The Cold War as a Historical Conflict - Essay Example

Cold War The cold war was a conflict that took place between the mid and the late 2oth century between the united states of America and the USSR which were by then the world’s two great superpowers (Peacock, 1982). The struggle involved both sides and their respective allies and it involved both political economic, technological and military issue, however the core difference was political as both the US and Russia tried to sell their ideologies to their own and each other’s allies (Atomic Archive, n.d). The battle was between capitalism which was proposed and followed by the US and communism by the soviets; in Europe, the US led the NATO side while the signatories of the Warsaw pact comprised on the European communists and pro-soviet faction. The reason behind the name cold war was because the two chief combatants America and Russia never actually took each other on in a direct fight or “hot” war as the real battles within the war were referred to. Instead, they would each assist the opponents of the other and provide them with arms and financial support adopting the approach that “the enemy of your enemy is your friend. Some people would refer to it as the third world war but in those times it was called the cold war under the premise that there was not direct confrontation between USSR and Russia (Brown, 2012). In the aftermath of the Second World War, the USA and Russia were left as the two most dominant powers in the world; however their modes of governance were radically different with the US practicing capitalist democracy while the USSR was a communist dictatorship. They competed to recruit as many nations as possible to their ideological camp with the US restoring democracy to its allies as the USSR on the other hand tried to turn its ‘liberated lands’ to soviet satellites. The west and Eastern bloc both feared each other, the US especially lived in fear of a communist invasion both in the physical and ideological sense, to mitigate against the possibility, they came up with the Truman doctrine which involved bailing out collapsing economies that were making it possible for communist sympathizers to gain power. By 1951, Europe was divided into two power blocks each lead by one of the superpower and they all had atomic weapons and significant resources, this resulted in the cold war, which finally culminated into a nuclear standoff. The first actual standoff between the two powers was witnessed during the Berlin blockade, this was post war Germany. The division of Germany into four parts necessitated the blocked and the blockade was used by the soviets to deny the US access into their part of Germany. However the allied air lifted their supplies over the blockade and they bluffed that Stalin would never attempt to shoot at them because he would not have wanted to start a hot war. After the death of Stalin, in 1953, hopes of a thaw in the relations between the two powers were raised but soon shattered after the Budapest rises in 1956, the communist state of Hungary, which was faced with an uprising forcing the troops to leave the city. The Russians reacted by sending red army troops to take over the city and then put in a new government, the west was highly critical of this action but since they were distracted by the crisis at the Suez canal they did not take any steps. Khrushchev feared that the US and the west would resurrect West Germany and use its power to destabilize the soviet position; he offered a concession in exchange of the return of a single and united Germany. The talks for this were set to be held in Italy but they were derailed by an incident in which Russian forces shot down a US U-2 spy plane over her territory. This incidence served Khrushchev with an excuse to renege on the deal he planned on offering the Americans as he was being accused by his detractors back home for giving too much. After the shooting, he withdrew from the talks and with him talk of a unified Germany faded. Leaders in East Germany took radial steps to prevent refugees from running away to the east by putting up the berlin wall that acted as physical barrier between the west and the East Germany. In addition, it acted as symbolic barrier between the allies and the soviets and it was not until the conflict between the two had come to an end that the wall was finally pulled down (Peacock, 1982). One of the main competitions that underscored the cold war was the nuclear race, American experts had predicted that the Soviet Union would not have the capacity for nuclear bombs until the mid-50s and it came as a shock to the world when Russia detonated its first nuclear bomb in 1949. Both the US and USSR governments spent a great deal of money on increasing the quality and quantity of their nuclear arsenal, the US detonated the first hydrogen bomb in 1952(Fleming, 1961), once again the soviets who during this period were viewed as underdogs surprised the world by also building their own deployable thermal nuclear device. The nuclear arms race lasted up to until the end of the cold war but none of the measures taken by both sides could guarantee security, at the end of the day, they had enough firepower to obliterate other (Brinkley, Current, Freidel & Williams, 1991). The both had the capability to launch devastating nuclear strikes on each other through submarines, which was called a second strike; the policy was dubbed mutual assured destruction, (MAD) which meant that none of them could attack the other without devastating themselves in return. While both sides hoped they could use their weapons to extract concessions from other powerful nations such as China (Van, 1993), they were force to acknowledge that this may be too dangerous and they refrained. In the 80’s it appeared that Russia was winning since it had a considerably better and more productive economy as well as a more effective and numerous missiles (May, 2013). This was despite the fact that their economy was built on propaganda and corruption was deep seated. The US feared that Russian domination and made moves to re-arm and built up their defensive forces, these efforts involved placing missiles strategically in Europe and the defense spending was vastly expanded by President Reagan. When Brezhnev died in 1982, his successor Mikhail Gorbachev who took over power in 1985, realized that the USSR was crumbling and the Russian satellites were negatively affecting the economy and stability of the Russian itself (English, 2013). He decided to end the cold war and gave up the satellite states, after he agreed with the US to reduce the quantity of nuclear weapons; he spoke to the UN clarifying to the assembly that he was renouncing the Brezhnev Doctrine (Evangelista, 2002). It has been claimed that although the nuclear confrontation almost resulted in the destruction of vast parts of the world, this threats were mostly outside Europe and the hot wars were mostly in Vietnam and Korea (Kissinger and Wellings, 1969). Therefore, it is worth noting that the cold war was mostly in Europe but they enjoyed a period of relative peace and stability compared to the early 1900’s. The cold War has often been defined as a challenge between democracy and communism and although this was to some extent true, the US did however sponsor some distinctly undemocratic and authoritarian practices with the intention of denying Russia access to some countries. References Atomic Archive. n.d. Cold War: A Brief History. Available at: http://www.atomicarchive.com/History/coldwar/index.shtml Brinkley, A., Current, R. N., Freidel, F., & Williams, T. H. 1991. American history: A survey. New York. McGraw-Hill. Brown, A. 2012. Reform, Coup and Collapse: The End of the Soviet State. BBC History. Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/coldwar/soviet_end_01.shtml English, R. D. 2013. Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals, and the End of the Cold War. Columbia: Columbia University Press. Evangelista, M. 2002. Unarmed forces: The transnational movement to end the cold war. Cornell: Cornell University Press. Fleming, D. F. 1961. The Cold War and Its Origins: 1917-1960. 1950-1960(Vol. 2). Doubleday. Kissinger, H., & Wellings, V. 1969. American foreign policy (pp. 117-18). Royal Victorian Institute for the Blind Tertiary Resource Service.. May, E. R. 2013. John F Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis. BBC History. Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/coldwar/kennedy_cuban_missile_01.shtml Peacock, H, L. 1982. A history of modern europe 1789-1981. London.  Heinemann Van, C. M. 1993. Nuclear proliferation and the future of conflict. New York, United States: Free Press Read More