The Cold War: Communism And Capitalism

The Cold War was a state of economic, diplomatic, and ideological discord among nations without armed conflict. The Cold War was between the United States and the USSR because these were the two major powers after WWII. Basically, the Cold War was a series of proxy wars that had taken place back in time involving surrounding countries. One of the main causes for Cold War was that the Soviet Union was spreading communism and the United States didn’t like that so they were trying to contain communism. However, in the end they failed. Many events took place in other countries. In Korea, Vietnam, Latin America, and China, communism took over; however, before it did, major wars had taken place. The cold war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union worsened the condition of countries involved. The Cold War broke countries into two parts that turned against each other, the United States and the Soviet Union used these countries to fight their war and caused a big disturbance to daily life, and the Communist States fought the Non-Communist States; however, the end results of these wars only caused more damage in these countries.

During World War II, the United States and the Soviets put their political differences aside in their need to defeat their common foe, Germany. However, even during the war against Germany, and later Japan, the political and post-war tensions between the United States and the Soviets were ever underlying and continued to grow. As both sides of the Axis allies continued to gain ground, during their victories in Europe, the questions and positioning for future world domination of political ideals continued to mount up. Shortly after Germany surrendered, the issues began to come to light at the Potsdam Conference that was attended by the current British, American, and Soviet leaders. After the use of the atomic bombs and Japan’s surrender,

The Cold War, in one sense, was a power struggle between the two nuclear military giants of the age, the United States and the Soviet Union. But on a more basic level, the Cold War was a contest between two opposing ways of life. One was democratic capitalism, whose leading representatives were the United States and the nations of Western Europe. The other was totalitarian Communism, the system of the Soviet Union and its "satellite" nations in Eastern Europe. Between 1945 and 1990, despite constant tensions and an alarming buildup of nuclear arms on both sides, the United States and the Soviet Union officially remained at peace—hence the name the "cold" war. Yet it was hardly a peaceful era. Furthermore through newspapers in USSR (Pravda and

Throughout United States history, there has not been a more prominent and long lasting threat like the one of communism. It has been a threat to the democratic and capitalist ideals of the U.S. since before World War I, throughout the Cold War and is still until this day. When one thinks about communism, you conjure up images of the Red Scare that the Soviet Union induced and of other dictatorships throughout the western hemisphere and one might overlook the Marxist ideals that were being spread throughout our neighboring countries. These western countries were allies that the U.S. could not afford to lose during the Cold War. Latin America, which has many ties to the U.S., both geographically and politically, could pose a very strategic threat to the U.S. in its battle against communism. To understand Latin America’s communist history is to understand how much influence and intervention the U.S. had in the region during the Cold War. This report will serve to explain how communism spread to the western hemisphere, why the U.S. government had to stop that spread, and how they were able to stop many communist revolutions in Latin America.

The Cold War was easy: Capitalism vs. Communism, West vs. East, Good vs. Evil… however you wanted to define it, the dichotomy was simple to understand. When the Soviet Union officially dissolved in 1991, the New World Order was going to be a little more difficult to define, and to comprehend.

The author of The Devil We Knew wrote this book from a standpoint of displeasure at the way the government handled the Cold War. I believe that H.W. Brands was not alone in this feeling of the government failing its people. The Cold War was the third war in a very short period of time. During the first two wars 100,000 Americans and millions of non-Americans were slaughtered. The feeling of continuous war and death to simply be in another war was more than some people could stand (VI). Thus, their fear took on the image of communists, they became the scapegoat for everything we feared.

America’s foundation was constructed on the ideal of freedom, whether that be religious, political, or individual freedom. U.S. citizens have very strong feelings about their independence and will do almost anything to protect their rights from being taken away. During the 1950s Americans were afraid that their freedom was going to be threatened and taken away by the communist style of government. The Soviet Union and America were both trying to win control on a global scale, but with the USSR being communist the paranoia of a socialism takeover was heightened. Americans were so fearful of communism that it became known as the Red Scare. All over the country people were being accused of being communist spies and federal employees were being interrogated, the U.S. was in full panic mode. The United States was so fearful of the USSR being able to gather more communist allies and take over that the U.S. stepped in militarily to protect South Korea from North Korea’s communist invasion. This battle for dominance between the nations was named the Cold War. I believe that this war was justified because there were clear threats towards the United States and their capitalist ideals. In the very beginning of the Cold War the Soviet Union successfully tested an atomic bomb. This seemed like a clear indication that the USSR had plans to use that bomb in order to establish their dominance and embark on a communist takeover. America fought to keep their freedom and rights safe from the

The U.S. has considered Communism the greatest threat before and after WW2 and the civil war. It also worked very well in China. During the 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy unfairly accused a number of innocent people of being communist and traitors.

The Cold War’s major belief was communism, which simplify was the belief that property is publicly owned, everyone worked and is paid according to their needs and work ethic. The U.S. strongly disapproved of this belief system and is the major reason The USSR and the U.S. went to war. The Cuban Missile Crisis was a short lived dispute between the USSR, Cuba, and the U.S. over ballistic missiles. The Iron curtain was basically the imaginary line that dived the communist countries and none communist countries. The Vietnam War was the conflict between North and South Vietnam. South Vietnam was supported by the U.S., while the North was supported by The USSR. South Vietnam wanted to bring the countries into communism, while South Vietnam wanted a democratic.

Although America and the rest of human history have presumed a future of boundless joy and civil peace after the end of World War II, the differences in the political and economic perspectives between the United States and the Soviet Union caused a rift in their convenient relationship and ceased the warmth of their shared handshakes. With the Soviet Union’s preference for a communist government, its principles of authoritarianism and limited freedom ignited a conflict with the democratic United States which, on the other hand, valued capitalism, independence, and freedom of expression. The Soviet Union was confident that their communist influences would outrule capitalism and ultimately become the dominant driving force of government in the

The Cold War was based off of different political and economic views between the US and The Soviet Union. Soviet communists did not agree with the allies way of private ownership economies. Russian leaders felt as if capitalism was dying and that communism would spread through the world which caused a great tension, releasing a new kind of war, the Cold War. Winston Churchill described the separation of Soviet controlled countries in Eastern Europe and the Western Democracies known as the “Iron Curtain”. The Soviets wanted expansion and the retaliation of the US was containment. A form of containment was known as the Truman Doctrine, declaring that the United States would free people of communism, such as those in Greece and Turkey. Down the

-The Cold War is one of the most complicating yet interesting topics in history. It was an altercation between the Soviet Union and the United States over different ideologies concerning politics. Russia believed in communism which was the ideology of advocating class war and believing that all property was publicly owned (Sherman, 2004). Each person is given or gets paid however much they need. Everything was owned by the government and divided equally among the people who eventually worked for what they got. This was totalitarian. The United States had a capitalist economy. This was an economical system where a country's industry and their trade is controlled by a private owner for profit not by the state. It followed the idea that people

When the cold war began, no one thought that it would last as long as it did. Many people thought the war was caused by fighting, and there were some people that thought it was caused by the conflicts of communism and capitalism, so who was right? Well we only know what we read in our history books which says that it was caused by the conflicts of communism and capitalism. Was this the real reason for the cold war? In my essay I will give details about the cold war and tell why the war was started, who started the war, what doctrines were put in place to keep the Soviet Union from spreading communism, and how the Cold War impacted the foreign and domestic policy of the United States.

Though the Cold War was mainly between the two super powers, the United States and the Soviet Union, it also encompassed their European allies, split by the Iron Curtain. It divided the world into the Warsaw pact and the NATO, cementing Europe’s role in the Cold War though its alliances. The constant threat of the nuclear weapons meant that the Cold War became more psychological war rather than of military actions1. .The United States developed their nuclear weapons to strengthen their own military potential after WWII, but the Soviet Russia took this to be more an offensive tactic after the bombs the devastation of the atomic bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The Cold War then largely became an arms race, due to the

These objectives changed the lives of many people. The lives of many Eastern Europeans was never pleasant during the Cold War, for it was regulated and restricted by communists who were fixed on developing such a system throughout the world. The Soviet Union needed to reach an extent wherever they were the only leaders and always in control. It is maybe due to this wish and wants that their policies and system, in the end, are lost. The Soviet's economic decline due to military spending, Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost management, and the quick opposing of surrounding nations of the Soviet Union toward their government were the primary causes of the death of communism in Eastern Europe and the dissolving of the Soviet