From Kennan’s telegram, the U.S. perceived the postwar crisis as the era of increased risks linked with unwanted ideologies spreading across Europe and Western powers. Specifically, the absence of “courage and self-confidence” and the American nation’s possible inability to provide European peoples with guidance faster than the Soviet Union would do it fuelled the country’s vigilance (Kennan, 2019, p. 111). As per the U.S., the Soviet Union’s intentions revolved around destroying Western powers’ strategic potential by causing disunity, stimulating unrest among dependent/colonial peoples, and disrupting the personal independence principles (Kennan, 2019). The Soviet Union’s plans were interpreted as efforts to achieve global domination under the disguise of the bearer of freedom for the lower class.
The Soviet Union’s perspective on the postwar crisis was similar and stressed the aggressive and expansionist hidden moods of the U.S. In his analysis of the rival’s postwar foreign policy, Novikov (2019) highlights the country’s alleged “striving for world supremacy” (p. 111). As viewed by the USSR, the intentions of the U.S. incorporated the exploitation of various forms of physical and financial control for achieving dominance. The possible levers ranged from the importation of capital through trade to innovative weapons to foreign military base expansion.
The perceptions discussed above are greatly similar in terms of how the opposing side is positioned, but the supposed means of achieving power differ drastically. Both superpowers categorize each other as aggressors that actually wish to maximize their access to the international levers of influence despite presenting as the strongholds of peace. At the same time, the U.S. fears the USSR’s expansion by means of propaganda, whereas the former expects the U.S. to weaponize its capital and withstand the democratization of the USSR’s adjacent allied countries. Thus, differences in perceptions stem from the superpowers’ dissimilar ideological orientation.
References
Kennan, G. (2019). George Kennan’s long telegram, February 1946. In B. Steil (Ed.), The Marshall plan: The dawn of the Cold War (pp. 108-111), Simon & Schuster.
Novikov, N. (2019). The Soviet Ambassador to the United States on post-war American policy, 27 September 1946. In B. Steil (Ed.), The Marshall plan: The dawn of the Cold War (pp. 111-114), Simon & Schuster.