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Cold War Ethical Reflection

Decent Essays

Reflection of the Cold War The Cold War, from 1945 to 1991, is one of the most important periods of time that has greatly influenced and shaped the modern world. It was not just a battle between two super powers, the USA and the Soviet Union, but also a clash of two really popular ideologies during that time. There was the American claim of fighting for freedom and democracy and the Soviet claims of fighting for the interests of the workers and the common people. Now in theory, these ideologies seemed ethical, but throughout this period, both countries’ actions severely opposed the ideologies they represented on numerous occasions. Some say it all came down to a competition of achieving the most power and influence and just using what …show more content…

The Marshal Plan although was one of the greatest actions USA had taken and they gave about 13 million dollars in aid to the war devastated countries in order to help them rebuild. Some might argue that they only did this to improve their trade business with these countries and to help form NATO in order to compete with the Soviets and this is partially true. Other things they did which showed they actually stood up for democracy was supporting the democratic revolutions in the Korean War, Polish Solidarity Movement, and the Velvet Revolution. They not only did they do this for freedom, but also to stop the authoritarian spread of Communism which they deemed highly undemocratic and even propagandized it as evil especially during the Berlin Airlift which is one of the most famous benevolent event that the USA orchestrated. But those were the only freedom fighting they took. Everything else they did was highly undemocratic. USA has a tendency to overthrow foreign government if they don’t please their interests. Their first major anti-freedom action was overthrowing the democratically elected government of Iran simply because the new leader decided to nationalize the oil for benefit of the Iranian People. Then they did the exact same thing in Guatemala because the interests of their fruit companies were in danger. All of these overthrows were done through US backed coups and the School of America played a key

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