In 1945, most of the countries around the world are devastated further to World War II which had stroke the globe for six years. Only the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic, also called USSR, seem to be in a stable economic situation despite weighty losses. Both states are considered to be the great winners of the war and this is the beginning of a confrontation between two superpowers but also the confrontation between two distinct ideologies: communism and capitalism. With the shock of two destructive world wars and then the creation of the United Nations, whose aim is to preserve peace, it is unconceivable for these two nations to fight directly in order to promote their own ideology. But the US and the USSR end up to be in competition in numerous ways, particularly in technological and industrial fields. In the same time they start to spread their influence over their former allies. This phenomenon have led to the creation of a bipolar world, divided in two powerful blocs surrounded by buffer zones, and to the beginning of what we call the Cold War because of the absence of direct conflicts between the two nations. In order to spread their influence and promote their ideologies, the United States and the Soviet Bloc have mainly used two strategies: expansionism, which aim to get the stranglehold on as many places possible and containment, which is used so as to restrict the territorial growth of the opposite camp. But these strategies have led to murderous conflicts and endless wars in some territories, especially in Asia. Finally, it appears that these strategies were at the origin of a significant competition and a rise of palpable tensions all over the world. From the outset of the p... ... middle of paper ... ...95), Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991. 2nd edn. London: Abacus. Kent, J. and Young, J.W. (2013), International Relations Since 1945: A global History. 2nd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lafeber, W. (2002), America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-2000. 9th edn. New-York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education. Macdonald, D. J (1995), 'Communist bloc: expansion in the early cold war: Challenging realism, refuting Revisionism', International Security, Vol. 20, N°3, The MIT Press. (Online). Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2539142?seq=7 (Accessed: 16th November 2013) Seton-Watson, H. (1960), Neither War nor Peace: The Struggle for Power in the Post-War World. Southampton: Camelot Press Ltd. Vadney, T.E. (1998), The World since 1945: The Complete History of Global Change from 1945 to the End of the Twentieth Century. 3rd edn. London: Penguin.
Gaddis, John Lewis. We Now Know: Rethinking the Cold War: Dividing the World. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1997. Publishing.
The alliance formed between the US and USSR during the second world war was not strong enough to overcome the decades of uneasiness which existed between the two ideologically polar opposite countries. With their German enemy defeated, the two emerging nuclear superpowers no longer had any common ground on which to base a political, economical, or any other type of relationship. Tensions ran high as the USSR sought to expand Soviet influence throughout Europe while the US and other Western European nations made their opposition to such actions well known. The Eastern countries already under Soviet rule yearned for their independence, while the Western countries were willing to go to great lengths to limit Soviet expansion. "Containment of 'world revolution' became the watchword of American foreign policy throughout the 1950s a...
After a few years since the publication of the “X” article, ‘containment’, the term that was coined by Keenan, became a key word to describe the U.S. foreign policy in overcoming Soviet threats. Yet, Keenan criticized Truman’s containment policy as ‘too universalistic’ in that it placed the U.S. in an exhausting commitment to block every Soviet expansion to free countries (Keenan, 1967). In fact, the containment policy was influencing the U.S. involvement in different confrontation from Germany to Vietnam.
Isaacs J (2008). ‘Cold War: For Forty-five Years the World Held its Breath’. Published by Abacus, 2008.
During the late 1940's and the 1950's, the Cold War became increasingly tense. Each side accused the other of wanting to rule the world (Walker 388). Each side believed its political and economic systems were better than the other's. Each strengthened its armed forces. Both sides viewed the Cold War as a dispute between right and wron...
Following the war with Vietnam, America foreign policy saw a new shift. This shift is marked by the decline of containment to a policy of a ‘here and now’ approach. That is, the United States’ new policy was to deal with each situation on a case by case basis rather than treating every threat of communism as a threat to containment. This reclaimed part of the old policy of objectivity in international affairs. As the past shows, controversies and wars alike have the power to dramatically shift a countries foreign policy. One can only wonder what will cause the next change.
The end of the Cold War was one of the most unexpected and important events in geopolitics in the 20th century. The end of the Cold War can be defined as the end of the bipolar power struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union, which had existed since the end of the World War II. The conclusion of the Cold War can be attributed to Gorbachev’s series of liberalizations in the 1980s, which exposed the underlying economic problems in the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc states that had developed in the 1960s and 70s and prevented the USSR from being able to compete with the US as a superpower. Nevertheless, Reagan’s policies of a renewed offensive against communism, Gorbachev’s rejection of the Brezhnev doctrine and the many nationalities
Since 1945 to 1991 the world confronted a peaceful war known as the Cold War. Amid loads of years students of history have talked about if this worldwide clash in the middle of private
According to the conventional view, the Cold War was a conflict between two superpowers, caused by Soviet aggression, in which the US tried to contain the Soviet Union and protect the world from it. At the inception of the Cold War, the Soviet Union was on the verge of amassing a great deal of power, and it was this possibility that frightene...
Following the Second World War in 1946, two political super powers had emerged; the United States of America and the Soviet Union. In the period that followed, these two nations clamored for dominance over each other in every way possible; neither wanted to be left behind and as such even the smallest of competition between the two drew great resources and attention from the respective governments; “rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union that lasted for much of the second half of the 20th century resulted in mutual suspicions, heightened tensions and a series of international incidents that brought the world’s superpowers to the brink of disaster” (History).
Naranjo, Robert . "eHistory.com: Historical analysis of the Cold War." eHistory.com. N.p., 6 May 2003. Web. 18 Mar. 2014.
2Gaddis John Lewis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947, New York, 2000, pp. 32-62, 282-315.
Following the conclusion of World War II, two countries that once stood as allies found themselves on the brink of war with each other. America and the Soviet Union were divided by politics and ideology, “…capitalism versus communism - each held with almost religious conviction, formed the basis of an international power struggle with both sides vying for dominance, exploiting every opportunity for expansion anywhere in the world” (Trueman, 2014). History would define this battle as the Cold War in that neither country fired a weapon directly at the other.
The Cold War was the longated tension between the Soviet Union and the United States of America. It started in the mid 40’s after WWII had left Europe in shambles and Russia and the USA in superpower positions. The Cold War was a clash of these supergiants in political, ideological, military, and economic values and ideas. Though military build up was great on both sides neither one ever directly fought each other. In this essay I’m going to bring forth the following points: Rise of the Cold War, events in and because of the Cold War, and the fall of Russia.
Abstract: Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has been the world’s only unquestioned superpower. How the United States evaluates its position as global hegemon has important consequences for American foreign policy, particularly with regards to the potential for future policy constraints. Thus, this paper seeks to consider the question: How durable is American hegemony? The paper first defines the state of American hegemony and then considers the primary challengers: Europe, Russia, China, Japan and imperial overstretch. It will conclude that in the long-term, East Asian geopolitical instability poses the greatest threat to American hegemony, but that in the short-term, the hegemony will prove to be quite durable as long as the United States can counteract the phenomenon of imperial overstretch. In order to diffuse both internal and international threats to hegemony, American leaders should work to pursue national interests within a framework of consensus and legitimacy as much as possible.