Yolanda Williams
The Cold War
American Intercontinental University

Abstract

This essay is on the cold war and the major events that affected it. It will be analyzing 2-3 major consequences the conflict had on the United States. It will also explain how the war affected American sensibilities, including the way Americans viewed the war and themselves. The essay will also answer: if the war changed America’s role in the world? And was the outcome of the war beneficial or detrimental to the United States or was it a combination of both.

The Cold War: Containment

By the time World War II ended, a large majority of the American officials came to a conclusion that the best defense against the soviet threat was a strategy called “containment”. George Kennan explained the policy: The Soviet Union, he wrote was “A political force committed fanatically to the belief that with the U.S. there can be no permanent agreement between parties that disagree”, as a result the only chance America could make was the long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies. This way of thinking would shape American foreign policy for the next four decades.

The Cold War: The Atomic Age

In 1950, a National Security Council report known as NSC-68 had copied Truman’s suggestion that the country use military force to “contain” expansionism where ever it seemed to be occurring. The report called a four-fold increase in defense spending. American officials suggested the development of atomic weapons just like the ones that ended World War II. Thus began a deadly “arms Race”. President Truman announced the United States would begin building its own atomic weapon which would beeven more powerful and destructive: the hydrogen bomb or super bomb”. Stalin followed suit. The stakes of the cold war were very high. The first H-bomb test was in