If FDR Had Lived Would There Have Been a Cold War?

     I'm reading a book about the Cold War called, aptly enough, "The Cold War" by Martin Walker. I'm must in the early chapters right now when it started.

     What stands out right away is that US policy seems to undergo a pretty large seismic shift with Truman. whereas FDR has built up the WWII Grand Alliance with Churchill and Stalin, Truman at the advice of some of his staff came out right away with a much harder line with Stalin. Some progressives like Henry Wallace viewed this change with dismay.

      The question that begs is would it have been different if only FDR had lived? Some have suggested yes. I find these sorts of counterfactuals fascinating. The trouble is they are very hard to prove. It's tempting to think this. Yet I think you have to be careful before going down that road too quickly.

      Statements like "If Benjamin Strong had lived there would have been no Great Depression" as Scott Sumner at times has suggested-he later claimed he never said that; I certainly do remember him saying it but maybe it was meant tongue in cheek; for his sake let's hope so-are almost always wrong.

     To be sure you have Truman even back in 1940 saying that we should help which ever side was losing between Hitler and Stalin though the one thing that was not acceptable in any case was a victory by Hitler.

     In retrospect Truman has been criticized for saying this, though one should recall that in 1940 we were at the height of the nonagression pact between Hitler and Stalin.

     Still I think that what is more realistic is to look not at individuals like FDR and compare him to individuals like Truman but rather to consider what the US interests were during WWII and after it's conclusion.

     It's like Zizek's analysis of the rise of Stalinism. If Lenin had "done the right thing" and appointed Trotsky rather than Stalin General Secretary would things have been different? Zizek suggests that there would have been Stalinism, ironically, even if Trotsky had triumphed over Stalin rather than the other way around.

     I suspect this is most often the case. If I have to guess the answer to the counterfactual 'would there have been a Cold War if FDR had lived?' I'd have to say yes.