Friday, January 28, 2011
The Cold War
I think both the US and the USSR share the blame for the Cold War. There was no primary cause but a combination of many things that contributed to the War. After the end of WWII relations between the countries were very strained. With economy in Europe being destroyed the US implemented the Marshall Plan to help countries recover. However, the USSR wouldn't allow the eastern bloc areas they controlled participate. The US also became economically and politically invested in Latin America. Fear of communism led the US to try to create democratic governments in countries where communism was rising. We feared that any communist country would be an ally of the USSR. Socially, USSR support of communist revolutions in poor countries really scared the US. The extreme fear of communism in the US led to the Red Scare, and tensions further increased. The differences between the US and the USSR were too extreme and the resulting competition made everyone nervous. Building up the supply of nuclear arms was theoretically supposed to make the country feel safer, but with both countries doing it, it just escalated political tensions. The combination of all these factors is responsible for causing the Cold War.
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I agree with you, I think that all of the problems together were what caused the Cold War, but I think that more than anything else the differing political views was what started everything. I believe that if the Soviet Union and US had been more open minded to political choices than the whole war would have never taken place.
ReplyDeleteI think Katie brings up a good point with the nuclear arms race causing political tensions, but I think that how civilians reacted to it is even more relevant than how the political leaders reacted to it. Most people during this time lived in constant fear of nuclear war. Most Americans probably weren't especially concerned with what kind of government system Korea or Vietnam had. But essentially everyone was going to be totally freaked out that their town could be hit by a nuclear missile at any given moment. This was a huge cause of the fear that led to anti-Communist sentiment, and I think, a huge contributor to the way things were handled and how things got out of control.
ReplyDeleteI definately agree with what you are saying here. It is funny that we always tend to think of the U.S. as being the good guy and the USSR the evil empire we were holding at bay. In reality the U.S. was no better in its attempts to spread Democracy, than the Soviet Union was to spread Communism. The U.S. would do anything, including supporting a crazy dictator in the name of Democracy. Also, the U.S. who supposedly is always thinking things out, became very irrational when it came to the Cold War. Fear gripped the country and led to rash decisions.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, Katie; your post kind of made me think of the personality clash thing. I think the US and the USSR were just two completely different personalities who butted heads a lot because they were so different. It just got way out of hand and blown out of proportion and ended up affecting the whole world...no biggie.
ReplyDeleteYeh Katie I think you bring up a good point in the competitiveness of it all. As you said as soon as communism spread the US was there to pounce and try to push democracy. We held such fear of the rise of communism that we just constantly built up more and more tension between us and the USSR.
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