American-Russian relations deteriorated after the October Revolution, normalized, transitioned to an outright alliance against a common enemy in 1941, then went bad for good after WWII.
So it might be tempting to argue that in an alternate timeline with no communist revolution and no Soviet Union, the adversity wouldn’t have happened. But logically, if the adversity had that much to do with communism, then logically relations should have improved at the end of the Soviet era. But they didn’t. Bilateral relations don’t happen in a vacuum, so saying “If Russia did this or that differently” is only part of the story. Looking at past history, an observer would expect the USA to withdraw from Europe in 1945 as they had after WWI. But the circumstances had changed, and probably for the worse.
After World War II the British were enormously indebted to the USA, and also lost their empire. To large extent the USA absorbed the interests and positions of their former enemy. This included having a stake, or at least a perceived stake, in European affairs. It was a hostile and awkward relationship, but ultimately western Europe accepted servility to the USA in exchange for it taking up most of the cost of their anti-Russian interests. The USA benefited from this new system of financial and political domination. American voters, despite being historically isolationist, didn’t complain as a small fraction of the newly found immense wealth trickled down to them. The new American suburbia was in fact more prosperous than anything else in the world at that time.
I can’t say I understand the mindset of someone who sees most of the world destroyed with tens of millions dead and immediately wanting to leap into another war with former allies, but this is the choice Americans made that doomed the human race to at least another century of bloody conflicts.
Ian Kummer
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