The Cold War Was A State Of Political And Military Conflict

Brands' purpose for writing this book was to inform the reader of actions taken before, during, and after the Cold War. After World War II, the United States and Russia were the only two remaining world powers. Each had a conflicting method of government, which ultimately led to the Cold War. The two superpowers were at the center of attention for the better part of

Truman believed that if Russia got Greece and Turkey it would then get Italy and France and the “iron curtain” would extend to western Ireland and to the United States. Arnold posits that Truman’s views were excessive. Stalin never challenged the Truman Doctrine or western dominance in Turkey, which was under U.S. military guidance, and Greece. Arnold states, “ [Stalin] provided almost no aid to the Greek rebels and told Yugoslavia’s leaders in early 1948 to halt their aid because the United States would never allow the Greek Communist to win and break Anglo-American control in the Mediterranean” (221). Arnold believed that President Truman more often than not narrowed rather than broadened his options. Truman’s insecurity also reinforced his liking to view conflict in black-and-white terms, to categorize all nations as either free or totalitarian, to demonize his opponents, and to ignore the complexities of historic national conflicts. In sum, despite Truman’s claim to have “knocked the socks off the communists,” he left the White House with his presidency in tatters, military spending at a record high, McCarthyism rampant, and the United States on Cold War footing at home and abroad.

But Cold War origins had roots in American suspicions of Soviet communism and in Stalin?s aggressive posture toward Eastern Europe and the Persion Gulf, not the Far East. In hindsight, we see that the Soviets were not the schemers of the Korean War, as we can see from the fact that that they were absent from the Security Council vote to begin ?police action? in North Korea. Plus, now that the Soviets had detonated an atomic bomb, relations between the U.S. and Soviet Union needed to be, in Truman?s mind, as cautiously done as possible; a full assault on communism may have caused a third World War. The open-ended struggle against communism gave the president expanded powers to act when unrest threatened, and only at those times.

Elizabeth Edwards Spalding, argues that Truman’s principles, expectations, decision, and policies not only gave rise to and defined containments content, but also shaped America’s understanding of the Cold War and as a result of this fundamental role, it is right to say that Harry S. Truman was the first cold war warrior. Truman’s containment strategy also provided the grounds for a new liberal internationalism. For Truman, international meant that American leadership was central as his ideas and policies stemmed from a multifaceted definition of peace, composed of freedom, justice, and order.

Since the beginning of the Cold War in the late 1940s, American national strategy has been dedicated to the containment of the Union of Soviet Socialists Republics (Soviet Union) and its soviet-inspired communism. Following the end of World War II, relations between the Soviet Union and the United States were strained. The distinct differences in the political systems between these two countries facilitated animosity and mistrust, often to the brink of war. The Soviet Union, led by Joseph Stalin, spread communism throughout Eurasia in an attempt to establish Soviet hegemony and secure his power domestically. President Harry S. Truman embraced the framework of George F. Kennan’s controversial containment policy to limit the Soviet’s influence, often at the expense of the United States.

Mr. Truman was a historian who understood International Relations so in depth that it was second nature to him. He was not afraid of a fight; however, he hated being dragged into one! The author brilliantly captures Mr. Truman’s’ thoughts on having to deal with the negotiations with Japan, Russia, and Korea. He had no patience for war mongers or what he named pigheaded totalitarians that had no common sense or passion for their own people. Mr. Truman’s operational code and his perceptions of reality were spot on. His way of dealing with leaders of other countries was tough and seriously intellectual. He preferred to outsmart his opponent rather than to have to come to blows, and most of the time he was successful in accomplishing this, but with some, he believed there was not enough intellectual ability to compromise for a solution. President Truman believed communism should be contained at all cost and foresaw the problems of the cold war between the free world and the communists.

The Cold War was the perpetual rivalry that took place between the Soviet Union and The United States. The war was called the Cold War because no direct fighting took place between America and Russia. Instead, it was a war of words and threats. It was an ideological war based on ideas of communism and capitalism. The war never fully escalated because both powers knew that use of nuclear weapons would be disastrous, although, there was a nuclear arms escalation between both sides. The Truman Doctrine stated that it was America’s responsibility to contain communism. I think America should not have got involved in a war against communism and neither should China and Russia have rallied against democracy.

President Truman’s philosophy was to come to the defense of those countries at risk of a Soviet takeover, however, the United States wouldn 't begin a war with the Soviet Union. He also created alliances with Europe, which was a contrast to the past as a result of from the time of Washington’s Farewell Address, Americans have strongly favored avoiding all foreign entanglements. He additionally was condemned by the paranoia created by the red scare, ordering the investigations of three million federal employees for “security risks.” Truman’s presidency set the stage for the remainder of the cold war. The beginning of the cold war raised the problem of the form of the new world and what new political alliances would be shaped. This would become the key supplier of rivalry between the world’s leading political-economic system, capitalism and communism. The American economy was growing more dependent on exports, whereas American industry required to import metals. This needed open trade and friendly relations with those nations that provided metal. With several economies in shambles, competition for the few healthy economies became fierce. Germany, Japan, and Great Britain, who had been the strongest before the war had either been defeated or their influence was greatly reduced. The united states and the Soviet Union became the world’s leading two powers, and they quickly became enemies.

Limiting the threat of a government that would control the flow of a free flow market and risk their security and investments. Truman said, “The American system can survive in America only if it became a world system”, by preserving national security and bringing “freedom, democracy, and capitalism to the rest of the world” (chapter. 10) would help ensure order to secure Americas peace in the future. Knowing America had a monopoly on atomic weapons, Truman was firm but willing to work with the Soviets as long as they conformed to the U.S. plans for the post war world as well as refrain from expanding. Stalin’s point of view was that he had power within those countries defeated in the war and those that the Red Army had liberated. The U.S. was rebuilding governments in Italy and Japan while Stalin had installed Communist governments in Poland and Bulgaria. Initially the Soviets were tolerate of non-communist countries, but would eventually remove their troops from Iran in the spring of 1946 when the Unites States applied pressure on them. As the book says, this allowed for the United States to gain access to the rich oil fields of Iran. Referring to the notes, the Cold War had become a race to expand spheres of influence, with the United States looked stuck with their allies as they resisted the efforts of the Soviets efforts to

“ The Soviet Union was fighting for its survival, and the Roosevelt administration believed that if Russia fell to the Nazis, the United States too would be facing destruction. When the war was over, the differences between the “free world’ and the “communist system” resurfaced quickly.” The Cold War was a defining point for both countries' foreign policies through the second half of the twentieth century. The USSR and US competed for allies to preserve and widen their respective domains of influence around the world. Each saw the Cold War as a battle

In Europe, there were many problems erupting during the cold war. Progress was need but very little changes were being made during 1946. The economy was getting worst and worst, but both Britain and France had effective campaigns to increase production for export that provided increased earnings of the dollar required to finance essential needs. The campaign wasn’t as effective as we might of thought because sooner or later the United States had to get involved. The Truman Doctrine came about during the cold war, when the British government informed the U.S that they can no longer furnish the economic and military assistance it had been providing to Greece and Turkey. The Truman administration believed that both nations were threatened by communism, and this would be a great opportunity to take on the Soviet Union.

The Cold War is named “cold” because there was little to none actual armed battles. It was shortly after World War II and was started between the United States and the Soviet Union. There were many differences including the perspectives from both sides of the War, however, there were also positive outcomes as a result of the Cold War. The war lasted approximately forty years and was a true test of power between the two enemies. The cold war lasted so long that is considered an era. The two parties believed that one another were out to get each other. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the political and military relations between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War. John Lewis Gaddis, the author of The

Conflict always revolves around a certain type of change. Whether it is political, economic, and civil or hate change for the issue will be made through conflict. During the Cold War, the Truman Doctrine was written to contain the vicious spread of communism lead by the Soviet Union. Actions made out of fear had negative consequences on the United States, such as the 1954 Guatemalan coup, 1953 Iranian coup or the Second Red Scare. These actions made to defeat economic threats and communism, toke a wrong turn when American government made economic security more important than allies. In the mid-1950s the Cold War was not the only issue brewing. Segregation was at its prime and Civil rights activists were there to ensure equality. The peaceful

The Cold War was a time of military and political tension that came about in the years following World War II, and was characterized by a lack of large scale military engagements between the powers involved. The “war” was waged between the Eastern Bloc which was comprised of the Soviet Union and its allies in the Warsaw Pact, and the Western Bloc which wascomprised of The United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the United States had profoundly different ideological, political, and economic differences, and as a result the use of diplomacy was instrumental in preventing the advent of a third World War. A specific example of this diplomacy was that of John F.

Unimaginable five years earlier, the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1991 was, as historian George Herring asserted, “an event as momentous in its ramifications as it was anticlimactic in its occurrence.” Soviet Premier Gorbachev’s dual policies of glasnost and perestroika had relaxed central control and encouraged self-sufficiency among the republics of Eastern Europe, but it also revealed the underlying economic weakness of the Soviet system. The collapse of the Soviet Union sent shockwaves through a U.S. foreign policy establishment that had, for decades, overwhelmingly focused on the containment of the Soviet Union. Lacking the fundamental organizing principle that the Cold War provided, both the Bush and Clinton administrations struggled to put forth a consistent foreign policy strategy. Each administration reacted differently to the reality of a world without a central adversary, and each made critical missteps. U.S. foreign policy during the first post-Cold War decade was at times tentative and inconsistent as foreign policy authorities sought a dominant organizing principle to shape its strategy.