Cold War Research Paper

DBQ Outline Intro Paragraph · Background/Context: The Cold War was a state of political tension after World War II between the Eastern bloc countries and Western bloc countries. Cold War took a significant place in between 1947 to 1991 which the two most powerful countries, United States of America and Soviet Union, were competing with each other over spreading the rule and showing off their arms without killing people. After the World War II, people in different countries started to think about who bears more responsibility for starting the Cold War, United States or USSR. · Three-point thesis: The United States of America bears more responsibility for starting the Cold War because it built up military powers and prepared for

The orthodox view regarding the cause of the Cold War, formed the standard interpretation between the 1940s and early-1960s. The breakdown of the wartime alliance and the expansion of Soviet

The Cold War was the continuing state of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition existing after World War II between the Communist World – primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies – and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States and its allies.

In 1947, the Cold War had started, named after how both of the disputing sides did not fight but only threatened each other with new technologies. The U.S and Soviet Union disagreements on political systems and also questioned war reparation, show how they cause the Cold War with their mistrust and technological issues.

The cause of the Cold War is debatable. The Cold War was inevitable due to the differences in Capitalist and Communist ideologies. However, one is not able to fully point out who was responsible for the Cold War. There are so many factors that could have contributed to the Cold War. Many of the historians perspectives about the causes of the Cold War varies to a certain extent. The Orthodox view generally holds that the Soviet Union was responsible for the Cold War. It states that the Soviets were inevitably expansionist , due to their suspicion of the West. Thus, Stalin violated the Yalta and Potsdam agreements, occupied and imposed Soviet control in Eastern Europe and decides to ¨plot¨ the spread of Communism throughout the world with

Consisting of 44 years of violence and civil unrest from 1947 to 1991, the Cold War was a huge turning-point in history. The Cold War however was a war of avoidance, not combat. Defence systems were heavily funded as deterrence to actual war, the belief being a risk of mutual annihilation would be too great to be the side to make the first move. However, the Cold War caused a large variety of conflict and civil unrest around the world, such as the Korean War, Vietnam War and the Cuban Missile Crisis. The War split the world into supporting either the United States, or the USSR (Soviet Union). Both superpowers were associated with two very different political systems; Capitalism and Communism. The Soviets were very concerned about the spread

MacDonald’s article Communist Bloc Expansion in the Early Cold War, four schools of thought surrounding the origins of the Cold War are laid out. Specifically, MacDonald argues mostly in favor of the traditionalist school, which emphasizes the expansionist, offensive nature of Soviet expansion into Asia and Eastern Europe. Also, MacDonald makes an important point regarding the accuracy of information and historical texts regarding the origins of the Cold War, explaining that “The argument over the origins of the Cold War is important not only for historical accuracy, but also for the consequences it will have on theoretical questions and therefore on their implications for policy.” Not only is this true, but also extremely relevant to scholars studying the Cold War with regard to international relations, as it points out the importance of the correct application of paradigms and perspectives to the Cold War case study. In MacDonald’s argument in favor of the traditionalist school, he

In this paper I will discuss what actions and thoughts added up to cause the cold war. The cold war lasted from September 1, 1945 to about December 25, 1991. That is about forty-five years, which is an extremely long time. The cold war was a global competition basically between two sides, the Free World, which was led by the United States of America, and the Communist World led by the Soviet Union. The struggle took place through indirect military conflict, and direct competition in the areas of economics, diplomacy, culture, space exploration, and political theory. It also involved nuclear stand offs, espionage, and global competition for other nations. The cold war has established the framework for most

The orthodox view of the Cold War elucidates its inevitability due to the great ideological differences that existed between the Soviet Union and United States. On the other hand, the revisionists argued that it happened due to the actions that Soviets took and the consequential responses made by the United States as a result of their inflexible, single-sided interpretations of Soviet action. Yet, even with the backdrop of the early Bolshevik conflict in 1918 as well

However, the Cold War was not completely inevitable. Both revisionist and orthodox historians agree that the war “resulted from essentially unilateral actions by one or another power and that therefore the cold was an avoidable tragedy” (Crockatt 65).

There have been many attempts to explain the origins of the Cold War that developed between the capitalist West and the communist East after the Second World War. Indeed, there is great disagreement in explaining the source for the Cold War; some explanations draw on events pre-1945; some draw only on issues of ideology; others look to economics; security concerns dominate some arguments; personalities are seen as the root cause for some historians. So wide is the range of the historiography of the origins of the Cold War that is has been said "the Cold War has also spawned a war among historians, a controversy over how the Cold War got started, whether or not it was inevitable, and

     The Soviet Union and the west also formed political alliances to combat the other side. Western Europe and the United States formed NATO,a military pact. The Soviet Union created a similar pact,the Warsaw Pact, between the states within the Soviet Union. These military coalitions put a greater threat behind the growing conficts by involving more countries. These military alliances were supplemented by two edicts set by the Soviet Union and the United States. The United States issued the Truman Doctrine, which stated that they would support those countries resisting communism. Likewise, the Soviet Union later issued the Brezhnev Doctrine which decreed that the Soviet Union would intervene with force in order to protect communism in its satellites.

This is because the USSR took these policies as a direct attack against communism. Stalin coined the term "dollar imperialism" for the US foreign policies because they offered economic aid to nations in Europe that were detrimentally affected by WWII in an attempt to make these nations economically dependent on and politically influenced by the US. It caused fear and paranoia in the USSR because the soviet communists believed that the US would gain political and economic control of the countries in need of aid. It also caused fear and paranoia because the Truman Doctrine and Marshall plan condemned communism as evil and it took action to prevent the spread of communism to any susceptible nation by providing military assistance. The USSR was upset that the US could do such a thing, thus they responded furiously to these policies by developing their own similar form of economic aid. These were called the Molotov Plan and Comecon which forcefully imposed economic aid on countries such as Czech (even if these nations wanted the aid of the US instead). These actions and reactions caused tensions to greatly rise in the Cold War (Todd, 2009). Thus, it can be argued that it was not only Truman's policies, but Stalin's policies that also played a major role in the Cold War.

I think that to some extent, the Soviet Union was to blame for the start of the Cold War. The Soviet Union’s aggressive actions in Eastern Europe meant that the Americans had to step in to stop the Soviet Union from taking over Eastern Europe and making the countries into puppet states of theirs. As stated in the Truman Doctrine, America was supposed to aid all countries under oppression. That is why the Americans tried to stop the Soviet Union and allow democracy in those countries which the Soviets didn’t like at all. That distanced the two countries from each other and made them hate each other even more.

The term “Cold War” refers to the second half of the 20th century, usually from the end of the World War II until 1990, when the Soviet Union collapsed. Since the 1940s and 1950s the scholars have disagreed on the topic of the origins of the Cold War. There are several groups of historians and their interpretations are very different, sometimes even contradictory. The three main schools are the orthodox, the revisionist and the realist. The classification is not completely accurate because we can find several differences in theories of scholars within the same group and often the authors reevaluated their ideas over time.