There are considerable differences in approach by academics and historians when looking at the Cold War. It is these differing approaches that historians take that I will examine in regards to my chosen texts.
             In 'We Know Now' by John Gaddis he sees the Cold War's origins as primarily Stalin's paranoia towards the United States and that it was Soviet actions that caused the Cold War. In Dana Allin's 'Cold War Illusions' she argues that it was the approach of US administrations in policy terms forcing the USSR into a defensive position. (Allin, 1998, p.1) Martin McCauley in 'The Origins of the Cold War' argues that the Cold War was inevitable due to the opposing ideologies of the USSR and USA. Richard Crockatt in 'The 50 Years War' sees the origins as being multi-faceted and dependent on a mixture of circumstances, ideology, history, paranoia, insecurity and US policy.
             Gaddis sees the origins of the Cold War wrapped up in Stalin's paranoia, his perversion of Marxist thinking into territorial expansion and a thirst for expansion of his personal domain. (Gaddis, 1997, p14) Gaddis continues that Stalin saw the security of the USSR as his own security and therefore any challenge to the USSR he would see as a personal threat.
             "...Stalin's preferred personal environment, a zero sum game, in which achieving security for one meant depriving everyone else of it. The contrast, or so it would seem, made conflict unavoidable." (Gaddis, 1997, p.15)
             In Allin she is primarily focused on the United States in explaining the origins of the Cold War. However, it seems that in this focus she seems to be implying the role of the USSR was benign. She sees that the actions of the USSR were essentially rational and logical. "It was Stalin's great paradox that, however murderously paranoid he was in running the Soviet Union, he was rarely anything but coldly ratio...