down from Thucydides. By contrast, the ideology-driven conflict has Biblical overtones of the climactic conflict of good and evil (it is significant that evangelical Protestants, taking a more explicitly religious world-view than most Americans, are among the most supportive of "Cold War politics").
It should be noted that these two views of the Cold War are complementary rather than contradictory. It is possible to argue that, while balance-of-power considerations made a state of tension between the U.S. and the Soviet Union inevitable, ideological enmity greatly exacerbated this tension, turning what might have been an uneasy peace into the Cold War.
A contrast could be drawn, for example, to the naval
competition between the U.S. and Great Britain after World War I. The war left the two navys roughly equal, and a conflict over dominance at sea could have been a natural balance-of- power outcome. Indeed, a naval arms race quickly heated up between these powers. But the Americans and the British were willing to talk to one another, and to believe one another's promises. The Washington Naval Conference successfully defused the naval arms race between them (Keegan, 1988, p. 171).
Thus, the evolution of British-American relations after World War I was from wartime allies to potential rivals, and then to somewhat wary quasi-partner. After World War II, in contrast, the evolution of Soviet-American relations was from wartime allies to potential rivals, and then to deeply committed opponents. The Cold War did not have to begin the moment World War II was over. Americans could have somewhat reluctantly accepted Churchill's lead in acknowledging a tacit Soviet "sphere of influence" in turn for Soviet acceptance of a Western "sphere of influence" (Halle, 1967, p. 66). American commitment to a fully independent Poland was not, by itself, enough to counter the even stronger American commitment to returning to some kind of ...