Coca-Cola in France and the Poison that Caused the Cold War

Please respond to each of the following posts, #1 & #2 (at least 100 words for each response). Each response should be substantive and add something to the discussion, rather than simply restating or agreeing or disagreeing with something the original writer has written.

Post #1:  

 Kuisel states that "Coca-Cola aggressively announced the arrival of consumer society at a time when the French were not yet ready". This along with the the fear of "American intrusion in French affairs and American challenges to French traditions of consumption and culture" were the biggest reasons the French attempted to reject Coca-Cola.  The French were already fearful of the ever-dominating United States and Coca-Cola represented a large part of America to the outside world.  Allowing them to enter France was threatening to their norms especially when culture was struggling post war.  As it was, "the United States secretly funded European literary journals to shape the cultural cold war", and had influence in magazines and would "buy the services of popular authors who would denounce the Soviet Union and promote the United States among their Western European readers" (Smith pg. 569 Kindle).  The United States was sneaky and France knew this.  Their fear was valid about having political influence with Coca-Cola, but the main interest in Coca-Cola was expansion.  After all, it was a great product loved by all.  But even after successfully entering France, it was found that "only 17 percent of the French liked Coca-Cola either well enough or a lot, while 61 percent said not at all" (Kuisel 115).  The fear of the French was American intrusion, but ultimately what led to Coca-Cola's entrance into France was Coca-Cola's ability to manipulate their own government.  They "lobbied forcefully within the government, the bureaucracy, and the legislature", and found ultimately there was not much serious support for banning Coca-Cola.

Post #2:

The production of nuclear and other weapons and a climate of fear were the poison the Soviet Union and the United States injected into the world in the forty-four years of the Cold War. During this period, communication technology improved, and Cold War culture flooded people's daily lives through radio, books, newspapers, and television. The United States, "the ideological enemy of communism, feared that its influence might expand." (Smith, 90). The atomic bombs that the "United States dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 marked not only a human tragedy but also a deadly advance in an arms race that had been taking place in the West since the end of the nineteenth century."(Smith, 308). The build-up of nuclear weapons in both the United States and the Soviet Union helped to keep the Cold War from turning "hot." The knowledge that each superpower held a stockpile of nuclear weapons created a military doctrine of mutually assured destruction in which an attack from one would cause the complete annihilation of one or both or more countries. The Cold War was different from World Wars since there was only tension between the two nations, and they didn't decide to attack each other since it will cause massive destruction.