Cold Wars Impact: Ideological Rivalry, Atomic Devastation, and Shifting Global Dynamics

Abstract

The Cold war. The Cold war began at the end of World war II between the United States and the Soviet Union and its allies. It was termed a cold war since there were no vigorous fights between the two superpowers. Still, the main conflict was an ideological and geopolitical struggle for global influence between the two superpowers, sports rivalry, technological competitions, and psychological warfare (Thompson 4). The cold war led to American domestic life alteration and atomic devastation in the conflicting nations. The greatest fear was communism in the United States and Joseph Stalin’s tyrannical rule in Russia; hence the US developed a cold war foreign policy they termed as containment to prevent the expansion of communism. President Truman proposed increased spending on National Security to prevent further communist expansion. The cold war gained momentum in 1949 after developing the Atomic Bomb in the US (Sakwa 12). The Russians responded, and it became a moment of atomic obliteration, and atomic devastation prevailed in the American Atmosphere affecting their domestic lives. The US and its allies formed the National Atlantic Treaty Organization to resist the influence of the Soviet Union, and in the same year (1949), the Soviets exploded their first atomic bomb and the US monopoly on the use of atomic bombs ended. The cold was at its peak until 1953, where Joseph Stalin, a vicious leader in the Soviet Union, died. The cold war relaxed, and the two avoided direct military confrontation using nuclear and atomic weapons. Still, in 1958, they started developing missiles leading to the Cuban missiles’ crisis, and the superpowers adopted a treaty to end the use of the missiles in 1962. The US militarily enacted massive killing and use of chemical weapons to prevent the spread of communism. This damaged the reputation at home and abroad. Communism had failed politically since their atrocious actions to countries such as Laos and Cambodia ganged communists to power. The policy of containment failed to prevent nations, for instance, Vietnam, from falling into communism (Kong 199). The US was under pressure to commit to peace from home by the United States politicians. After the United States failed in the Vietnam war, Chia and Russia pumped their money and technology. The policy of containment failed to improve the relations between the two nations and the United States. Work Cited Kong, Yuan. "Identity Politics and the Evolution of World Order." The Impact of Innovation on Globalization. Brill, 2021. 195-215. Sakwa, Richard. "Russian neo-revisionism." Russian Politics 4.1 (2019): 1-21. Thompson, Graeme A. "Applying Global History: Globalization, Geopolitics, and the US-China Rivalry after Covid-19." Journal of Applied History 1. aop (2021): 1-23.