...The Cold War (Russian: Холо́дная война́, Kholodnaya voyna) (1947–1991), was the continuing state of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition existing after World War II (1939–1945) between the Communist World – primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies – and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States and its allies. Although the primary participants' military force never officially clashed directly, they expressed the conflict through military coalitions, strategic conventional force deployments, extensive aid to states deemed vulnerable, proxy wars, espionage, propaganda, conventional and nuclear arms races, appeals to neutral nations, rivalry at sports events, and technological competitions such as the Space Race. Despite being allies against the Axis powers, the USSR and the US disagreed about political philosophy and the configuration of the post-war world while occupying most of Europe. The Soviet Union created the Eastern Bloc with the eastern European countries it occupied, annexing some and maintaining others as satellite states, some of which were later consolidated as the Warsaw Pact (1955–1991). The US and its allies used containment of communism as a main strategy, establishing alliances such as NATO to that end. The US funded the Marshall Plan to effectuate a more rapid post-War recovery of Europe, while the Soviet Union would not let most Eastern Bloc members participate. Elsewhere, in...
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...Discuss when, why and how the Cold War began. Then cite at least one factor that perpetuated the Cold War in each decade from the 1950s-1980s and discuss how the item you selected affected America at home as well. Last, discuss when and why the Cold War ended To begin with, it should be specified that the Cold War was a state of political, economic, ideological and other confrontations existed between the Soviet bloc countries and The United States-led Western powers. There were several prerequisites of the Cold War beginning, but the main one was a refusal of the USSR to compromise with the USA and leave occupied areas of Eastern Europe, moreover its potential interest in communist regimes in Greece, Italy and France. The Truman Doctrine that was suggested by the president with a support of George Marshall, George Kennan and Dean Acheson in February 1947 became an ideological substantiation of the Cold War. According to this doctrine a conflict between Western democracy and communism was inevitable, thus the Cold war began. The most significant event that happened in 1950s was the threat of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that were successfully tested by the USSR in August, 1957. Reacting to such danger, the USA created a system of anti-missile defense in big cities and started to construct nuclear bombers. 1960s were marked by Berlin crisis, when a physical symbol of the Cold War – the Berlin Wall was built. According to the decree of Khrushchev the Wall separated...
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...Preface The Cold War was a struggle for global influence between the United States and the Soviet Union. To that end, the two countries employed a variety of methods, all short of a direct, all-out attack on each other's homelands. The methods they used included the creation of rival alliances, the extension of military and economic aid to client states and would-be client states, a massive and expensive arms race, propaganda campaigns, espionage, guerrilla warfare, counterinsurgency warfare, and political assassinations. The Cold War was one of the longest conflicts in human history, over seventy years in duration, with periodic lulls in the level of hostility. It was also the widest in scope of all the world's wars; it was fought on every continent on the globe and, considering the space race, over every conti- nent as well. The Cold War was also one of the costliest of the world's conflicts, not only in numbers of lives lost but also in resources expended. In the end, the Soviet Union collapsed, and communism, at least in the form that existed in the Soviet Union, expired. But, as Mikhail Gorbachev pointed out, both sides lost much in the Cold War. The United States lost many lives and consumed huge financial resources as well, and the demo- cratic principles on which it was founded were endangered. For decades, historians have argued about the origins of the Cold War. Who, or what, was primarily responsible? Was it inevitable? One...
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...The Cold War Celena Daley Kaplan University SS211: Prof. Jennifer Schmidt 03/12/2016 The Cold War began as a result of a dispute between The United States of America and The Soviet Union. Although the war was never “officially” declared, it began somewhere around 1947 and ended roughly around 1991. The term "cold" is used because there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two sides, although there were major regional wars. The first phase of the Cold War began in the first two years after the end of the Second World War in 1945. Throughout this period, the rivalry between the two superpowers unfolded in multiple arenas: military coalitions; ideology, psychology, and espionage; sports; military, industrial, and technological developments, including the space race; costly defense spending; a massive conventional and nuclear arms race; and many proxy wars. There was never a direct military engagement between the US and the Soviet Union, but there was half a century of military buildup as well as political battles for support around the world, including significant involvement of allied and satellite nations in proxy wars. Although the US and the Soviet Union had been allied against Nazi Germany, the two sides differed on how to reconstruct the postwar world even before the end of World War II. Over the following decades, the Cold War spread outside Europe to every region of the world, as the US sought the "containment" of communism and forged numerous alliances...
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...Cold War Cold War is a war between USA and Soviet Union during 1945 to 1980.During this war Americans used new atomic weapons. The reason for using the name ‘cold war’ due to the good and friendly relationship between USA and Soviet Union. Actually in the cold both countries not fight each other. It is war between communist countries and democratic countries during this war Soviet Union support the North Vietnam it is a communist country. But America supports the South Vietnam it was an anticommunist country. Americans fight for the safe democracy, but the Soviet Union fought for the communism. During this war USA and Soviet Union tried to hold their values and beliefs. There are so many events happened during this time, some of the events are Defeat of Germany, Returns to parliament democracy in the west, Soviet Control of Eastern Europe, The Berlin Crisis - the Climax of the Conflict between the East and the West in Europe are some of the events happened during this cold war (Cold war 1945-1960, p.1). Interviews I interviewed three of my friends to find out about the cold war and their conception about the cold war. The first person I interviewed gives me the following answers for the questions. 1. What words or phrases come to mind when you think of the term cold war. Bombs, Secrets. The trivial notion that a single button can end the world 2. Did you ever study the cold war in school? If so what are some aspects of the cold war that you remember? Yes. Planes...
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...Conceptions of the Cold War Ceara E. Carrier SS310-98 Kaplan University The Cold War is a subject that I don’t remember being taught in school but I do know that it was. Before I conducted the interviews bellow I myself did not recollect as much as they did. Having talked to them I now have a better understanding and more knowledge on the Cold War. Below you will find the questions that I asked and their word for word answers. Interview Transcript Question 1: What words or phrases come to mind when you think of the cold war? Marty: “Communism, Iron Curtain, Berlin, Wall, Good vs. Evil, Olympic boycott, nuclear war dictator, freedom and poverty.” Rusty’s Mum: “Duck and cover, bomb shelter, air raid shelter, communism, missiles, nuclear attack, espionage and radioactive.” Adam: “Threat of nuclear war, heavy espionage, communism, "tear down this wall" and the KGB.” Question 2: Did you ever study the Cold War in school? If so, what are some aspects of the Cold War that you remember? Marty: “Yes. The word “war” didn’t mean fighting and killing. It was a competition between two super powers trying to dominate the world. Communism vs. Democracy.” Rusty’s Mum: “No. In my memory there were no studying materials. Maybe not available yet? I don’t know how often school books were replaced, but I also don’t really recollect any discussion of the Cold War.” Adam: “Yes it was taught in school but I don't remember it.” Question 3: Who were the parties...
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...“The real cause of the Cold War between the two superpowers after 1945 was due to ideology differences between the two sides” Ideology differences were a major factor in causing the Cold War, however, many other issues did have a part to play. For example, Stalin’s paranoia in the insurance of the protection of the USSR and Truman’s need to stamp out communism led to the creation of COMINFORM and COMECON by Stalin and the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan by Truman in 1947. Both countries did not trust each other and disagreed over many things. The big disagreements surfaced from ideology differences. The two countries could not have been more different! America was a Democratic country, where the government was chosen by free democratic elections; whereas, Russia was a Communist state, where it has a one-party dictatorship. The USSR did have elections, but only communist candidates participated. In America business and property where privately owned; this meant that any profit making was encouraged to benefit one self and therefore the economy. There was a clear divide in the country’s wealth. In the USSR profit making was still encouraged, however all money went into the state; there was a general class of living with very few cases of poverty. The Americans were glad to be free from the government while the US Constitution made everyone equal. Communists were tightly controlled with their rights being valued as less important than the state. Both countries believed that...
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...Cold War: Postwar Estrangement The Western democracies and the Soviet Union discussed the progress of World War II and the nature of the postwar settlement at conferences in Tehran (1943), Yalta (February 1945), and Potsdam (July-August 1945). After the war, disputes between the Soviet Union and the Western democracies, particularly over the Soviet takeover of East European states, led Winston Churchill to warn in 1946 that an "iron curtain" was descending through the middle of Europe. For his part, Joseph Stalin deepened the estrangement between the United States and the Soviet Union when he asserted in 1946 that World War II was an unavoidable and inevitable consequence of "capitalist imperialism" and implied that such a war might reoccur. The Cold War was a period of East-West competition, tension, and conflict short of full-scale war, characterized by mutual perceptions of hostile intention between military-political alliances or blocs. There were real wars, sometimes called "proxy wars" because they were fought by Soviet allies rather than the USSR itself -- along with competition for influence in the Third World, and a major superpower arms race. After Stalin's death, East-West relations went through phases of alternating relaxation and confrontation, including a cooperative phase during the 1960s and another, termed dtente, during the 1970s. A final phase during the late 1980s and early 1990s was hailed by President Mikhail Gorbachev, and especially by the president...
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...Assignment 1: The Cold War and U.S. Diplomacy By Cedric Rhynes Professor Emmanuel Obuah POL 300 05/11/2013 The 35th President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, came into office at the height of the Cold War. The president decided to keep the foreign policy of his predecessor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and also decided that he could expand upon that foreign policy doctrine. President Kennedy wanted to be able to provide the United States with the flexibility to respond to communist expansion. The President believed that the expansion of communism would become a direct threat to the United States and Europe. While Truman and Eisenhower created policies that were mainly based on containing communism in Europe and the Middle East, President Kennedy’s doctrine’s differed from his predecessors in that his doctrine focused on Latin America, especially leading up to and after the Cuban Revolution. President Kennedy believed that the United States should contain the spread of communism by using other alternative means. During President Kennedy’s term in office there were several diplomatic crises that challenged his foreign policy doctrine. The challenges included; The Bay of Pigs in 1961, The Vietnam War in 1962, and The Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Although The Bay of Pigs and the United States involvement in Vietnam were seen as major efforts that supremely impacted U.S. foreign policy, it was the Cuban Missile Crisis that almost brought the United States to...
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...Assignment The Cold War By: Deborah Rodriguez While doing these interviews, I was very amazed at the amount of information I received. I interviewed my friend who was in the marines for about 6 years. He knew many things also, since he just studied about the Cold War in school. It helped him to elaborate more on his answers. I next interviewed my father which was very interesting. My father is very into the military and that is all he watches. The first question I asked him turned into an eleven minute conversation. Lastly, I interviewed my sister who is not fond about that era at all. In fact, she refused to give me the interview, but I made her. Before I get into the interviews, I want to give a brief look at the history of the Cold War. The atomic bombing of Japan by the United States ended World War II, but it marked the beginning of an intense rivalry between the two new superpowers, the U.S. and the Soviet Union. So began the Cold War, an ideological and political conflict lasting nearly 50 years. The competition spawned great developments in among other things, military technology, civil defense, and space exploration. The Apollo II landing marked a major political and scientific victory for the United States in the Cold War. The U.S. and Soviet Union continued having various conflicts until the Soviet Union’s breakup in 1991 ending the Cold War. My friend I interviewed said that the words that came to his mind when he thought of the Cold War was Soviet...
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...The Cold War is a span of almost a half century of tension between, primarily the United States and its allied powers and the Soviet Union and its supporting allies or the Warsaw Pact, from the tension started during World War II and America’s late entry, to the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the economic, cultural, social, and political battles that ensued. Hesitant and cautious of Stalin’s thirst for power and dominance through his fanatical Communist control and the chance of Communist expansion, American’s enmity and distrust launched a policy to halt the possibility of the Soviet’s attempts at world dominancy. With American’s refusal to acknowledge the Soviet as a legitimate power only fueled the tension that arose. Although it was termed “The Cold War” only three wars arose during this time, The Korean War, Vietnam War, and the Afghanistan War, and never shaped an actual armed conflict. The succession of the advancement of technology lent its part to shape the cold war and the possession of nuclear warheads led to espionage and constant threats. Although many events led to the tension that constant escaladed between the two powerhouses two major events climaxed the tension. One being the launching of Sputnik Crisis in 1957, in which the US mounted themselves as the successor in space technology and therefore the leader in the forefront of missile construction, suddenly realized that the Soviet Union had surpassed them, which begun the space race, the Apollo mission, and eventually...
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...Samantha L. Overbay Prof. Payne Option 2 Assignment Unit 2 How has our ideology (United States) and world view influenced our relations and actions with other nations? Traditional scholarship on the Cold War assigned a central but sharply circumscribed role to ideology. The writers of the 1950s drew on the official rationales that the Truman administration had used to explain the nature of the Cold War and the necessity for the American Cold War policy of containment. This literature portrayed the Soviets as bent on expansion, driven by a combination of traditional interests and Marxist-Leninist ideology. The United States in response acted prudently and pragmatically to defend its interests against this obvious security threat. This view did not go unchallenged. Although initially an advocate of containing the Soviet Union, George Kennan soon joined another realist critic, Walter Lippmann, and turned against his creation. Kennan argued that the Truman Doctrine overcommitted the United States by defining American interests in ideological and expansive terms. For Kennan and Lippmann both, ideology influenced not only Soviet but also American policymakers. Beginning in the 1960s revisionist scholars turned traditional scholarship on its head, arguing that American, not Soviet, policy was ideological, and that the Soviet actions in the immediate postwar period were motivated by legitimate security needs. How has the media influenced our understanding, both positively and...
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...The Cold War and U.S Diplomacy politic 300 07/31/2011 The Cold War Diplomacy When most people think of President Kennedy’s Diplomacy efforts, they will often refer to situations that were resolved using the doctrine of flexible response. This is when the military and White House planners implemented a policy that offered them a range of options to choose from: in dealing with a host of threats. These included: the increased use of conventional forces to small and large nuclear weapons. As, this was based on two main principals most notably: destroying the enemy’s ability to make retaliatory strikes against American interests and only attacking the cities along with other population centers as a last resort. (Cohen, 1986, pp. 55 – 56) This is significant, because this new approach was a dramatic shift that was embraced by many previous administrations. To fully understand how this doctrine was used to solve foreign policy issues requires examining: US diplomatic efforts during Kennedy’s time in office, the instances that this approach was utilized, the effects of these efforts on the US along with other countries and the advantages / disadvantages of this doctrine. Together, these different elements will provide the greatest insights as to how this approach was utilized by the Kennedy Administration to deal with a number of different challenges that they were facing. Summarize a Situation that Required US Diplomatic Efforts during the President’s...
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...COLD WAR & World Leadership Wartime Peace Conferences (1945): • Yalta Conference - Peace conference held between Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin in order to establish the goals of WWII. They agreed to try people in Japan and Germany and the creation of the United Nation ( a world peace organization created in order to prevent further world wars. It created 6 offices all of which worked collectively to regulated political and economic affairs, promote peace and human rights.) Stalin promised to hold free elections in Poland after the war ended, but he never kept it. • San Francisco Conference - the 50 nation's delegates agree upon allowing 2 soviet satellites and the Soviet Union a seat in the UN. Iron Curtains - used to describe the boundary that separated the Warsaw Pact countries (Soviet and its satellites) from the NATO countries (North Atlantic Treaty Organization - created in order to encourage economic flow and alliances.) Cold War (1946-1989) - war of ideas waged between the US and the Soviets, in which each nation attempted to influence the political and economic views of another nation. They used weapons such as: • propaganda - advertisement • economic and military aid (Marshall Plan under Truman provided aid to nations that would remove trading barriers and cooperate economically; Truman Doctrine provided military and economic aid to Greece and Turkey) • alliances - military agreement to protect each other against another's aggression...
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