5 - The American Construction of the Communist Threat

Summary

As World War II came to a close, the Soviet Union and the United States competed to structure a new order for a world destroyed. Within just a few short years, alliance turned to rivalry, then to enmity. American political leaders came to see the Soviet Union – with its crusading propaganda machine, its vast army, its menacing international behavior, and its repressive centralized state – as an existential threat. Historians continue to debate whether the policy response, “containment,” derived from a realistic or exaggerated assessment of Soviet actions and intentions. There can be little doubt, however, that Americans understood themselves to be reacting defensively to a growing danger. Still, it would be a mistake to conclude that international developments alone drove US policy, for the image of the communist threat was also colored by the domestic context that framed American perceptions of the world.