep-rooted anticommunist ideology of the US ruling class made it see the Soviet Union's foreign policy goals as a quest for worldwide expansion; The rapid development of US power in World War II stimulated its desire to expand everywhere and it is confidence for itself to contain the Soviet Union; Soviet chauvinism and national egoism over Poland stimulated anti-Soviet sentiment inside and outside the US government; The Soviet Union's violation of international relations norms on Iran and the Black Sea Straits became a trigger for a hard-line US approach to the Soviet Union; The different social systems and ideologies of socialism and capitalism became a source of conflict; Soviet strategy to guarantee national security collided with U.S. strategy for global domination; The emergence of atomic weapons enhanced U.S. power and accelerated the outbreak of the Cold War. Some scholars chose to analyze the origins of the Cold War at three levels. At the international level, ideological differences and post-World War II geopolitical factors gradually led to a strategic confrontation between the East and the West, with both sides perceiving a mutual "security threat". At the national level, U.S. comprehensive national power and nuclear weapons superiority led the U.S. to establish an international strategy of 'world leadership' and to adopt an assertive policy toward the Soviet Union in the first place. At the individual level of policy makers, the policy recommendations of "political realist" theorists were important factors contributing to Washington's choice of the path of "containment".
Active Role of Britain. Regarding the origins of the Cold War, academics generally emphasize the role of the United States while neglecting the influence of Britain. In recent years, scholars from China have conducted meaningful discussions [11] . As far as the Western countries are concerned, even the main force of the Cold War was the United States, the role of Western European countries such as Britain cannot be ignored. Without the active response, cooperation, promotion and facilitation of Britain and other Western European countries, the United States alone was unable to make a single move. After all, the main battlefield of the Cold War was in Europe. In a sense, the United States was encouraged by the Western European countries to start the Cold War. In the entire process of formation of the Cold War, the British government functioned in three ways: first, it acted as a political mentor for the United States and encouraged it to embark on the Cold War path; second, it served as a temporary commander-in-chief before the United States took the lead; and third, it was the vanguard of the Cold War after it began. Some scholars even believe that Britain was not only the vanguard in implementing the containment policy against the Soviet Union, but also the facilitator of the West's containment of the Soviet Union.
Prof. SHEN Zhihua has made important contributions to the study of Cold War history by referring to the Soviet archives and support provided by the Center for Cold War International History of the Cold War International History Studies at East China Normal University. As for the economic factor of the origins of the Cold War, Shen raised his unique opinion [12] , and he argued that economy is the root cause of Cold War.

Conclusion and Inspirations
With regard to the origins of the Cold War, studies were often heavily influenced by ideology and one's own position at the beginning, and the absence of the U.S.S.R in Western studies of Cold War history and its dominance in the socialist group made the issue seriously polarized. After the collapse of the U.S.S.R and the end of the Cold War, both Western academics and Chinese academics have tried to break away from the ideological influence in the academy and attempt to make a comprehensive evaluation of the Cold War with a global perspective and a relatively objective view. In particular, the Chinese academy has been greatly influenced by Western views after the reform and opening up policy was implemented, and many of its views are based on Western achievements. Although it is widely acknowledged that the United States took the lead in starting the Cold War, it is found that Chinese studies on the origin of the Cold War scholars turned out to focus on the role of the United States-led Western countries, and factors related to the U.S.S.R. were neglected according to the literature review work done in this research. Worse still, the role of the Soviet Union in the Cold War is often not discussed so much as that of the United States except for those studies conducted by scholars specializing in Soviet and Russian history. This is partly limited by the availability of information and China's national circumstances, but it also has much to do with the fact that the United States is still the mainstay of Cold War history research. In recent years, scholars in China have proposed to take the local path and come up with their own set of methods for studying world history [13] . This phenomenon can also be reflected from the focus on the role of China in studies on the origins of the Cold War.