Cold War Between Two Powerhouse - U.S. and Soviet Union

Roark, James L. The American Promise: A History of the United States. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008. Print.

The Cold War was a period of economic, political and military tension between the United States and Soviet Union from 1945 to 1991. After the Second World War, United States and the Soviet Union became the two most powerful countries of the time. They were rivals in which the Soviet Union wanted to gain more land and U.S. was doing everything in its power to make sure that didn’t happen. The dislike these two had for each other led to national security, diplomatic tensions, and proxy wars. The United States and U.S agreed to separate Berlin after their meeting disputes. The soviets wanted to obtain Poland but at the time President Harry Truman rejected this need and instead revealed the atomic bomb he had been working on. The Soviet Union almost immediately began to plan their counter attack by putting more time in its military. But Truman in September 1945 went ahead and cut off the Lend-Leason Act, which basically was aid, the United States had been providing to military in beleaguered nations like Britain, France, and Soviet Union during the Second World War. Clearly though the plan failed when as the Soviets decided to get satellite states to make up for the lost. George Kennan at the time used a long telegram to communicate his thought about soviet expansion, which led to many American’s to live in fear. This fear led to the reason the policy of containment. In 1947 Truman passed the Truman Doctrine to hopefully stop this fear and the expansion of communism. The doctrine basically gave out money to third world nations like Greece and Turkey so that they could become allies and help United States with this b...

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...he cold war years has decreased in modern day. All that spending on the military has left America very much in debt. The United States in my opinion became a big bully after the cold war and with the fear of nuclear weapons led much of the economic issues of today.

Europe was split in half and after the cold war basically stayed like that. Because United States had implemented democracy on the Western part it became rich with a free market economy. When Eastern came to be poor on economy but both continued to dislike each other and grew to run different cultures. Now they are trying to unite there are a lot of problems arising. For example the fact that many citizens from the East are trying to settle on the West to benefit from the jobs and free medical care. The West for the most is doing better so now there’s that tension of whether uniting will work or not.