The Cold War: Study Notes

The Cold War had a significant impact on American foreign policy, changing it substantially in both attitudes to social and economic factors. The heavy influence of a difference in political standing between the Soviet Union and the United States, in conjunction with the high tensions that followed in the post war period, set the foundations for American foreign policy to adapt and change to better suit the developing political agender of the time. Socially, the two sides were heavily split, with the Soviet Union seeking communist support and allies whilst the US sought to counter their progress in a similar manner. Economically these relations with foreign countries that either joined the eastern or western blocs helped to further the

The Cold War was the name given to the political economic, military and ideological contention that occurred between the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union and their allies after World War II. The two forces never directly engaged in military activity in light of the fact that both had atomic weapons that if utilized, might have had crushing outcomes for both sides. Instead, proxy wars were battled. A proxy war results when contradicting forces utilize outsiders as substitutes for battling each one other and is ordinarily launched by a power that does not itself partake. The Korean and Vietnam wars are two examples of proxy wars on the grounds that the U.S. and the Soviet Union did not directly engage one another however, Soviet endeavors to spread and bring together both Korea and Vietnam under communist rule provoked mediation either by the United States and/or by their allies. These two occasions were simply a few of the impacts of the Cold War in Asia. This paper will examine each war individually and in more detail and endeavor to persuade that the Korean and Vietnam Wars were the immediate aftereffects of Soviet endeavors to expand communist influence in Asia and the United States and their allies' approach of forestalling and holding such endeavors.

Research this week was fruitful and my bibliography grew substantially. A large part of the reason for this growth was the mining of the bibliography of other sources. One of the most fruitful was, The Cold War in a Cold Land: Fighting Communism on the Northern Plains. The book provided me with a variety of both primary and secondary sources. The list of sources includes, books, articles, and government reports. A second book that provided more sources was, How We Forgot the Cold War. The bibliography provided some sources created by the North Dakota State Historical Society. In addition to these sources, I have been looking into newspapers. I have ordered some rolls of microfilm of the Griggs County Sentinel-Courier and am still waiting for them to arrive. I started with these rolls because they came from the paper closest to the geographic center of my research, as well as the dates of my research. In addition to the rolls, I have ordered The Cold War in a Cold Land, which provided a list of other newspapers that may be useful. In addition to ordering more microfilm reels that I will have sent to me at school, I will also have the opportunity to examine many more when I return home for spring break. Many are housed at the State Historical Society, just twenty minutes

Although the Soviet Union and the United States fought together during World War II against the Axis Powers, the relationship between the two grew bitter going into the 1950’s Cold War. The Cold War left a dominant impact on the U.S. and American living throughout the 20th century. The fall out between the U.S. and the Soviet Union created various issues that United States dealt with (Suddath). The United States was a capitalistic country, while the Soviet Union, also known as the USSR, was lead by a strong communist influence. The expansion of Soviets into Eastern Europe fueled most of the fear the U.S. had of Russia, that they would attempt to influence many more countries.

The Korean War changed the face of American Cold War diplomacy forever. In the midst of all the political conflict and speculation worldwide, the nation had to choose between two proposed solutions, each one hoping to ensure that communism didn?t sweep across the globe and destroy American ideals of capitalism and democracy. General Douglas MacArthur takes the pro-active stance and says that, assuming it has the capability, the U.S. should attack communism everywhere. President Harry Truman, on the other hand, believed that containing the Soviet communists from Western Europe was the best and most important course of action, and that eliminating communism in Asia was not a priority.

1947 through 1991 was the time period of the Cold War; the Cold War was a result caused by the tension of the after math of what had happened with world war 2 .The tension that was there wasn 't just any kind of tension it was military tension between the power of the eastern bloc and the power of the western bloc. The Cold War wasn 't only one war but it was decades of "little"wars and intimidation. Germany was busy after the war, there where so much tension between the Soviet Union and the western allies because they had feared each other because they had thought a new war could arise. Minister Churchill then decided that he would put what would be an iron curtain across Europe. The Cold War had so many little conflicts within it like the Chinese revolution, the Palestine liberation organisation, and so many more hundreds if you would that happened in the Cold War time.

The United States made a commitment to fight communism after World War II everywhere it could in the world and got involved in conflicts more because of self-interest and determination to beat communism than the cause. This first appears with the Truman Doctrine, which set the precedent for America to assist anti-communist regimes around the world. After World War II and up until the early 1990’s the foreign policy of the United States was based on the policy of the containment of Cold War ideology and to prevent nations from turning towards Soviet-based communism.

After defeating Hitler, the US and the Soviet Union started to argue over Eastern Europe, especially Poland. Stalin insisted that friendly communist governments must be installed on the Soviet borders, Stalin broke his Yalta promise to allow free elections and saw to it that communist regimes came to power in Poland, Bulgaria, and Romania. President Truman didn’t accept that, Soviet domination of Eastern Europe would violate the principles of national self-determination that the US had spoken about at the Atlantic Charter and Yalta Declaration. Truman believed that the spread of communism threaten American economic interests in Europe and elsewhere. Opposition to Soviet intervention was a popular opinion in the states with

John Gaddis is a professor at the University of Yale. Gaddis field of interest are the “U.S Cold War history; Historical methodology; Biography; Grand Strategy (Yale University." John Gaddis. http://history.yale.edu/people/john-gaddis). Since his field of interest is in the U.S Cold War history, he wrote a book about it by the name of The Cold War A New History. Gaddis’s book is written for his undergraduate Yale students that he lectures to every Monday and Wednesday afternoon. His real purpose in this book is to make his Yale undergraduates understand what the Cold War was since “hardly any of them remember any of the events I’m (he is) describing”(preface).

Clare, J. (2002). Origins of the Cold War 1945-49. Johndclare.net. Retrieved 29 January 2016, from http://www.johndclare.net/cold_warA1.htm

During the Vietnam War era, the United States and other democratic and free nations were fearful of communism spreading to more parts of the world. They fought two world wars to protect freedom, and to contain the communist movements. The foreign policy of the United States evolved to that of a pre-emptive type strike on the possibility of communism surfacing and threatening free countries. Harry S. Truman began to theorize that if a communist nation took over a non-communist state, then neighboring countries would also fall. This became known as the “domino effect,” and was the foreign policy that Dwight D. Eisenhower applied to countries in South East Asia in the 1950s.

“Following World War II (1939-45), the democratic United States and the communist Soviet Union became engaged in a series of largely political and economic clashes known as the Cold War” (“Red Scare”). During this so called Cold War, the correlation between the United States’ global objectives and its foreign policy was very clear. The intentions of the United States during the Cold War were to combat the spread of communism to the best of their ability on all fronts, to be militarily superior to the Soviet Union, and to allow their country to grow without impediment. These ideals were developed both as a result of and in the midst of their political opposition to the Soviet Union. These intentions developed by the United States during the

The topic I will be covering is the Cold War and question number six. The Roosevelt Administration was determined to avoid a retreat like the one that followed WWI. The United States itself had sole possession of the atomic bomb. The United States goal was to expand democracy. America saw that there needed to be global economic reconstruction. The Soviets looked to model the rest of the world after their own values and origins. It indeed had to do with Soviet Expansion. The Russians didn’t want to go to war with the United States. The Russians wanted to expand their ideology throughout the world. It was the United States goal to stop that spread and to contain the Russian Government (Foner 882). These were some of the origins of the cold war.

Most historians and foreign policy analysts in 1981 did not anticipate that within a decade the Cold War would be over and that it would end with relatively little violence and the end of the Soviet Union. Structural forces have received considerably less attention than the players in assessments on the end of the Cold War. There is widespread recognition that a stagnating Soviet economy definitely shaped Gorbachev 's policy of perestroika to revive a command economy dominated by the Soviet Communist Party and state. Although Gorbachev struggled to transform the Soviet economy, the American economy revived after a severe recession in 1982 and took off into sustained growth, offering a striking contrast to the Soviet scene.

The Cold War was a time after World War II, so from 1945 to 1991, where the USA (United States of America) and the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) had very different views on what the new world should be like. The Cold War drew international interest for decades. Many major conflicts occurred. The conflicts consisted of the Vietnam War, the Korean War and many others. For most people though, the Cold War was about the creation and the use of weapons of mass destruction, this was the most troubling issue.