The Cold War, in one sense, was a power struggle between the two nuclear military giants of the age, the United States and the Soviet Union. But on a more basic level, the Cold War was a contest between two opposing ways of life. One was democratic capitalism, whose leading representatives were the United States and the nations of Western Europe. The other was totalitarian Communism, the system of the Soviet Union and its "satellite" nations in Eastern Europe. Between 1945 and 1990, despite constant tensions and an alarming buildup of nuclear arms on both sides, the United States and the Soviet Union officially remained at peace—hence the name the "cold" war. Yet it was hardly a peaceful era. Furthermore through newspapers in USSR (Pravda and …show more content…
The persistence of Communism further sparked a fear of Communism in the US and McCarthyism prevailed. Joseph McCarthy, a Wisconsin Senator, promoted the Red Scare, which inspires accusations of being a Communist and deportations of those who “looked” like communists. Fear ran high through the streets, as families practiced safety drills in case of any attacks during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 196two. The Cold War was marked with severe competition in both arms race and in space race. The development of nuclear bombs by the US and the USSR in 1949 severely escalated the Cold War and promoted tension within the world. Furthermore, the tension sparked competition in the space race. The USSR launched its first space satellite, Sputnik, in 1957 and incited the US to embrace an ambitious space …show more content…
President Reagan and the White house began a military buildup that stimulated a new arms race. Subsequently, the Reagan administration adopted the Strategic Defense Initiative to build up a space shield for security and drove the Soviet Union into an arms race. As a result of the competition created by the Cold War between the two superpowers, the USSR challenged by the US, heavy industrialization was introduced to accommodate defensive expenditures and as a result a strain was imposed on the Soviet budget. Economically under pressure with the combination of Mikhail Gobrachev’s radical policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (free market economy) the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and gave rise to 15 different nations. The Cold War began as World War II was ending. American leaders saw the power and ambitions of the Soviet Union as a threat to our national security. The Cold War was a war of words and ideologies rather than a shooting war, although at times the Cold War turned “hot” as in Korea and Vietnam. Basically, the Cold War was a rivalry between the United States as leader of the western democracies, and the Soviet Union and the nations that were controlled by the
The Cold War was an over 40 year war between the former World War II alliances The United States and The Soviet Union. This was a war that begun by political disagreements, harsh anti-communist words from Winston Churchill, and a power imbalance between The Soviet Union and The United States. Though it was a war, a new, lethal weapon was used to emotionally harm the opposing country rather than causing physical damage.
The Cold War took place after World War II between the years of 1947 and 1991. It was a struggle for supremacy between both the United States and the Soviet Union. The Cold War was to dominate international affairs for decades. Major crises occurred such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, Hungary and the Berlin Wall being just some of the resulting issues. For many, the growth in weapons of mass destruction was the most worrying issue because it is always unknown as to what they could be used for. Neither side ever fought the other because the casualties would be tragic, but they did ‘fight’ for their beliefs using client states who fought for their beliefs on
An American U-2 reconnaissance airplane was shot down over the Soviet Union. American Central Intelligence Agency had provided training for exiles. However, the United States failed to send military planes to protect the Soviet Union from the invasion. The Cuban’s missile crisis easily could have resulted in a nuclear war. American’s felt especially threatened, with those missiles just one hundred fifty kilometers from the Florida coast. A major change in the Cold War would take peace in nineteen eighty-five when Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union. The Cold War years were also the time of the “Space Race” - when the United States and the Soviet Union competed in space exploration (Jerilyn Watson).
The Cold War was a time of tension between the Soviet Union and the United States, and their respective ideologies. It followed the Second World War and persisted from 1945-1991. It was not declared in the same sense as most wars, rather it progressed over time. Therefore there are different opinions on the exact beginning of the War. The United States and the Soviet Union weren't very friendly with each other. They didn’t agree with each others economic and political policies. The economic, political, and philosophical differences between the U.S. and Soviet Union made them enemies. Since their governments did not agree with each other, the Cold War had begun.
First, the Cold War was the geopolitical, ideological, and economic struggle between two countries, the USA and the USSR. It started in 1945 at the end of World War 2 and lasted until
After World War II, the United States ended its policy of isolationism and began a new foreign policy, containment. After seeing the effects communism had in the world, the United States pushed to stop communism from spreading. Thus, the Cold War began. And the place to begin this containment, the Soviet Union. During WWII, the Soviets has pushed east into Europe to stop the Nazis.
World War II shocked and dismantled many Eastern European countries leaving Europe in a state of shock, with many unanswered, open ended questions. Buildings were blown up, streets cracked, people slaughtered, and governments destroyed. As turmoil struck Eastern Europe, an opportunity arose for a new political system to come into power. However, this process is never a simple one; two common political ideologies fought to control the heart of Europe. Capitalism led by the Western Allies, funded by the United States Marshall Plan, spread providing a short time of economic prosperity. The American’s plan however could not venture as far east as West Germany with Moscow’s direction of Communism led by Joseph Stalin and he took over a large portion of Eastern Europe with many open statements and empty promises. These two ideologies caused an enlarged time of tension stemming from the drastically different values they were known to embrace, leading to a horrific time known as the cold war.
It was the Cold War, causing the space race and the arms race between America and Soviet Russia since 1947. In its midst the Cold War changed the United States dramatically, ranging from political to social problems all around the country.
The Cold War was based off of different political and economic views between the US and The Soviet Union. Soviet communists did not agree with the allies way of private ownership economies. Russian leaders felt as if capitalism was dying and that communism would spread through the world which caused a great tension, releasing a new kind of war, the Cold War. Winston Churchill described the separation of Soviet controlled countries in Eastern Europe and the Western Democracies known as the “Iron Curtain”. The Soviets wanted expansion and the retaliation of the US was containment. A form of containment was known as the Truman Doctrine, declaring that the United States would free people of communism, such as those in Greece and Turkey. Down the
The U.S. has considered Communism the greatest threat before and after WW2 and the civil war. It also worked very well in China. During the 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy unfairly accused a number of innocent people of being communist and traitors.
The Cold war dated from 1947-1991. It was characterized by both political and military superiority between United States, which was backed by its NATO allies, and Soviet Union that led the communist side. The cold war was mainly started after the success of the alliance that was formed against Nazi Germany. This competition supremacy on nuclear warfare attracted other countries that also started making nuclear weapons due to the tension that existed in the world. Both sides directed huge sums of money to their military budgets with each side trying to outdo the other.
Throughout United States history, there has not been a more prominent and long lasting threat like the one of communism. It has been a threat to the democratic and capitalist ideals of the U.S. since before World War I, throughout the Cold War and is still until this day. When one thinks about communism, you conjure up images of the Red Scare that the Soviet Union induced and of other dictatorships throughout the western hemisphere and one might overlook the Marxist ideals that were being spread throughout our neighboring countries. These western countries were allies that the U.S. could not afford to lose during the Cold War. Latin America, which has many ties to the U.S., both geographically and politically, could pose a very strategic threat to the U.S. in its battle against communism. To understand Latin America’s communist history is to understand how much influence and intervention the U.S. had in the region during the Cold War. This report will serve to explain how communism spread to the western hemisphere, why the U.S. government had to stop that spread, and how they were able to stop many communist revolutions in Latin America.
-The Cold War is one of the most complicating yet interesting topics in history. It was an altercation between the Soviet Union and the United States over different ideologies concerning politics. Russia believed in communism which was the ideology of advocating class war and believing that all property was publicly owned (Sherman, 2004). Each person is given or gets paid however much they need. Everything was owned by the government and divided equally among the people who eventually worked for what they got. This was totalitarian. The United States had a capitalist economy. This was an economical system where a country's industry and their trade is controlled by a private owner for profit not by the state. It followed the idea that people
The Cold War was not a typical war, where there was physical fighting and battles, it was a fight of superiority between Russia and the US. After World War Two, there was a great amount of tension between these two countries, leading to this long, persistent battle to achieve supremacy. In world war two the Us and Russia were Allies, there was always a hint of suspicion between the two, but after the war Russia began to take over the countries freed from Germany. The United States was highly against communism and Stalin the Leader in Russia, disliked democracy. It was a struggle of international ideologies of capitalism and communism. It lasted from 1947 and concluded in 1991, when the Soviet Union was non existent.Though there is much debate
After WW2, United States became the greatest power in the world; many American politicians thought that Unites states should play the role as a leader to “lead the rest of the world to a future of international cooperation, expanding democracy, and ever-increasing living standards (Give me Liberty P952).” They wanted to express the idea of equality, civil rights, and the freedom to the world, and hoped to build an easier world for democracy and capitalism. However, Soviet Union, which was the only power that could rival the United States, claimed that communism could make the world more organized and ordered. Both countries hoped to expend their influences around the world, and their confliction generally turned to be a cold war, in other words, a battle between Capitalism and Communism. The cold war coincided with the civil rights movement in the United States and had a strong influence on Africa-Americans’ action of pursuing racial equality. Although some left-wing activists in the united states pushed the blacks and some whites into fear of speaking for the Africa-Americans, cold war still provided the blacks a good opportunity and a great starting reason to fight for their civil rights and also enabled the U.S government realized the importance of racial equality for their promotion of democracy because of domestic and international pressure.