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INTRODUCTION
An attempt is made in this paper to examine in comparative perspective two official documents of great historic value from the point of their influence both on the onset of the Cold War, and on the shaping of the United States (US) grand strategy in the post-war era: the "Long Telegram" written by George Kennan, charge d'affaires in Moscow, in February 22, 1946, and the "National Security Memorandum No. 68" (NSC-68) on "United States Objectives and Programs for National Security" written by a Joint StateDefense Department Committee, under the supervision of Paul Nitze, Director of the Policy Planning Staff, in April 14, 1950.
Before proceeding to some methodological remarks, we should recall that the Long Telegram was sent to Washington shortly after Stalin's speech about the inevitability of conflict with the capitalist powers, and the capitalist encirclement of the Soviet Union; this should be added to the Iranian and Greek crises, as well as to refusal of the Soviet Union to enter the newly established International Monetary Fund and World Bank. NSC-68 was drafted following the explosion of a Soviet atomic device and the "loss" of China.
Additionally, we should be cognizant of three theoretical strands that have been developed in regard to the origins of the Cold War. The traditional or orthodox view, which assigns primary responsibility to endemic Soviet expansionism; the revisionist school of thought, which focuses on the aggressiveness of American policy against the Soviet Union; and the post-revisionist version, which questions the monolithic approach of the preceding arguments, suggesting a more "synthetic" approach.1
With respect to how we go about our study that is, the methodological approach to the subject matter, our inquiry resides in the theoretical method. As compared to a conceptual treatment or to a conventional historical analysis, the theoretical approach, when favored as a broad-gauge, general research method, allows scholars to gain a more focused understanding of developments and, thereby, to provide more comprehensive explanations of connections between variables. This is not to say that historical or conceptual methods are atheoretical. We merely mean that theory can be treated as a separate type of method to analysis.
The evolution of paper's argument rests on the narrow, specialised method of structured, focused comparison of the Long Telegram and...