The Cold War Essay

The Cold War was unlike any war in the world’s history. It was a war based on fear and tension instead of blood and rage like the world had already grown accustomed to. It was a battle that took place on no frontier and left no blood soaked land. Instead, it was a battle that took place in the minds of the United States of America’s citizens and the citizens of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It was a battle of wits that many feared would lead up to the third World War. On the contrary, it led to almost nothing. It just ended without any real battle. The only battles fought in this war were battles of psychological warfare which included propaganda against communism and in support of the Cold War, McCarthyism or what resembled witch hunts which contributed to the Red Scare in the United States of America, the Space Race, the Berlin Airlift, and then the creation of the Hydrogen Bomb. The creation of the bomb created tension between the two world super powers, but there was not any usage of the bomb. The bomb just remained a terrorizing thought in the back of many scared citizen’s minds. Since the Cold War was a psychological battle, there are many mixed feelings on who won. Many would claim that there was no winner since both countries spent trillions of dollars and many years of terror preparing for a confrontation that never came. How did the war end exactly? It ended in as an unthreatening way as the war began and continued. In the final years of the Cold War, a new Secretary General was appointed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. His name was Mikhail Gorbechev and he instituted new policies that gave his people more of a taste of freedom which is what led to a revolution that ended the Cold War. “When Mikha... ... middle of paper ... ...sed to a new way of life without the tension and fear of a communist takeover in which many American citizen’s had no idea how to. They were used to growing up in an era were fear of communism was an ever present force in everyone’s everyday lives. While most would say that the Cold War was not a war to be won, Republicans were quick to claim that their policies under the Reagan and Bush administrations were key contributors to the collapse of the Soviet Union and Democrats were quick to argue in repute that the policies that attributed to the containment of communism were enacted forty five years earlier during president Truman’s presidency. Although communism was contained, it caused a lot of fear and trillions of dollars. The Soviet Union fell and American’s breathed a sigh of relief though, because an era of fear and relentless money spending had seemed to end.