Question

What was the Cold War? Who fought and how was it fought? Why did it end?

Answer 1

• The Cold War is the name given to the relationship that developed primarily between the USA and the USSR after World War Two. The Cold War was to dominate international affairs for decades and many major crises occurred – the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, Hungary and the Berlin Wall being just some. For many, the growth in weapons of mass destruction was the most worrying issue.
• The Cold War began after World War Two. The main enemies were the United States and the Soviet Union.
• A clash of very different beliefs 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.
• The Cold War was the period between 1949–1991 in which the United States and the Soviet Union were at political odds. Much of the tension between the U.S. and the Soviets was rooted in World War II, and specifically, the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Sovs realized the Americans could use their arsenal on any country opposing them, so they started building their own.
  
• Both the ideals did come into conflict, in three different wars over the Cold War. The most notable one is Vietnam, but it wasn’t the first one. In 1951, the Korean war started, when North Korean forces under Kim-Il-Sung crossed the 38th parralel, which had divided the country into Soviet north and american south.
• The long-term causes of the Cold War are clear. Western democracies had always been hostile to the idea of a communist state. The United States had refused recognition to the USSR for 16 years after the Bolshevik takeover.
• Domestic fears of communism erupted in a RED SCARE in America in the early Twenties. American business leaders had long feared the consequences of a politically driven workers' organization. World War II provided short-term causes as well.
• There was hostility on the Soviet side as well. Twenty million Russian citizens perished during World War II. Further, The United States terminated Lend-Lease aid to the Soviet Union before the war was complete. Finally, the Soviet Union believed in communism.
  
• Until 1953, the war was brutal, and the U.S. dropped more bombs there than the entire pacific theater. In the end, the war was resolved, and the border was left, more or less exactly where it was. It was important, because it was the first major military action by the United States after World War II.
• During the Cold War, each side tried to portray each other's government and social living order as inferior, "evil" and a great injustice to mankind, through the use of newspapers, books, television, radio etc.
• On the more violent side, the USA and the Soviet Union indirectly fought wars against each other overseas through a third party or "proxy", which could either be a government or an armed group.
• Each side "fought" the other, by providing money, arms, training and logistical support to their proxy and sending it to war against the other side's proxy. Sometimes, a proxy was used to fight more directly with the opposing superpower.
• Examples of two proxies fighting each other were the 1973 Arab-Israeli War and the War in Angola, and examples where a proxy fought the army of the superpower itself include the Vietnam War (1962 - 1975) and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979 - 1989).
• The cold war ended because the Soviet Union could not endure the social and economic pressures that existed inside of it, and as a result imploded into numerous different states, losing its grip over Eastern Europe in the process.
• These pressures were a result of poor policy on the part of the Soviets, the intense economic and military pressure to keep up with the stronger Americans, and the external pressure from the Americans themselves.
• Mikhail Gorbachev tried to create reforms, glasnost and perestroika, to solve these problems, but they proved inadequate and only sped the fall of the USSR. Once the USSR was gone, there was no other superpower than the United States and Russia was in no shape to continue the Cold War.
• Meanwhile he dissolved the Warsaw Pact and all of its former Nations quickly broke away from the Soviet Union. The culminating points of this were the execution of Ceausescu and the Fall of the Berlin Wall. The end of the War in Afghanistan was also a signal moment as it showed the failure of the Red Army and the decline of Russian Power.