Evaluate the impact of crisis in Asia on superpower policies in the period to the 1970’s. Evaluate the impact of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on the cold war. To what extent were Soviet attitudes and policies under Gorbachev responsible for ending the cold war? Evaluate the contribution of the Reagan administration to the ending of the Cold War. Account for the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the USSR?
It significantly highlighted the true conflict involving the US and the USSR, and more importantly the ongoing battle between two opposing ideologies- capitalism and communism. The Korean War began with the communist North’s invasion of South Korea only years after the neighboring China ended its civil conflict and embraced a new Communist Regime under Mao Zedong. Whilst in the West communism had already been threatening to “swallow up” Europe seen through Stalin’s role in Czecoslovakinan Crisis; his disregard for the Yalta-Potsdam Agreements and the mobilized Red Army troops scattered over Eastern Europe. Consequently, the US where experiencing the beginnings of “anti-communist hysteria” due to the domino-effect Communist had had in Asia seen through the Sino-Soviet Pact (1950, and the possible threat of world-communism. In this sense, the Korean War is highly significant because it displayed the new terms of post-World War Two conflict and how difficult it would be to fight a contained War due to the snowballing effect of communism around the world.
Fourth reason was refusal of South Korea to hold elections as per North Koreas demands. The Korean War is considered as an escalation of civil war between two rival regimens and supported by external powers. Here is a more in depth explanation of the four main causes of the Korean War the division of the Korean Peninsula after World War 2 between capalists, US supported right wing government of Syngman Rhee and the communist. China and the
How Did Bay of Pigs Lead To Cuban Missile Crisis Riham Attalla Professor Tsung Soo Hoo Seminar on National Security New Jersey City University Abstract During the first and the Second World War both the USSR and US, Union of Soviet Socialist Republic were on the same side of alliance, the Triple Entente France and Britain also forming part of the alliance. The alliance was opposed to the Triple alliance, which constituted Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Germany as the de-facto leader. Immediately after the Second World War, two countries emerged super powers; the US and USSR (Jones, 2008). US apparently had used atomic bomb in two of the Japanese cities the Hiroshima and Nagasaki and USSR was determined to develop atomic bomb. The situation that followed the Second World War was the period of Cold war that lasted up to early 1990s and when the Soviet republic disintegrated.
General Buck Turgidson is the head of the SAC Commander and a rabid anti-communist. He is the individual who consulted the president on how to deal with the Russians and nuclear war. He is a realist; nuclear war to him is a game and he does not view it as something that will lead to world destruction. General Jack D. Ripper, also a realist, is an ultra paranoid nationalist. He believed that the fluoridation of drinking water was a communist conspiracy that it needed to be destroyed to stop the communist advance in America.
The Cold War had essentially started as a split between USA and the USSR due to ideological and strategic differences between the two countries. During the course of the Cold War, the official US foreign policy was of containment of communism. This policy fuelled by the fear of communism in USA was designed to prevent further expansion of communism. The policy emerged at a time when Eastern Europe was under the military, and increasing political, control of the Soviet Union, and when Western European countries appeared to be wobbling from their democracies because of socialist agitation and collapsing economies. Containment was a foreign policy introduced at the start of the Cold War by the United States, aimed at stopping the spread of Communism and keeping it 'contained' and isolated within its current borders, otherwise the 'domino effect' would occur, where if one nation became Communist, the surrounding ones would follow.
During the Harry Truman presidency there were many impacts on the American and Soviet relations because of the atomic weapons, the Marshall Plan or the Berlin Blockade. The United States pushed the Soviet empire to its knees and won the Cold War. No, the USSR collapsed of its own rotting weight, and Japan won the Cold War. Option three: A brilliant Kremlin leader, besieged at home and long misunderstood abroad, perceived the irrelevance of superpower military competition to the overarching new challenges of global security and engineered a strategic retreat toward sanity in East-West relations. The deterioration of relations within the Grand Alliance led to the undeclared conflict known as the Cold War.
If the United States cannot respond to a threat near our own borders, why should Europeans or Asians believe that we're seriously concerned about threats to them? If the Soviets can assume that nothing short of an actual attack on the United States will provoke an American response, which ally, which friend will trust us then? (Reagan, 2012). This statement had to do with his concern over the events that were happening in Central America, which during this time had the Pro Soviet Sandinista government running Nicaragua which in had just ridded itself a previous dictatorship in 1979. This was also problematic because in 1981, Sandinista-supported Marxist guerrillas launched an offensive against the government of El Salvador, which was pro-American (Russell, 2010).
• Who was more to blame for the start of the Cold War, the USA or the USSR? The origins of the Cold War; the 1945 summit conferences including the parts played by Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin and Truman, and the breakdown of the USA-USSR alliance in 1945–6; Soviet expansion in Eastern Europe; the Iron Curtain; the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan; the Berlin Blockade and its immediate consequences. June 2012 | Q.2 (a) What was the Iron Curtain? [4] (b) Explain why Berlin was a cause of tension between East and West between 1945 and 1949. [6] (c) How successful was the West in containing Communism in Europe up to 1949?
There were a combination of reasons as to why relations between the USA and the USSR grew worse by 1948, but the underlying cause were the ideological differences between the two superpowers; USA (capitalism) and the USSR (communism). Once Germany was defeated, the joint aim of the allies was achieved and they were no longer forced to cooperate in an, “Marriage of Convenience”. From then on, the relationship between the USA and the USSR worsened. One main reason as to how the relationship between the Soviet Union and the USA grew worse was because of the Yalta and Potsdam conferences. At the Yalta conference, Roosevelt’s death in 1945 brought an end to any superficial unity that still existed at the end of 1943 and Stalin had promised free elections in the countries of Eastern Europe.