Cold War Essay, Research Paper

Spencer Easton

Cavanna 4th

THE COLD WAR

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.

Again Germany had been thwarted in its plans of total domination. It had been a combined effort by all the Western powers and a few Eastern powers too. England was devastated, France had been literally burnt to the ground, and many small nation had suffered economic failure. To the East Russia had suffered many losses from the vain siege of the Nazi s. But they were in better shape then Europe. They still had a military and a running, somewhat , economy. In the late 40 s through early 50 s the Soviet Union started to spread the Lenin ideological as it started moving in the Westward position. In 47 the US started funding the rebuilding of European infrastructure in a system called the Marshall Plan. Russia in turn brought forth its own funding called the Molotov Plan. Because of that, they were able to spread communism through many countries. Some of these nations were: Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Eastern Germany, and numerous countries in Southeastern Asia. But on the US side we had the support from almost the entire Western Europe. So the tension started, between Western Europe or a republic society and Eastern Europe and communism.

There are many key events that happened throughout the entire duration of the Cold War. The fist main events that led up to the tension were the foreign aid policies. These policies were able to divide up Europe between the superpowers. After Europe was divided up treaty organizations and alliances stated forming up again. One of these alliances was the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). This allied the western portion of Europe. Next came the Warsaw Pact, it was the communistic version of NATO.

Throughout the Cold War, relations between the Soviet Union and the west alternated between times of tension and crises and periods of reduced tension and limited cooperation. Though the two superpowers never engaged each other militarily, they were periodically caught up in major political crises that had the potential to become warfare. One example was the Soviet blockade on Western Berlin. The Russians threatened, and did, block of supply routs to Western Berlin. The people in the city were staving and dying from the lack of supplies. Because of this the US had to make periodic supply drops into the city. Some other examples are the Cuban missile crises, where the Russian funded Cuban military had secretly made or smuggled nuclear missiles onto the island and pointed them at the USA. Also there was the crises in the middle east and the U.S. bombardment on Hanoi and Haiphong.

The U.S. did go to battle though. We fought two major battles against the communists. The fist was over Korea. North Korea a communistic satellite tried to spread there ideas through hostile takeover. The US funded and aided South Korea until they were able to fend of their attackers. The second time it was in Vietnam. Like the first battle north Vietnam was trying to concur south Vietnam and make it a communistic nation. The US sent massive man power into it and lost lots of solders, but we were unsuccessful in stopping the north Vietnamese. Soon tension grew so high that the US knew that they had to do something about all the nuclear missiles that Russia possessed.

During almost the entire time that Russia and the USA had been fighting for power they had also stored up a large cache of nuclear weapons. This in fact would put the whole world in jeopardy for their lives. It was Regain who brought forth the ideas of a Star Wars anti-ballistic weaponry. But the idea of putting thousands of little 5 pound bombs up in orbit that would through sheer kinetic energy destroy a missile on its upward trajectory had been around science Khushchev. This put him at worry. He concluded that the only way for him to reach the US with his missiles was to launch them in such sheer numbers. To do this he would have to change the governments funding of 30% to the military to 60%. This surge in funding left the citizens in financial ruin. People were laterally starving to death by the tens of thousands. Countries started to revolt. A few of these countries were Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. The revolts in the first two show me why we have our second amendment. The Checks and the Hungarians staged revolts, but because of the laws that forbade to possession of a firearm the rebels were quickly and systematically slaughtered by the Soviet military. Poland was a different story. After the fall of Khushchev, Mikhail Gorbachev came into power. He instituted many reforms such as military cuts, reconstruction of agriculture, openness to the government, and democratization. Because of some of these reforms, the revolts of Poland were not a bloody massacre as the first two, but effective displays of rejectment of the government. It was a union setup by a boat dock worker, which union were forbidden, to start strikes on the factories and industrialized areas. They smartly got the world media on them. This put the Soviet Union on the spotlight. The revolt was considered one of the greatest individual feats on the fall of communistic Russia. This in turn brought forth new policies and rights.

The by-products of these policies brought forth the collapse of the communistic countries(around 89 -90 ). This lead to the establishment of non-communist political parties, free elections, and the development of a new democratic state.

In October of 1990 the communistic government fell in Berlin, and the divided city was re-united. This was the final symbol of the fall of communism in Europe. A little bit later the Warsaw pact was abolished, and the last of the nuclear weapons were dispersed in the sea. Presidents George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev officially ended the Cold War in 1991, I think. Basically the end of the Cold War ended because the Soviet Union ceased to be a superpower.