Themes In The Unfinished Journey

The book The Unfinished Journey, by William H. Chafe, addresses the many issues in which likely contributed to the onset of the Cold War. Many of these issues could have been avoided, if certain events hadn’t taken place. It’s like the theory the “butterfly effect”, one event creates a continuum of events, but if that first event had taken a different course than the following events would take that new course as well, and the outcomes would be vastly different. So to with the Cold War, if certain events had not taken place, there may not have ever been a Cold War.

I feel that the Cold War is a good topic to bring up because, I feel that most American’s don’t really understand the onset of it, or really anything much about it. Chafe talks about that the U.S. and Russian conflict began around the end of World War I. America had a distrust for Russia, in particular the Soviet Union, and its policies of Communism, and it leader Joseph Stalin. When Stalin came into power he “got rid” of anyone that did not claim the communist party. This was a big problem for the U.S. who felt that this was a

and Russian relations dramatically. I really learned a lot from The Unfinished Journey about the Cold War that I didn’t know. The biggest thing I learned is that America didn’t have to be in a war with Russia. There is this notion engrained in Americans that the Russians were going to come in, and nuke all the Americans, and turn us all into Communist. However, there was really no possible way for the Russian’s to do that until much later. Which, more than likely, started with Truman waiving the Atomic bomb in Stalin 's face, which if he hadn’t there may have never been an arms race, and thus no threat. All in all Chafe’s read on the origins of the Cold War was most enjoyable and I would definitely recommend