This chapter argues that the Soviet–American Cold War was overdetermined. Since human agency, not impersonal forces, drive history, no event can be literally inevitable. But, some happenings, both great and small, are the product of so many factors pushing synergistically in the same direction that their occurrence is as close to a certainty as to make no difference. So it was with the Cold War. For the purposes of this chapter, the Cold War began with the proclamation of the Truman Doctrine on March 12, 1947, and ended with the destruction of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989.

With only mixed success, this analysis strives to distance itself from the rather tiresome and unproductive debate about the origins of the Cold War which has become a cottage industry for scholars. There is an obvious sense in which “peace making, 1943–1949” has to be about the origins, onset, and full emergence of what came to be termed the Cold War. But, this author wishes to follow strict navigational guidance intended to reveal the reasons why it was difficult to make peace out of, and after, the Second World War. Such a contextual perspective is more likely to reveal plausible insights than would yet another foray explicitly into the dark forest of Cold War studies.