Essay On The Nature Of Cold War

When Germany invaded Russia it united the Soviets with Western Europe. Later on America join in an alliance against their common enemy. The war altered the global balance of power, weakening Europe and leaving Russia and the United States as the global super powers. However, the wartime alliance was not an easy one and with Russia liberating many areas of Eastern Europe which it want to put its own brand of government. They wanted to turn Eastern Europe into soviet satellite states to gain... ... middle of paper ... ...etonated its first atomic weapon, negating the America advantage and reducing the chance of the powers engaging in a ‘regular’ war because of fears over the consequences of nuclear conflict.

The two countries had completely opposite ideas of how to run and manage a country, which in return created chaos and was the core cause of the Cold War. The necessity of power was ... ... middle of paper ... ...their actions. The Soviet Union tried to spread Communism across the world and the United States intervened and created the Truman Doctrine where they stated that they would contain communism form spreading any further. The United States was trying to protect other countries from communist control. After World War II, the United States designed the Marshall plan in order to provide economic help to the Europe and Russia.

As a result of the atomic bomb, the Soviets engaged themselves in a nuclear arms race with the Americans, thereby contributing to the cause of the Cold War. With both the Soviets and the Americans in fear, the sides attempted to create stronger, more powerful bombs that they could use to shock one another. All in all, as the Cold War raged on and tensions boiled, the nuclear arms race intensified and the fear of a thermonuclear war was at a peak high. Fortuitously, the tensions between the Soviets and Americans cooled and the Cold War froze, becoming a part of history rather than exploding into a hot war that may have ended life on planet Earth itself.

The nuclear arms race was a competition for supremacy in nuclear warfare. Both American and Soviet experts aimed at using nuclear weapons to bring out concessions from the one another, or from powerful countries like China. However, the risk attached with using these nuclear weapons was very dangerous that they avoided what John Foster Dulles referred to as brinkmanship. The Americans lacked confidence, and in the 1950s they hoped in a non- existing bomber gap.

After World War II, the US and Soviet Union became enemies and entered a Cold War. The two countries had been allies in the fight against Nazi Germany but tension developed as the two countries emerged from the war as global powers. The allies had teamed up because of need, not desire. As the Soviet Union sought to spread communism, capitalist America adopted a policy of containment. Their growing suspicions of each other led to the Cold War, an indirect conflict that stemmed from a fear of nuclear destruction and was fought by each country supporting different international conflicts through aid and acquisition.

Ever since the outbreak of the Cold War after WWII, American historians have depicted it as a battle pitting good versus evil, American democracy, capitalism, and desire for world peace, against Soviet communism, totalitarianism, and desire to take over the world. However, this categorization of the Cold War has been proven false by many documents made public since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990’s. Over the course of this essay, I will attempt to explain the true causes of the Cold War, and some of the reasons it progressed the way it did. My analysis will begin with a general discussion of how nuclear proliferation impacted the decision making of both American and Soviet leaders. It is, I believe, important to understand this before delving any deeper, as nuclear proliferation’s affect on decision making was arguably the key dynamic operating throughout the entire Cold War.

In so doing, it will emerge that the major participants of the Cold War, the US and the USSR fought in an ideological battle of supremacy. Each of the nations wanted to dominate and thus, each fought to influence other like-minded states to support it in its course (Reim 53). It was just unfortunate that the strategies of the Communist USSR did not work out, and the U.S. and its capitalist ideology triumphed in the end. This saw the disintegration of the fifteen states that formed the USSR. The term Cold War initially used by the British writer George Orwell in 1945 in an attempt to express the worldview, beliefs and social struc... ... middle of paper ... ...iet Union collapsed.

The USSR got extremely annoyed not to know about America?s atom bomb in 1945. However the USSR got their own atom bomb in 1949 and then both sides began to stock up on weapons to arm themselves. The Soviets took the American bombing on Japan as an American motive to intimidate Josef Stalin of the Soviet Union. The existence of nuclear weapons prevented an all-out war, possibly a World War III, between the Soviet Union and The United States. Both sides realized that since they both have nuclear weapons what good would it be to use them, because they would destroy each other.

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... ... middle of paper ... ...he reader to put concepts like war spending into perspective. Warren convinces the reader of his argument that the Cold War was not only a nuclear arms race, but a military, diplomatic, economic, and scientific struggle between the Soviet Union and the United States that had effects on the home front and international affairs.

In response to Stalin’s claim, America proposed the policy of Containment to stem the spread of Communism, and the Soviet Union’s ascension to greater power. In response, The Iron curtain was “drawn” and divided Europe into Pro-Communism against Pro-Capitalist. (The Berlin Wall would ultimately be built to act as a scar between America and the Soviet Union). The heated relationship between the two countries led to the Cold War, with no direct battlefront action, yet intense policy affairs between their polar political views. The results of WWII left most of the Eu... ... middle of paper ... ...he NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization).