A Cold Peace: The Role of Ideology in the Making of the Postwar International Order, 1945-1948

This book outlines the factors that explain the onset of conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union in the aftermath of World War Two. The central assumption of this work is that the Cold War came about as a result of the efforts instigated by the superpowers in order to articulate the normative mechanisms needed to actualise their geopolitical interests in the postwar scenario. The correlation between ideology and the pursuit of certain geostrategic aims led to the creation of the interventionist mechanisms needed to establish a sound management of the international order in the postwar era. This book argues that the elements of American exceptionalism, the policy of containment, the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine served as instruments that contributed to manage the international order in the postwar era. Furthermore, this book also postulates that the Soviet Union contributed to create the basis for the effective management of the international order by establishing an ideological schema that corresponded with the accomplishment of its geostrategic interests in the postwar era. The Soviet Union subjected its ideological apparatus, guided by an Eurasianist orientation and the country’s position as an “inland” power, to the political expediencies of the postwar period. In this context, the “national front” strategy allowed Moscow to acquire control over the political and economic systems of the Eastern European nations with the ultimate purpose of entrenching its geostrategic position in the postwar scenario.