Gianna Herrera U.S. History May 21, 2024. The Cold War The Cold War was a period where geopolitical tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union were high. The Cold War had many impacts globally and on society during that time. While the Cold War is not necessarily seen as a war as the troops never directly fought against one another, multiple battles were done out of competition and fear of what the other, the United States or the Soviet Union, may do to them if they get the upper hand. When WW2 had ended, many officials in America had begun to discuss the defense against the Soviet threat and agreed the best solution was containment. George Kennan explained the strategy in the “Long Telegram” that the Soviet Union was a political …show more content…
The US decided to use a long-term strategy that involved being patient and firm in using the containment strategy to watch Russia and make sure they did not further expand their territory. Kennan continued by discussing that it should be the United States’ policy to provide aid to free people who have been resisting coercion. These ideals went on to shape America’s foreign policy for the next 40 years. The containment strategy they came up with began to give a rationale for the revolutionary need for arms in the United States. Government organizations began to agree with President Truman that the United States should use armed forces to suppress expansionism from the Communist Party. As a result of this, there was a call for a four times increase in militia spending, particularly to prepare the defensive side. Government workers in the United States have started to urge the development of atomic weapons. This began a race between the Soviets and the US, a competition to see who would develop their first atomic weapon. The Soviets tested their atomic weapon, with the US following and claiming that they would create a larger atomic weapon, Joseph Stalin followed suit. …show more content…
Anti-Communist politicians began to expand their examination of the HUAC to people who worked government jobs. Thousands of people who worked in federal jobs were then looked into, fired, and prosecuted. Anti-Communism spread throughout the 1950’s, professors who taught liberal arts were fired, many testified against their co-workers, and loyalty oaths became commonplace. The fight against rebellion had resulted in much concern as it began to mirror the Soviet Union’s threat. In the summer of 1950, military action began in the Cold War when the Soviets supported the North Korean People’s Army as it invaded South Korea, which supported the Western part of the hemisphere. American officials feared that this war marked the beginning of a communist campaign to gain control of the world and decided that intervention was necessary. In 1955, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) decided that Western Germany would become a member of the organization and would be allowed to remilitarize. The Soviets then followed suit by making the Warsaw Pact which was a pact of multiple countries including Albania, Hungary, East Germany, and Bulgaria that was a unified military force. Multiple
The United States and The Soviet Union were originally joined together by the want to defeat The Nazi army, in 1941-1945. The alliance remained, and strengthened, among the two until the end of World War II. At the end of World War II, a rupture between the two occurred. The differences began earlier, but there was a straw that broke the camels back. The reason The United States and The Soviet Union’s alliance did not work out is because The Soviet Union and The United States were complete opposites, The Soviet Union proved to be faulty, and they were never truly allies.
A war does not necessarily require physical weapons to fight. From 1947 to 1991, military tension and ideological conflicts held place. Cold War is defined as a state of political hostility existing between countries, characterized by threats, violent propaganda, subversive activities, and other measures short of open warfare, in particular. The causes of the Cold War between United States and the Soviet Union were the mutual distrust that had taken place in World War II, intense rivalry between the two super powers, and conflicting ideologies. The two superpowers differed in views of political and economic principles and were eager to spread their ideologies to other countries. The United States were in favor of democracy and capitalism while the Soviet Union sought for the chances of influencing communism. Cold War did not involve the use of physical arms but was intensely fought. Propaganda, economic aids, Arms Race, and the creation of alliances were the main methods to fight the war. The use of propaganda played a crucial role in containment by criticizing the other power and raised the morale and spirit of their nation. The economic support for nations helped them recover from the desperate situation after World War II, which prevented the nations from falling under communism. Also, the Arms Race and forming alliances between the two main powers were important weapons for competition and rivalry in Cold War.
During the Cold War, the United States engaged in many aggressive policies both at home and abroad, in which to fight communism and the spread of communist ideas. Faced with a new challenge and new global responsibilities, the U.S. needed to retain what it had fought so strongly for in World War II. It needed to contain the communist ideas pouring from the Soviet Union while preventing communist influence at home, without triggering World War III. With the policies of containment, McCarthyism, and brinkmanship, the United States hoped to effectively stop the spread of communism and their newest threat, the Soviet Union. After the war, the United States and the Soviet Union had very different ideas on how to rebuild.
The Cold War was the most important historic event in the 20th century after the Second World War, from 1945 till 1991 between two most powerful countries in that period – Soviet Union and USA. The Cold War invested a lot in world politics. What is the Cold War? This was a war for dominance in the world. In 1945 the USA was the only one country in the world that had the nuclear weapons. But in the 1949 USSR started to learn their nuclear weapons. In further developments forced the USSR was soon created by nuclear, and then thermonuclear weapons. (Isaacs J, 2008) Fight has become very dangerous for all.
The Cold War was a post-World War II struggle between the United States. and its allies and the group of nations led by the Soviet Union. Direct military conflict did not occur between the two superpowers, but intense economic and diplomatic struggles erupted in the country. Different interests led to mutual suspicion and hostility in a rising philosophy. The United States played a major role in the ending of the Cold War.
The Cold War was an argument between the Soviet Union and the United States of America after WWII. During WWII the USA and the Soviet Union were allies fighting a common cause: Adolph Hitler who was attempting to overthrow the surrounding countries. Although the USA and the Soviet Union were allies, the relationship between the two countries was very tense (What Was). Neither country trusted the other. After WWII their relationship became even more tense due to the building of new weapons capable of destroying entire countries.
In addition to the prevention of communism, President Truman’s decision was also influenced by the apprehensive environment during The Cold War. The Soviet Union was able to ruin the United States as the monopoly of nuclear bombs in 1949 when they successfully detonated their firs...
The cold war era is when America was at its most suspicious and paranoid. The cold war grew out of tensions that were post WWII. Two worldly super powers clashed over rivalry and one wanted to have more influence. This rivalry went for almost half of the 20th century, and led to many international incidents that almost brought both powers to a mutual destruction.
In his book Cold War: The American Crusade against World Communism, James Warren discusses the conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, its causes, its consequences, and its future. Warren also analyzes why the United States was so afraid of communism and how this fear controlled both U.S. domestic and foreign policy. In George Washington’s Farewell Address, he warned future leaders to avoid foreign entanglements. However, the United States strayed away from this policy in 1941 after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. From then on, the United States realized that with its great power came great responsibility. The U.S. felt the responsibility to develop a strategy to combat the spread of world communism, which was viewed as the “Red menace.” The U.S. believed that communism would spread from the Soviet Union, across all of Europe; the U.S. understood that the spread of communism would not be very difficult because the destruction caused by World War II left many nations vulnerable to communism. Also, the Soviet Union had a highly-trained army, a ruthless leader, and a nation committed to Marxist-Leninism, which was a belief that human progress is the destruction of Western democracy and capitalism. The Cold War was a military, diplomatic, economic, and scientific struggle between the Soviet Union and the United States. The rivalry between these two nations also affected places such as Korea, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Malaya, and Vietnam. The Cold War controlled many of the crises that occurred the last half of the 20th century. The major conflict of course was the threat of nuclear weapons. Thomas Larson wrote that “the vulnerability to weapons that could destroy entire countries...heightened fears and antagonisms and made th...
The Cold War was a period of extreme tension between the United States and the Soviet Union that dominated world politics and held the public attention for almost five dec...
Cold War strategy following the outbreak of the Korean War. Unlike the Long Telegram, NSC-68 portrayed the Soviet Union as a monolithic entity driven by aggressive expansionist aims and possessing significant military capabilities. The document warned of the existential threat posed by Soviet communism and called for a dramatic escalation of U.S. military spending and global engagement. NSC-68 advocated for a policy of military containment backed by a massive buildup of conventional and nuclear forces to deter Soviet aggression. It emphasized the need for collective defense arrangements, including the establishment of NATO, to counter the Soviet threat.
From when World War II ended in 1945, all the way up to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Cold War was the center of attention of international affairs. It was a struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union. From an American view the Cold War was a mostly a war on communism. The US caused and maintained the Cold War, the US is to blame for the Cold War for disparish of the communist Soviet Union in support of the political and economic systems.
The Cold War is the closest the world has ever come to complete destruction. In this period of time, two world super powers were in a stalemate economically and militarily and were constantly competing to be the superior. The Cold War started as result of World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union had some differences on their perspectives of the world. United States being the richest country in the world promoted democracy and capitalism in the world. The newly formed Soviet Union thought that communism was a better political system because it transformed their economy and status in the world from nothing but a declining empire to a super power once again. The Cold War was a long series of events in which the communist tried to spread their ideas of government and socialist economy, known as expansionism, and the United States and some of the other Western powers such as Great Britain tried to contain it. Containment, a term introduced by George F. Kennan, was the foreign policy the United States practiced from 1946 to 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed. The United States saw the Soviet Union to be a direct threat to the free world. During president Truman and Eisenhower’s administration the policy of containment evolved so drastically that American presidents would put anything on the line, including world peace.
Cold War Essay Miller High School World History Honors Mr.Dial Alivea Luning 02/12/24. During the 1900s, 41 years of its time was wasted in a conflict between another nation, something we like to call, war. The Cold War was a period of “geopolitical tension marked by competition and confrontation between communist nations led by the Soviet Union and Western democracies including the United States” (N/A, 2023). It was a war that turned society against one another, fighting through the battle of economic systems.
As a consequence of the impacts of World War II, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as superpowers, initially cooperating to aid in post-war recovery efforts. Nevertheless, the partnership rapidly eroded due to their differing desires to either prevent or advance communism. As United States President Harry Truman implemented what was perceived as aggressive and targeted precautions against Soviet Union Leader Joseph Stalin’s desire to advance communism, the Cold War ignited. The Cold War was an ideological and geopolitical rivalry between the two superpowers, it “began in 1945, escalated in 1946, was unofficially declared in 1947, and congealed into a system in 1948-1949”. Whilst America’s desire to contain communism was responsible