The Cold War Essay

Although the indications were present well before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world was not completely ready for the end of the Cold War. The US was left alone without any major balancing opponents. Furthermore, after the dissolution of the Soviets the numbers of newly established independent states have increased significantly. All these new states were lacking of self-governing capabilities and also the Western vision, which was the victorious ideology of the Cold war. Moreover, some

In Looking Back: The Long Peace, John Lewis Gaddis examines the reasons why peace was maintained during the tense period now known as the Cold War. Gaddis highlights a series of reasons why the Soviet Union and United States never fought a war that could have potentially endangered humanity as we know it. Gaddis shows that an international ideology based more on stability rather than justice contributed to peace, he claims that post World War 2 international relations was built upon a stabile bipolar system, it is argued that the distance and lack of dependence between the USSR and the USA helped cool and prevent tensions, Gaddis also states that domestic policies by both countries thru ought the Cold War didn’t undermine world stability,

Offner, Arnold, "Provincialism and Confrontation: Truman’s Responsibility" in Major Problems in American Foreign Relations, Volume II.

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.

1.     How NSC-68 influenced America’s response to Communist North Korea’s invasion of South Korea in June 1950 and to Communist expansion in Southeast Asia in the 1960s. The NSC-68 called for military assistance programs that would meet the requirements of our allies. Since South Korea was an ally, we assisted them in repelling the invasion of another communist nation. This help for South Korea meant that a communist nation would be weakened and therefore possibly cripple a potential ally for the Soviet Union. Also, South Korea would then respond to a call for aid if the Soviet Union ever attacked

When one can truly understand and uncover the meaning behind these articles and how they fit into one or more of the ‘boxes’ we call paradigms and perspectives. In order to dissect and analyze the case of the Cold War, especially its origins, one must not only skim through the text and uncover main ideas, but also must also relate the readings to these paradigms and establish one’s own ideals and opinions regarding the study of international relations. Personally, I believe the articles associated with the origins of the Cold War along with Professor Katzenstein’s lecture on the topic provide strong arguments for the use of a ‘middle fish’ perspective and a ‘big fish’ paradigm: domestic politics and realism, respectively. Through George Kennan’s personal accounts, experience and analysis at both the time of the Cold War’s inception and forty-plus years later after the fall of the Soviet Union, a point is made regarding the nature of Soviet expansion as an offensive maneuver, which he believed must be contained by a defensive strategy. This point of conflicting strategies by the U.S. and (especially) the Soviet Union provides the reader with a realist argument and perspective. Also, in his second piece, which details remarks made to the Council on Foreign Relations in 1994, Kennan explains that instead of whole-heartedly adopting

In 1961 President John F Kennedy put together a doctrine, which altered from President Eisenhower’s one. It was to “Respond flexibly to communist expansion, especially guerrilla warfare.” (Roskin & Berry, 2010, p. 58) It was a time when the Cold War was at its height and nuclear weapons a mass threat and source of power. This doctrine was aimed at using alternative means before opening into combat. This, in light of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, it succeeded in doing.

“At the heart of the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1940s was a fundamental difference in the ways the great powers envisioned the postwar world.” After World War II countries were in chaos, no one was able to agree on what should happen to the postwar world. While the Soviet Union and the United States were allies during the world wars, they were the one with the biggest issues during the aftermath of the war and their issues ended up becoming what we now know as the Cold War. Many issues led up to this war and to this day we still suffer from the war and the American people still fear communism.

After world war one peace looked inevitable. Everyone was wrong about this because a few years later world war two erupted. This great war was supposed to be the war to end all wars. In this war it was crystal clear who was the good side and who was the bad side. Almost everyone figured that if the bad side was defeated then peace couldn’t possibly escape us again. We defeated the evil Axis powers, but of course another serpent would rear its ugly head from behind the curtains. This period of a “cold war” after world war two has become one of the most complex and studied eras since America’s birth. This state of paradoxes, paranoia, and public disorientation has only ended a few years ago, but its

Realism is a theory which believes that sovereign states are the primary actors in the international system. It also believes that the international system has always been anarchic due to the nature of states not trusting each other and each state seeking to gain or maximize its own power capability. The Realist approach to the Cold War was also that of an “anarchical constitutive” and had seen the Cold War as something that was not out of the ordinary. The realists believed that states are always competing to maximize their own power, “the basic premise of its understanding is that the Cold War was not historically unique. the Cold War rather reflected in general terms the ongoing logic of inter-state conflict derived from the anarchical constitutive nature of the international system, and the ‘power maximization’ policies of states” R.Saull (2001:7).

The Cold War was a response to the perceived threat by the United States that Communism would interfere with national security and economic stakes in the world. It was a perceived threat by communist countries that the United States would take to the world. During the Cold War, the United States, Russia, and other countries made efforts to avoid another world war, while warring in proxy in other lands. The devastation caused by the hydrogen bombs exploded in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the next technological advancements became only deterrents to the public. Governments had their own agenda which would result in worsening the strain between nations. The United States hid behind a curtain of nationalism resulting in increased

grand strategy, one should look no farther than the Cold War. According to Walt, realism was the dominant theoretical tradition throughout the Cold War. It depicts international affairs as a struggle for power among self-interested states and is generally pessimistic about the prospects for eliminating conflict and war. Realism dominated in the Cold War years because it provided simple but powerful explanations for war, alliances, imperialism, obstacles to cooperation, and other international phenomena, and because its emphasis on competition was consistent with the central features of the American-Soviet rivalry. At the onset of the cold war, we see telltale signs of the theory of realism. One could argue Josef Stalin initiated the “war” and it was his attempt at communist world domination. The flipside of that argument is at the conclusion of World War II; the U.S. dismissed the Soviets security concerns. At the end of the day, the relationship deteriorated and the main powers of the day sat at different ends of the table…the United States sitting next to the United Kingdom while on the other side of the table the Soviet Union looked on in amusement, thinking all had agreed on the future. The initiation of the Cold War finds its roots at the Yalta Conference in Tehran mired poor international relations. In the end, the Yalta agreements were not so much a true compromise as a useful misunderstanding among the three leaders. Stalin left happy he had won Anglo-American acceptance of de facto Soviet control of Eastern Europe; Roosevelt and Churchill left happy they had won Stalin's acceptance of the principle of self-determination; however, the two parts of the agreement were mutually exclusive. Future disputes over the problematic Yalta agreements were not just likely; they were virtually inevitable. The failure of the Yalta Conference and the subsequent break down of international

Realism, as a way of interpreting international relations has often been conceived to be closely tied to the Cold War. Realism, rooted in the experience of World War II and the Cold War, is said to be undergoing a crisis of confidence largely because the lessons adduced do not convincingly apply directly to the new realities of international relations in the twenty-first century (Clinton 2007:1) Worse still, if policymakers steadfastly adhere to realist precepts, they will have to navigate “the unchartered seas of the post-Cold War disorder with a Cold War cartography, and blind devotion to realism could compromise their ability to prescribe paths to a more orderly and just system.” (Kegley 1993:141). This paper will demonstrate that

Realism philosophers such as Glaser affirm that, ‘the international system is anarchic –there is not an international authority that can enforce agreements and prevent the use of force’ . This assertion facilitates the analysis and understanding of the role that each state ought to adopt to survive in a world where the lack of authority at the highest level primes. Furthermore, such anarchism promotes the individual strengthening of the states, which in turn, are compelled to accumulate sufficient power to protect their national interests. For example, during the period of the cold war, superpowers such as the United States of America (US) and the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) initiated a long-term run for the world

By the end of the Cold War, realism had gradually lost its popularity and individuals began to take on a more optimistic view. Realism clarifies the United States’ responsive actions in the post 9/11 world to the terrorist attacks. They used their immense power to expand its sphere of control in the international community. Realism has also been recently useful after the United States had ultimate dominance, other states are also on the rise.