Research And Describe What Was The Cold War (1945-1991)

Lessons of the Cold War
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Lessons of the Cold War
When the Second World War came to an end, tensions emerged between the United States and its allies and the USSR (Harper, 2011). The president of the US at the time, Harry S. Truman, and Soviet Union’s Premier, Joseph Stalin, had different ideologies in terms of politics and economies, that is, capitalism versus communism. The leaders both wanted veto power over the world. Stalin aimed at getting the Soviet Union a recognition as part of the International Community and take revenge for the deaths of many Russians. Truman, on the other hand, hated the establishment of Russian Rule. Also, Truman aimed at weakening communism, which was applied and spread by the USSR. It is for this reason that the US and its allies were at cold war with USSR.
Bernard Baruch came up with the term ‘Cold War’ as a way of describing the indirect war between two allies, the U.S. and USSR, whose only common interest was their opponent, Germany. The war was branded cold because the parties had dangerous arms they could have used but did not put them to use during the war. The anger and suspicion brought about by the competition over superiority between the World War II winners are actually the Cold War. Each of them took to spy on the other’s technological advancement, dragging the latter behind. All these were in a bid to dominate over the World’s resources.
The United States’ victory in the Cold War was attributed on finances. It is the abundance of money and its use in the expansion and advancement of nuclear technology that gave the U.S. an advantage in spreading capitalist ideologies to many countries around the world. President Ronald Reagan’s installation saw the USSR’s established communist states crumbling. Reagan allocated about 10% of the States’ gross revenue to nuclear power research, which was fueled by the Soviet Union’s progress in the sector (Goldgeier & McFaul, 2003). The weakening of communism and its replacement with U.S’ capitalist ideology, followed by Soviet Union’s dissolution ushered the end of the Cold War, making the U.S. winners.
The USA employed the containment strategy against advancing Soviet military (Gaddis, 2005). The former resorted to launching a defensive shield since USSR was fast approaching with nuclear missiles. As a result, Caspar Weinberger implemented the Strategic Defense Mechanism. This saw the collapse of USSR granting U.S. the victory.
The United States’ win in the Cold War has to a great extent shaped the world. As a superpower, the US has helped in creating leaders, improving economic development as well as military strategy. Wars, with the inclusion of the Cold War, are imperative of the steps taken in the present and future of every partaker, and witness as well. As such, the Cold Wa...