Volume 8, Number 5 · March 23, 1967
How Did the Cold War Begin?
By Gar Alperovitz
Beginnings of the Cold War
by Martin F. Herz
Indiana, 214 pp., $4.95
Writing as 'Mr. X,' George Kennan suggested twenty years ago that the mechanism of Soviet diplomacy 'moves inexorably along the prescribed path, like a persistent toy automobile wound up and headed in a given direction, stopping only when it meets with some unanswerable force.'[1] A generation of Americans quickly embraced Kennan's view as an explanation of the tension, danger, and waste of the Cold War. But was his theory of inexorable Soviet expansion—and its matching recommendation of 'containment'—correct? A cautious but important book, Beginnings of the Cold War, suggests we might well have been more critical of so mechanistic an idea of the way Great Powers act and how the Cold War began.
Review, 3900 words
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