Khrushchev's Contribution To End The Cold War

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Though both leaders were determined to end the cold war it became amazing that it intensified instead of reducing. It became clear that Khrushchev really meant “peaceful competition “instead of “peaceful coexistence” when he started visiting countries like Burma and Afghanistan to give them economic aid if they agreed to support Russia. As a result of the western allied powers forming the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Khrushchev responded to this by forming a military alliance of communist countries named the Warsaw pact. Members of the Warsaw pact included Albania, Poland, Hungary, Romania, East Germany and the Soviet Union. The formation of these alliances had been preceded by an arms race in which both the two major powers were trying to overpower each other in terms of military equipment. The Soviet Union had tried its first atomic weapon in 1949, and this greatly shocked the Americans as it had happened very early than expected. Truman had responded to this by authorizing the development of thermonuclear weapons or hydrogen bombs. They controlled the Asia effect by exploding the H-bomb which was smaller in size than the Hiroshima atomic bomb but 2500 times powerful compared to it. The Russians were however not willing to give up, and in 1953, they also managed to produce an H-bomb. Despite Khrushchev’s efforts to outdo America`s military equipment the Americans always believed in the existence of a missile gap between them and the Asians. This motivated them to increase their missile forces. The soviet union brought the world to a shock when they launched the first world`s artificial satellite (sputnik 1) further threatening the Americans who had never thought of this. Khrushchev`s idea of criticizing his predece... ... middle of paper ... ...ar of a military strike, he decided to blockade Cuba. Lucky enough, Khrushchev sent two telegrams: in the first one he offered to dismantle the nuclear sites if America would agree not to invade Cuba and in the second one he demanded the American sites in turkey to be dismantled. On the contrast, an American U2 plane was shot down in turkey at this time, but J.F. Kennedy decided to ignore the incident following the turn of events at that time. Peace was insinuated when finally President Kennedy publicly agreed not to invade Cuba and proceeded to dismantle the sites in Turkey. Though both leaders had a crisis they agreed to set up a telephone hotline to talk over the issue and in 1963 they agreed to sign a treaty that banned the testing and usage of nuclear weapons. The Cuban crisis ended up very significant as from then on the cold war started becoming insignificant.

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