Revisionist criticism of the cold war during the Vietnam War

1. Revisionist Criticism History has shown that the events of the present effect how people look at the past. This was the case when revisionist thinking in the United States that was becoming popular during the Vietnam War. The revisionist thinkers challenged the accepted conventional views that were held up to that time about the origins of the Cold War. Their main point of contention was who was to blame for the start of the Cold …

…time when many people in the country were not favorable towards their government. Some of the revisionist arguments that were presented here have been effectively rebuffed by the traditionalists, but others are considered convincing even today. Even though some of their claims were based more on emotion than on fact, the revisionists writings did open up a new dialogue that brought new ideas to consider other that the traditional one sided view of Soviet-American relations.