Category: Cold War

Propaganda can be defined as a mode of communication used to manipulate and influence public opinion in support of the propagandist’s beliefs. Propaganda has taken shape in art, movies, speeches, and music over the years, but it is not restricted to forms like these.

Propaganda

Publicity with a purpose is created, and consciousness is molded. ‘The dispersal of stories, well-planned information, new and different contentions, and the intentions of the claims are intended to impact the convictions, which are then considered and the explicit gathering and their actions.’ In the history of mankind, we have assorted the occasions personally which have caused the public wherever the torment and disgrace. Numerous examples solely measure the removal and shift of the local people in North America, the Second World Jewish Holocaust, and group action along these lines of Tutsis in Rwanda are imprinted in the people in the mid-1990s. But, with the mirroring of everything, humankind’s most extraordinary terrible qualities, have together shown the successful use of propaganda.

Cold War period: 1950-1990

The world was split into two significant parts after the Second World War; liberals and socialists ruled the majority of the government. The term ‘war of words’ was brought about on the brink of the Cold War: activities involving data were competent and eventually, rose rapidly or gradually. The quick media which was designed to impact the conviction on a short basis.

It talks about the interrelatedness between information, impact, and therefore the contention throughout officials’ hearings on America’s first data masterminds in the period. though the rise of the correspondence science worldview has influenced the quantitative verification age to live the viability of America’s contention information, this contextual investigation suggests that the ‘war of words’ relationship any outstanding requirement for exploratory proof of America’s situation in that fight, even as any physical fight supported body checks and land estimations to review the ampleness. America’s war endeavors were impelled by a closely resembling need for ‘objective’ confirmation. The Cold War’s perseverance helped ensure that the communication investigation model was systematized which restricted the work of episodic verification as a defense for the results of the framework. Academic query in recent years has stressed the elements of ideology and information in the grip of the character and the parts of the Cold War. As for the US was once concerned, the significance of social policy and information systems developed as the bloodless threats initiated to solidify.

The US Board arrangement was divided into the imperative division expanding authorities’ purposeful publicity by the Eisenhower administration. Conflict data pointed toward promoting one political system’s values and gifts while reviling or deriding the opposite. Throughout the conflict, political data won, but it reached its peak in the 1950s and 1960s. In film, television, music, literature, and art, North American values were promoted throughout this period. Films of movements took to the big screen the battle between market economy and socialism. A few of those movies were made in the aftermath of boycotts mandatory by the HUAC, as film studios and producers tried to be very patriotic and trustworthy. Duke Wayne stars in ‘Big Jim McLain’ as an investigator on the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) traveling to Hawaii to end socialist activity there. TV in the 1950s was still in its earliest stages. A few television programs featured music, light entertainment, and humor, leading to a lot of open portrayals of anti-socialist themes. In the 1950s, American TV promoted conservative family values and American society’s virtues, especially in its comedies of manners. George Orwell’s ‘1984’ capitalized on the conflict by envisioning a world with thoughts of ‘endless war’ solid divided and reasonable.

The style of the ‘international mystery novel’ was by far the most common in literature from the conflict. Written in the 1950s, Ian Fleming’s books about an English spy, James Bond, were inspired by tensions with the Soviet bloc; conflict strains invigorated group action and forged the content of artworks as entirely different with music and smooth move. American and Soviet dance companies performed commonly around the globe, trying to showcase cultural superiority. This challenge led to a thrilling rise in the U.S. government

Funding for expressions of the human experience. A significant moment in freedom came in 1961 when Soviet artist Rudolf Nureyev defected to the West to perform with England’s Royal Ballet; Russian leader Khrushchev later signed an exit visa for Nureyev, should he ever return to Russia. The U.S. offered resources to allow numerous groups, jazz bands, and solo artists to visit the USSR, attempting to show the creative advantages of capitalism.

Conflict competition likewise persevered into sports (see Sport in the Harsh Sections War). The 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne were held only days after Soviet forces had crushed an anti-Soviet uprising in Hungary, provoking the withdrawal of Spain, Switzerland, and the Netherlands from the games. These tensions spilled over into a water polo match between Hungary and the Soviet Union, where players exchanged punches and one drowned in the pool. The game was called off when the riot started by the pro-Hungarian crowd. The U.S, U.S.S.R. 1972 Olympic basketball final game also resulted in controversy, with the defeated Americans refusing to accept the outcome.

In Moscow, the 1980 Olympiad was hosted and boycotted by the U.S., West Germany, Japan, alternative, and several other countries. Despite the significance of information and psychological warfare to the war effort, they were quick to dismantle the information machinery they had created during World War II. Within years of Japan’s surrender, President Harry Truman transferred all of the Office of War Information, moving only the clean bones of an information service to the Department of State. Although the OWI was abolished and the budget of its successor was slashed, the US President insisted that they maintain at least a modest information program to support US policy. This was a significant step, as before the 1940s no one genuinely considered an organized, government-supported effort to influence foreign peoples except in a national emergency. While the US President acknowledged the importance of information as a time tool of policy, it was essentially the conflict that systematized information as a permanent tool of US policy.

A widespread belief developed that they were losing the ‘war of ideas’ to the Soviet Union’s allegedly superior information machinery.

As conflict tensions intensified, bit by bit extended its information capabilities. In 1948, the information program received permanent legislative approval with the passage of the Smith-Mundt Act—the first legislative contract for a period information program. The act gave the State Department jurisdiction over all international information operations and social and academic exchange programs further information activities were conducted by the newly created Central board, the financial assistance agencies (heralds to the Office for International Development), and the military, particularly the army. In 1950, the US President called for an intensive program of information called the Battle of Truth.

Conclusion

In summary, this quite prominent issue was ultimately the common divisor of the problem information of these campaigns. This fear came together with the nursing surroundings the US government used to dominate the individuals who supported The Yankee techniques which were best used at that time. This False statement of the contending has not officially stopped backing up western civilization’s progress. It has parted ways with a great deal of doubt in socialism that starts.

After the Second World War, the United States of America (U.SA.) and Soviet Russia (U.S.S.R.) became two great powers of the world. The entire world got divided into two power blocs. This led to the emergence of a Cold War between the western powers of the U.S.A. and the communist bloc of Russia. The term “Cold War” was first used by Bernard Baruch, an American statesman. In a speech on 16th April 1947, he said “Let us not be deceived we are today in the midst of a Cold War.”[footnoteRef:1] Cold War can be termed as a state of extreme political unfriendliness between two or more countries, although they do not actually fight each other which leads to the formation of a condition that can be called a state of uneasy peace. The Cold War, which started roughly after the end of the Second World War in 1946 continued till 1991 after U.S.S.R. collapsed. In my paper, I will focus on the end of the Cold War highlighting the significance of the Soviet economic decline and “the Gorbachev effect” in the processes that ultimately ended it. [1: Andrew Glass, “Bernard Baruch coins term ‘Cold War,’ April 16, 1947,” April 16, 2010, https://www.politico.com/story/2010/04/bernard-baruch-coins-term-cold-war-april-16-1947-035862 (accessed March 8, 2019).]

Beginning of the Soviet economic decline

The Soviet economy was growing at impressive rates in the 1950s and showed respectable performance during the 1960s, but in the second half of the 1970s, it entered an acute decline from which it never fully recovered. By the time Mikhail Gorbachev had become a general secretary in 1985, the Soviet Union had grown on an average of at least 1–2 percent slower than the United States over the following decade. In 1980-81, for example, the annual growth rate of the economy averaged only 1.5 percent a year, and in 1982 Soviet leaders announced that there was no increase in income per capita planned for that year.[footnoteRef:2] Further, U.S. allies such as Germany and Japan were also growing in their economies rapidly, making Russia’s relative decline all the more prominent. This period of economic decline was called the era of stagnation by Mikhail Gorbachev which started during the time when Leonid Brezhnev became the general secretary and continued under Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chrenenko. It is because their policies were weak and not up-to-date which did not give the desired results. [2: Valerie Bunce, “The Political Economy of the Brezhnev Era: The Rise and Fall of Corporatism,” British Journal of Political Science 13, no. 2 (1983): 130.]

There are various causes of the soviet economic decline, but the widespread agreement is that an important part of the explanation lies in the large and growing costs of the Soviet Union to maintain its international position. As Vladimir Kontorovich sums up, “The achievement of strategic parity with the west and the macroeconomic stagnation, or decline, in the late 1970s to early 1980s, is strongly related.”[footnoteRef:3] Defense claimed a massive proportion of Soviet resources. Despite daunting measurement problems, different sources converge around an estimate of roughly 40 percent of the budget and 15–20 percent of GDP in the early 1980s, or at least four times the U.S. level. By any comparative standard, this is a punishingly high peacetime commitment to military power. Not only was the defense burden in December high, but it was generally rising from the mid-1970s on.[footnoteRef:4] During this period Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan. It also provided military assistance, without overt participation, in the civil wars of Ethiopia and Angola. The amount spent on the front was much more than disclosed. Some of the superior materials and human resources which were allocated to the military should have been spent on civilian activities. [3: Vladimir Kontorovich, Michael Ellman (eds.), The Disintegration of the Soviet Economic System (U.K.: Routledge, 1992), 9.] [4: William C. Wohlforth (eds.), Cold War Endgame: Oral History, Analysis, Debate (U.S.A.: Penn State Press, 2010), 277. ]

At the same time productivity declined not only in the industrial sphere but also in the agricultural sphere. A structural change was required in the economy but the communist government refused to admit that the collectivization of land could not solve the economic problems of the nation. Consequently, it relied on increased investments in agriculture, which were used to subsidize this sector. In 1977, annual subsidies to agriculture reached 19,000 million roubles. However, the peasants were still dissatisfied with the regime and their work remained the same. Also, the cheap and abundant labor which had previously been a major asset of the government became scarce, expensive, and difficult to handle. It was because of the declining birth rates in Russia, Ukraine, Belorussia, and the Baltic republics. The only available laborers were peasants whose lands had been confiscated by the government; they were a dissatisfied lot who had suspicion and ill-will against the government and did not work wholeheartedly which increased after the introduction of the Liberman Reforms (which reduced their profit margins). The estimated growth rates of industry and agriculture slowed down, as it happens, by the same amount as GNP as a whole. Between them, they accounted for only a little over half of GNP, but clearly, the sum of transport, construction, and services experienced a closely similar slowdown.[footnoteRef:5] The inability of the agricultural sector to supply the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (CEMA) partners with the right quantity of raw materials also led to the disqualification of the Soviet Union for the sophisticated foreign technology that the West was scheduled to give her to provide a fillip to her economy. Meanwhile, the country’s long-standing qualitative lag increased in exactly this period, with the productivity of research and development (R&D) and technological progress both declining. [footnoteRef:6] [5: Philip Hanson, The Rise, and Fall of The Soviet Economy: An Economic History of the USSR 1945 – 1991 (U.K.: Routledge, 2014), 132. ] [6: William C. Wohlforth (eds.), Cold War Endgame: Oral History, Analysis, Debate (U.S.A.: Penn State Press, 2010), 276. ]

During the Brezhnev period, the raw materials to the west of the Urals had been used, and while 90 percent of energy resources were needed for the development of this area, 90 percent of energy resources lay in the inhospitable, frozen areas of Siberia and in the other parts of the Soviet Union. Output in 1980 was indeed below target, at 603.2 million tons. West Siberian production exceeded its 300 million tons target for 1980 but ran into trouble later. Production west of the Urals did indeed fall more steeply than the planners envisaged. But total output kept on increasing through 1983, to just over 616 million tons.[footnoteRef:7] The exploitation of natural gas, minerals, and oil was an expensive, time-consuming process, which was useful in the long run, but at that time it dramatically weighted down the economy. In April 1977 the CIA published what became one of its more widely cited reports arguing that the Tenth Five-Year Plan target of 640 million tons annual output (12.8 million barrels a day) in 1980 would not be reached and that the country’s total oil output would fall at some point between 1979 and 1983. At a time when oil was increasing its share in the Soviet energy balance (the shift from coal, like other technological shifts, came late in the USSR), and was contributing substantially to export earnings.[footnoteRef:8] [7: Philip Hanson, The Rise, and Fall of The Soviet Economy: An Economic History of the USSR 1945 – 1991 (U.K.: Routledge, 2014), 134.] [8: ibid., 132. ]

Another important factor that harshly affected the economy was the flourishing of the illegal black economy. Because of this, while the Russian consumers purchased in the black market the goods they considered essential for their existence, they preferred to wait for better times to buy luxury items when the prices would be reasonable and the quality of the products will be satisfactory. This led to a peculiar situation where the free flow of money was considerably restricted which hastened the process of decline. The conservative bureaucracy and the political leaders retained their theory of communist ideology and did pay much attention to these disasters. They instead adopted short-term resolutions like the senseless printing of countless roubles to compensate for a concealed budget deficit and increasing subsidies and bank credits to enterprises to cover losses, but they naturally backfired. So this increasingly creaky economy, led by increasingly creaky old men, was enjoying its strategic golden age, throwing its military weight around, alarming NATO countries and its close neighbors while trading more intensively than ever with the traditional enemy and benefiting from windfall gains in energy prices. Neither the muscle-flexing nor the petro-dollars, apparently, did much to alleviate the country’s deep-seated economic problems.[footnoteRef:9] [9: Philip Hanson, The Rise, and Fall of The Soviet Economy: An Economic History of the USSR 1945 – 1991 (U.K.: Routledge, 2014), 131. ]

The coming of Mikhail Gorbachev

Mikhail Gorbachev was the most dynamic communist leader Russia had ever seen for many years. He tried to revitalize and transform the country and introduced several policies which revolutionized the internal and external affairs of the Soviet Union. He aimed to reform and modernize the Communist Party. His era witnessed important developments of momentous consequence, which included glasnost or openness and perestroika or restructuring, and finally the dissolution of the U.S.S.S.R. which were a part of his “new thinking.” Historians have tried to explore how Gorbachev could take these decisions in a society that rewarded conformity and that insisted that people work within the framework of the dogmas outlined by it. One contributory factor was that he was not a product of the Revolution of 1917. He was born after the revolution and as such did not witness the euphoria which accompanied the later turning point events. According to Vladislav Zubok, the Cold war came to an end because of the personality and power of Gorbachev and the leader of the Soviet Union. This is evident when he quotes British political scientist Archie Brown and writes, “This energetic, handsome man with sparkling eyes and charming smile did more than anyone else to end the Cold War between East and West.” [footnoteRef:10] [10: Vladislav M. Zubok, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (U.S.A.: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 304. ]

Roughly a year after becoming the general secretary Gorbachev seems to have decided on a major new departure, centering on the concept of glasnost.[footnoteRef:11] This led to greater openness on the part of the soviet authorities on several issues, including those that had been forbidden previously. It also allowed greater freedom of discussion and criticism through various media such as print, radio, television, and art. The concept gained momentum in April 1968 when the worst nuclear accident in the world took place at Chornobyl due to insufficient security measures. The government was keen on hiding the facts relating to the disaster but so great were its magnitude and the international implication that the government was compelled to give out details. There is plenty of evidence, some from Gorbachev himself, that he was encountering serious resistance in the party apparatus and in the central economic bureaucracy, in opposition to even the modest Andropovite reforms he was pursuing up to that time. Ironically, the relaxation of Stalin-type despotism made it harder for a reformist leader to command change from above; the behavior of the bureaucracy in the face of the Chornobyl disaster only confirmed this fact. Faced with such difficulties, Gorbachev turned to the intelligentsia as a social base for reform and liberated the press and writers as instruments to prod reform along with the pressure of informed opinion.[footnoteRef:12] He believed that discussion and criticism of various issues would be constructive and that it would strengthen the system. He also allowed Andrew Sakharov, a scientist and a human rights activist, who was previously sent to Gorky from Moscow during Brezhnev’s rule as foreigners were not allowed to visit that city, to return to gain the support of the intelligentsia. Further, he also freed 1000 political prisoners. Gorbachev argued that glasnost “awakened people from their social slumber, helped them overcome indifference and passivity and become aware of the stake they had in change and of its important implications for their lives.” The intent of glasnost was to allow dissenting voices to legally be heard and also to allow people to see what conditions were like outside of the Soviet Union in the hopes that it would reaffirm their support for communism. However, the exact parameters and overall aims of glasnost were not directly articulated by Gorbachev or his government. This failure to clearly state the purposes and meanings of policies was a problem that plagued Gorbachev’s reforms until the fall of the Soviet Union as pointed out by Laura Cummings.[footnoteRef:13] [11: Robert V. Daniels, “Gorbachev’s Reforms and the Reversal of History,” The History Teacher 23, no. 3 (1990): 238.] [12: ibid., 238. ] [13: Laura Cummings, “Gorbachev’s Perestroika and the Collapse of the Soviet Union,” 59.]

In addition, long-banned anti-Stalin films and novels were also allowed to publish. Writers and filmmakers were given the freedom to express themselves, a development that brought new life into creative organizations such as the Writers’ Union and the Cinema Worker’s Union. Some noteworthy works which were popular during this period were Anatoly Marchenko’s prison-camp memoirs, My Testimony, and Andrei Sakharov’s Thoughts on Progress, Peaceful Co-existence, and Intellectual Freedom. Most of them focused on the corruptness of the soviet system and looked to the West for a solution to their problems. Foreign books which were previously banned were also published during this time, like Hitler’s Mein Kampf and George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm. Interestingly, a satire on Gorbachev was also published. These new arrangements, like glasnost, called into question not only the basic political development of Stalin’s time, the dominance of the party apparatus, but also the central principle going back to Lenin, the hegemony of the Communist Party as a whole in the country’s life. [footnoteRef:14] [14: Robert V. Daniels, “Gorbachev’s Reforms and the Reversal of History,” The History Teacher 23, no. 3 (1990): 241. ]

While pursuing his growing reform agenda and fighting off the challenge of the conservatives, Gorbachev simultaneously began to recast some of the Soviet regime’s basic principles in matters of ideology. He soft-pedaled all the familiar Marxist categories, starting with the proletariat, in favor of higher “humanist” values, and embraced what amounted to the interest group analysis favored by North American political scientists to take cognizance of all the functional and occupational groupings that make up any modem society. “Socialist pluralism” became the new byword.[footnoteRef:15] He also talked about the need for demokratizatsiya (democratization). [15: Robert V. Daniels, “Gorbachev’s Reforms and the Reversal of History,” The History Teacher 23, no. 3 (1990): 241.]

Gorbachev struggled hard to introduce several changes aimed at improving the precarious condition of the Soviet economy. He used the term perestroika, which means rebuilding or restructuring, to indicate the various steps he had taken to modernize the Soviet economy. The word signified most of the changes that had taken place during the Gorbachev period. He brought about some very important reforms for improving the economy. Amongst these was uskoreniye or acceleration, where the government tried to speed up production by introducing advanced technology, completing projects that had been started, and building the necessary infrastructure. At the 27th party congress, Gorbachev made this point when he said he was after “a new quality of growth: an all-out intensification of production on the basis of scientific-technical progress……” He wants the Soviet Union to become competitive internationally even in high-technology fields like electronics and computers.[footnoteRef:16] Zubok shows us that in mid-1987, Gorbachev wrote a book called Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World. It contained an image of international relations based on a just and democratic world order, in which the U.S.S.R. would play a key role and the United Nations would reign supreme. Gorbachev replaced one messianic revolutionary-imperial idea that had guided Soviet foreign policy with another messianic idea –“that perestroika in the U.S.S.R. was only a part of some kind of global perestroika, the birth of a new world order.”[footnoteRef:17] Cummings also points out, “perestroika did not only deal with the economy; it dealt with politics as well. The political reorganization called for a multi-candidate system and allowed opposition groups to speak out against communism. Although the motivations and intentions of perestroika are debated in the historiography of the period, its importance to the Cold War is clearly evident. To some degree, perestroika contributed to the fall of communism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Although Gorbachev was trying to save the system, his reforms contributed to its end.” [footnoteRef:18] [16: “The Soviet Union: GORBACHEV’S REFORMS,” Great Decisions, eat Decisions (1988): 42.] [17: Vladislav M. Zubok, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (U.S.A.: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 309.] [18: Laura Cummings, “Gorbachev’s Perestroika and the Collapse of the Soviet Union,” 54. ]

In 1987, Gorbachev allowed private ownership of land for the first time since the 1920s. Apart from this, small-scale private enterprises were also allowed in the services, manufacturing, and foreign trade sectors. He also removed central control over raw materials, production quotas, and trade so that factories could work according to the orders of the customers. This led to the emergence of a semi-free market system and a semi-mixed economic system in Soviet Russia. He further introduced many reforms in the state-controlled agricultural sector and also made arrangements for alternate employment facilities for many people. He also allowed foreigners to invest in the Soviet Union in the form of joint ventures with the ministers, state enterprises, and corporations which gave him capital, technology, expertise, and in some cases products and services of the best quality.

However, Gorbachev’s reforms did not help much to improve the economic conditions of the country. Cummings shows that by 1987, there was an overwhelming tension in Soviet society that arose from their worries over perestroika. The fact that the economy had not stabilized and grown as hoped caused the people to lose faith in the system. Gorbachev wrote in his memoirs that there was a growing sense of “confusion caused by the haphazard transition of the industry to a system of cost accounting, self-financing, and self-management. Those who feared change began to capitalize on troubles.”[footnoteRef:19] The formulation of perestroika by the Soviet government affected not only internal Soviet affairs but external foreign affairs as well, especially in terms of how Gorbachev was viewed by President Ronald Reagan of the United States and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Great Britain. In his personal diary, Reagan wrote in 1985 that he believed “that Gorbachev will be as tough as any of their leaders. If he wasn’t a confirmed ideologue he never would have been chosen by the Politburo.”[footnoteRef:20] [19: Laura Cummings, “Gorbachev’s Perestroika and the Collapse of the Soviet Union,” 62.] [20: ibid., 63. ]

For this reason, Gorbachev felt that the Soviet Union could no longer afford to spend large sums on the military system. This led to the signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (SALT) with the U.S. which hinted at the end of the long ongoing cold war. The soviet army also withdrew from Afghanistan to save the costly expenditure of the state. He further declared that the Soviet Union would no longer maintain political control over the WARSAW Pact countries and gave them the right to follow their own political principles. This led to the conversion of eastern European countries like Poland by democratic parties through peaceful democratic revolutions. Most importantly, the Berlin Wall was broken down and Germany got unified again in 1989. These proceedings largely alarmed the conservative section of the party placing Gorbachev under house arrest and trying to take control of the government known as the August Coup. However, they failed and Gorbachev was released after three days. This led him to dissolve the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and resigned from his post as General Secretary. The next general secretary Boris Yeltsin met the leaders of the other republics and announced the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. and decided to form the Commonwealth of Independent States (C.I.S.) of fifteen Republics, ending the world’s largest and most influential Communist regime also ending the cold war which had dominated world politics since 1945. In this regard, Zubok writes, “The peaceful and rapid end of the Cold War secured Gorbachev’s place in international history. The unwitting destruction of the Soviet Union made him one of the most controversial figures in Russian history.”[footnoteRef:21] He further talks of an ideological crisis among the soviet elites “were Gorbachev and those who supported him were not prepared to shed blood for the cause they did not believe in and for the empire they did not profit from. Instead of fighting back, the soviet socialist empire, perhaps the strangest empire in modern history, committed suicide.”[footnoteRef:22] [21: Vladislav M. Zubok, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (U.S.A.: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 335.] [22: ibid., 344. ]

Assessment

In the reasons for the end of the cold war, John Gaddis has stated economic insolvency and deficiency of morals within the Soviet Union as one of the reasons for the end of the cold war along with military, cultural, and ideological factors. It is because of the Soviet economic decline that there emerged a crisis in the communist ideology which lead to new planning and policies among the party and it is here that Gorbachev’s “new thinking” comes in and plays an important role in speeding the process of the end of cold war thereby ending it at last.

References

1. Valerie Bunce, “The Political Economy of the Brezhnev Era: The Rise and Fall of Corporatism,” British Journal of Political Science 13, no. 2 (1983): 129-158.
2. “The Soviet Union: GORBACHEV’S REFORMS,” Great Decisions, eat Decisions (1988): 37-48.
3. Robert V. Daniels, “Gorbachev’s Reforms and the Reversal of History,” The History Teacher 23, no. 3 (1990): 237-254.
4. Kontorovich, Vladimir, Michael Ellman (eds.), The Disintegration of the Soviet Economic System. U.K.: Routledge, 1992.
5. M. Zubok, Vladislav, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev. U.S.A.: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.
6. C. Wohlforth, William (eds.), Cold War Endgame: Oral History, Analysis, Debate. U.S.A.: Penn State Press, 2010.
7. Glass, Andrew. “Bernard Baruch coins term ‘Cold War,’ April 16, 1947,” April 16, 2010, https://www.politico.com/story/2010/04/bernard-baruch-coins-term-cold-war-april-16-1947-035862 (accessed March 8, 2019).
8. Hanson, Philip. The Rise and Fall of The Soviet Economy: An Economic History of the USSR 1945 – 1991. U.K.: Routledge, 2014.
9. Laura Cummings, “Gorbachev’s Perestroika and the Collapse of the Soviet Union.”

Throughout the 1970s the nation was going through the Cold War and beginning the start of an economic crisis. In 1971, the nation was hit with Stagflation due to the rise of unemployment and inflation. Johnson’s policy to fund the war and social programs through deficit spending caused high inflation. Also, in 1973, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries cut off oil from the United States making oil prices quadruple in 1974 adding to inflation. President Nixon left the nation in pieces after the Watergate Scandal where his paranoia took over after he covered up a break-in. After Nixon, Jimmy Carter took the presidency and his first action was pardoning Richard Nixon leaving a cloud that floods the nation. In 1975, North Vietnam defeats South Vietnam thus impacting the US negatively because they were unable to stop communism. Also during Carter’s presidency, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. In that same year, Iran took 66 hostages and later freed 14 black women for sympathy. The 52 hostages were kept in Iran for 444 days. The nation was in great turmoil and needed an outsider to step up to the presidency. Ronald Reagan was the perfect candidate to run for president. He was previously an actor and appealed to the nation because he was an outsider. His charisma and optimism gave him a landslide victory thus proving the support he had. Ronald Reagan’s presidency from 1981-1989 was most impactful because of his stabilizing domestic policy, radical foreign policy, and his ability to talk to the people all allowing him to get the United States out of the cold war and fix the United States crumbling economy.

Ronald Reagan’s presidency was impactful because of his domestic policy including Reaganomics and the Tax Reform Act of 1986 which were revolutionary ideas in order to fix our nation’s economic state by solving stagflation. Reaganomics was Reagan’s revolutionary economic platform that includes 4 policies. One of his policies was budget cuts by reducing the welfare program but he was unable to accomplish this policy. His second policy was supply-side economics (tax cuts) which is the idea that a reduction of tax rates will lead to increases in jobs, savings, and investments, and therefore to an increase in government revenue. He also increased defense spending and reduced regulation through deregulation by changing some of Nixon’s ideas. For example, he got rid of the controls on gas and oil. By solving stagflation, Reagan was able to decrease the high inflation and high unemployment. Reagan was impactful because not only did he address and solve stagflation but he knew the urgency of inflation and the impact it already had. Reagan in 1981, said in his “Address to the Nation on the Economy”, that inflation reduced the value of money along with increasing prices (3). He knew that stagflation was flooding the nation and if he wanted to have a successful presidency he would need to fix it. He is impactful because he addressed the falling economy and was able to pick it back up again. Reagan also passed the Tax Reform Act of 1986 in order to grow the economy by reducing the federal income tax rate. The public responded positively to this act and it was one of his most celebrated policies. This act closed some loopholes involving the tax code but it did not stop people from finding new loopholes. Although, this act affected industries in unequal ways. For example, the real estate market was taxed heavier thus beginning the decline of the real estate industry. However, it did help improve the relationship of the public because it attempted to increase the fairness of the economy. ADD MORE Ronald Reagan forever impacted the economy with his new policies that solved the United States issue of stagflation.

Ronald Reagan’s immigration policy, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, set precedent for future leaders by solving the unauthorized immigrant issue thus adding to his impactful presidency. ADD SENTENCE TOWARDS EVIDENCE. This law tightened the enforcement of unauthorized immigrants because of the increasing amount of illegal immigrants coming to the United States. It also promised these unauthorized immigrants legal status eventually which was a milestone in immigration history. ADD SUPPORT + RESEARCH

Ronald Reagan’s presidency was most impactful because of his foreign policy including the SDI, Reagan vs. Gorbachev, and the INF treaty all ending the Cold War. Reagan’s most impactful “policy” was the Strategic Defense Initiative. Reagan used this policy heavily although it was not physically possible, he used it to get leverage over the soviets. This idea of “Star Wars” was similar to Theodore Roosevelt’s idea of “speak softly and carry a big stick” however it was the opposite. He spoke a lot about the idea that he can shoot lasers to knock down Soviet missiles which caused fear throughout the Soviet nation. The reason why this idea is different from Roosevelt’s is that he did not have a “big stick”, the Strategic Defense Initiative was not possible at all and he had no weapon built. “Star Wars” was one of his most impactful foreign policies because it was one of the reasons the Geneva meeting was unsuccessful. Reagan had many different views on ending the cold war but he knew he had to change his relationship with Gorbachev, which is why they met in Geneva. His policies before he decided to form a relationship with Gorbachev were if the United State kept increasing defense spending the USSR would match it and their economy will eventually crash. However, the war was getting longer and more expensive and Reagan wanted to meet with the Soviet Union in 1984. He said, “FIND THIS person don’t make wars, governments do”. The Soviet economy fell in shambles and Gorbachev decided to run things differently and allowed for glasnost and SPELLINGperechoka. Reagan also changed his views on foreign policy when Gorbachev took control in 1984-1985 from guns blazing to detente-like policies fundamentally changing the relationship. They decided to meet in Geneva, Switzerland on November 19th, 1986 which is the first meeting in 6 years between a United States president and a Soviet leader. ADD RESEARCH. This meeting was clearly significant in their relationship but Reagan did not want to let his Strategic Defense Initiative go slowing down any treaties that were in discussion. Eventually, in 1987, the two nations signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. This treaty eliminated some weapon systems and allowed for onside inspections of enemies’ military installations. This is extremely important as it decreases the tensions of the cold war because there is no longer an arms race. ADD RESEARCH. The symbolic end to the Cold War was the demolishing of the allowing for everyone in Berlin to be reunited thus ending this tense war. Reagan’s policies of enhancing his relationship with the Soviet Union ended the war and created many treaties and policies to protect the nation.

The most impactful presidency was Ronald Reagan’s from 1981-1989 because of his balancing domestic policy, revolutionary foreign policy, and his ability to talk to the people all allowing him to get the United States out of war and fix the United States crumbling economy. Reagan showed economic growth throughout the nation however the debt increased by 186%. By increasing defense spending he increased the federal budget deficit also adding to this debt. However, he did reduce the marginal income tax rate from 70% to 28%. Reagan left George H. W. Bush with a gap between the rich and poor thus adding a huge economic burden to Bush’s presidency.

The two articles contrast each other on several points in which I came up with the assumption to explain the significance of the Cold War and its consequences. Disagreeably, the article I misprinted on how the Cold War occurred in East Asia and other regions. It only addresses the actions and ideology of superpowers and the irrelevance of nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, to argue with the first one, article II, agreeably, comprehensively notes the misperception of the previous article and recognizes the role of nuclear weapons in maintaining stability. East Asia is significant to describe the production and relations which has been shaped by the Cold War until nowadays.

To these extents, I set out to explain accordingly what the first article overlooks; 1.) Cold War significantly took place in East Asia. 2.) Conventional War that stemmed from Superpowers’ policy, and 3.) the existence of nuclear weapons that made the Cold War never find its end. Cold War largely explained the severe tension between the United States and the Soviet Union in influencing its proxy states. Article I significantly notes that there are merely 3 significances taking into account of Cold War; Superpowers (US and USSR), Ideologies, and Nuclear weapons. However, first off, East Asia too was one of the regions that suffered from the brunt of the Cold War, being divided on the line of alliances to side with two hegemon powers. China, Japan, and North and South Korea interacted with one another in a way that they were politically, ideologically, and economically compiled into an alliance until nowadays. In China, the solidarity of the Communist world was concerned in East Asia at the very beginning of the Cold War by the Chinese leader Mao Zedong. Although communism in China and the USSR are defined differently due to interpretations and practical applications of Marxism–Leninism, namely the Sino-Soviet split, they are still put in a similar category of the communist bloc. During the period of the Cold War, the Chinese involvement in the Korean peninsula in the early 1950s marked the beginning of several decades of unfriendly confrontation between the Chinese communist regime and the United States. The two countries were also on opposing sides in Indochina during the 1960s when the US tried to prevent losing Southeast Asian countries to the Communist camp through the domino effect. Aside, the US also supported the Kuomintang government that retreated to Taiwan after it was defeated by Communist forces on mainland China. The tension of the communist bloc against the US arose not only with the USSR but also with China. Moreover, after losing in World War II, Japan acted by the US in implementing the capitalist and democratic regime. The system also allowed access to the American market and other economic benefits to US allies in the region. During the Cold War era, Washington’s approach to regional security was based on an alliance system with bilateral security treaties between the US and key allies in the Asia-Pacific region, mainly in Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. Japan was pulled indirectly into the Cold War as a US supporter. Markedly, following to Korean War in 1953-1955, Korea was most affected by the Cold War. The main concerns of political, economic, military, and ideological contest between the Soviet Union and the United States of America, intervened in the Korean War. The Soviet Union and China backed North Korea, while the United States allied the performance of the United Nations (UN) to support the South. And, with both superpowers possessing nuclear weapons, the outcome of the Korean War determined the United States to maintain large military forces to constrain communism. Therefore, without finding a compromise, Korea was divided into North and South, implementing each ideological legacy, communism, and democratic capitalism, as the result of the Cold War.

Second, the article only addresses the ‘Cold tension’ between the superpowers but fails to look at the proxy states, which were having the conventional war, or hot war, inside their lands. With the prospect of nuclear annihilation, the Cold War was only fought in proxy form in peripheral nations, including Korea. The only considering superpowers were only operating with the policy and possibility, for themselves, to gain victory by tactics. Both the US and USSR launched the Brinkmanship as a risk-taking policy in which during the Cold War, the nuclear weapon was used as an escalating measure whether it would utilize the threat of a nuclear attack or not. On the US side, the Truman Doctrine assisted in politics, economics, and military to any nation resisting the threat of communism, while, in the USSR view, it supported the ally by supplying material needs. An attempt to prevent the spread of the Soviet Union’s ideology also occurred along with the use of a Containment policy to keep communism from spreading to other places. These are the ways of collecting alliances between the two blocs, which the proxy states, then, were made to be a battlefield for a conventional war, or the supply lines as well as supporters for these two powers to prevent the massive retaliation between US and USSR that could end up with a use of nuclear weapons on a massive scale. Thus, Korea was proxied to the Hot War.

Third, Nuclear weapon is still a vastly relevant part that occurred from the Cold War and it is made to the endless arms race between states until the 21st century. The cold war continues. Started with the launch of a bomb in Japan by the Americans, nuclear weapons were recognized as to operating arms race between the USSR USA, and another country. Nuclear weapons made states realize that they too need to hold one for stability and security. For China, its nuclear development started as the US claimed to be its hostility and Russia became its unsure friend, so, to hold on to a strong position in the Asian region, Nuclear weapons are necessary. Meanwhile, when North Korea began to own weapons of mass destruction, South Korea too needed to develop its nuclear program to not prevent the North from easily threatening. Several times, North Korea took aggressive action in the experiment of nuclear proliferation to fear other neighboring states. This creates huge provocative threats not only to South Korea but also to Japan. This made Japan start to raise the concern for its nation to hold the nuclear weapons – the nuclearization in East Asia then took place. As such, nuclear weapons have importantly built serious tensions among countries, which continues the arms race and nuclear dominoes in East Asia.

This question is important because it was raised during the Cold War, a period in history that has been marked for over forty years by intense warfare between the US and the USSR. Pop culture was a major force that arose during this period that influenced all cultures in the middle of this period with superpowers competing for nuclear supremacy. Pop culture, and Hollywood films, in particular, influenced Russian society.

American popular culture reflected the concerns which emerged between the United States and the USSR in the years following World War II. However, in several ways, popular culture has helped to subvert Cold War fears by challenging both the government and the public’s prevailing assumptions

The Cold War was an important period of public, yet restrained, tension between Western world democracies and the Eastern communist countries. The United States led the Democratic West, while the Soviet Union – the two world superpowers at the time. Although the two superpowers never declared war on each other directly, they clashed indirectly through proxy wars, an arms race, and the space race, to achieve political and cultural supremacy.

The federal government itself created a series of so-called factual ‘documentaries’ documenting the dangers of a communist society: Communist Blueprint for Conquest (1955), Red Nightmare (1955), The Communist Weapon of Allure (1956), and Communist Target: Youth (1962), featuring then-Procurator General Robert Kennedy, just to highlight a few. In a series of pamphlets, books, and films about how to withstand the bomb, the government paid equal attention to the nuclear threat. Propaganda was subsequently the topic of the 1982 film The Atomic Café directed by Jayne Loader and Kevin Rafferty and was satirized in a 1997 episode of the South Park cartoon series

Nowadays, James Bond is such a familiar representation of British style that it’s difficult to keep track of his Cold War history. In early novels by Ian Fleming, Bond was simply a blunt weapon to combat the Communists. On the screen, however, Bond’s Cold War connotations were slightly toned down: for example, his early rivals worked for the international crime network SPECTRE, the Soviet intelligence agency SMERSH, while the films’ obsession with design, fashion, and architecture seemed a long way from Fleming’s fiery conservatism. And even the violent product placement of Bond films was in its way a tactic in the wider Cold War.

Only days after Japan’s surrender, an embassy clerk defected in Canada, exposing for the first time the scale of Western Soviet spy operations. Paranoia over Communist infiltration and control took place in the United States within a few years. Before long the box office hit Secret Agent, the first Soviet spy movie, by Boris Barnet. Secret Agent has set out a framework for subsequent popular representations of heroic Communist spies with its Third Reich setting. Soviet films will rarely depict the Cold War explicitly, giving preference to the backdrops of the Russian Civil War and World War II.

From the beginning of the Cold War, music has been viewed by governments as a powerful instrument for persuading people that their particular way of life was superior, a ‘soft power’ to be used in the cultural struggle that succeeded in the armed conflict raising the stakes of atomic power. However, in the messages they created and accepted, artists and audiences were not without influence, and their messages also came into conflict with both communism and the Western world. The analysis of music’s impact on Cold War politics and people’s relationships with their governments offers evidence of music’s ability to manipulate historical events and illuminates the lengths that government agencies have gone to regulate that influence.

The cold war resulted in very many results. Little is appreciated of all the spy movies, great novels independence movements among other things that came about as a result of the cold war. The one thing that people know for sure about the cold war was that it gave us a greater understanding and awareness that the greatest threat to humans is ourselves. The cold war changed the way people imagined the world and what role humanity played in it. In his noble prize acceptance speech, William Faulkner said’ our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit, the is only the question when will I be blown up.’

After world war two, we and the USSR were the only two nations with any power left. The United States was far much more superior in terms of strength compared to the USSR partly because they had atomic weapons and also because the Soviets had lost more than 20 million people in the war led by Joseph Stalin. Us however still had worries. they needed a strong free-market-oriented Europe and to a lesser extent Asia. This was particularly important as they were proper markets for manufactured goods as well as other market products from u sites states. the Soviets were however concerned with something more immediate and this was Germany invading them. Germany was very slow to learn the central lesson of world history that Russia should not be invaded. at the end of the second world war, the USSR, therefore, encouraged the creation of pro-communist governments in Bulgaria, Romania, and Poland which happened to be something easy to encourage because these countries were occupied by Soviet troops. The idea behind this was to create a buffer between them and Germany but to the United states the threat of communist expanding was seeming more and more viable. This was not supported by the Americans as it would mean major negative effects on the industrial goods market. America, therefore, responded with the policy of containment as introduced in diplomat George f Kennedy’s long telegram. Communism could stay where it was but it was not allowed to spread and ultimately this is what led to. The United States fighting wars in Korea as well as Vietnam. A 1950 report stated that there were three main goals of containment and these were; prevent any more expansion of the Soviet power then expose the pretense and lies and finally to induce a retraction of the Kremlin’s control and influence. the main agenda behind it, however, was to ensure that the Soviet system ultimately crumbles.

Harry Truman, who became president in the year 1945 after Franklin Roosevelt died supported containment. The first real test of this policy came in Greece and Turkey in 1947. this was a strategically valuable region because it was near the middle east which was of interest to the United States because of oil. Truman, therefore, announced the Truman doctrine in which he pledged to support any freedom-loving people against the threat of communism. The United States, therefore, sent $400 million in aid to Greece and Turkey and this was some of the first things that propelled the world into the cold war. The Truman doctrine created a way in which America would view the world, with America as free and communist as tyrannical. According to Eric former ‘, the speech set a precedent for American assistance to anti-communist regimes through the world, no matter how undemocratic, and for the creation of a set of global military alliances directed against the Soviet Union.’ It also led to the creation of a new security apparatus- the national security council, the central intelligence agency, the atomic energy commission, all of which were immune from government oversight and not democratically elected the containment policy along with the Truman doctrine also laid the foundations for a military build-up and arms race which would become one of the key features of the cold war.

The cold war was however not about the military. The Marshall Plan was first introduced at the Harvard commencement address in June 1947 by George Marshall. This turned out to be one of the most important commencement addresses in all of American history. The Marshall plan was a response to economic chaos in Europe brought o by a harsh winter that strengthened support for communism in France and Italy. the plan looked to use our aid to combat the economic instability that provided for fertile fields for communism. Marshall said’ our policy is not directed towards any country or doctrine, but against hunger, poverty, desperation. and chaos. this was a new deal for Europe and it worked well such that by 1950, production levels in industries had eclipsed pre-war level and Europe was on it’s way to us style capitalist mass consumer society which it.still.is. Japan, although not technically part of the Marshall plan, would also rebuild. General Douglass MacArthur was the dictator there and forced Japan to adopt a new constitution giving women the vote and pledging that Japan would forswear war in exchange for which the United States effecting became Japan’s defense force. This allowed Japan to spend money on other things such as industries which turned out to be positive.

during this time Germany was experiencing the first Berlin crisis. At the end of the war, Germany was decided into east and west, and eve. Though the capital, Berlin was entirely in the east, it was also decided into east and west. This meant that west Berlin was dependent o. Shipments of goods from West Germany through East Germany. And then in 1948, Stalin cut off the roads to West Berlin. The Americans responded by going on an 11-month long airlift of supplies that eventually led to Stalin lifting g the blockade in 1948. in 1949 Germany was officially decided into. The west and the east and this is the time that the Soviets also detonated their first atomic bomb, NATO was also established at this time and the Chinese revolution ended in communist victory. By the end of 1950, the contours of the cold war had been established, west versus east, capitalist freedom versus communist totalitarianism

As the NSC-68 shows, us government cast the cold war as an epic struggle between freedom and tyranny, which led to remarkable political consensus. both Democrats and Republicans supported most aspects of the cold war policy, especially the military build-up. some critics such as Walter Lippmann worried that casting foreign policy in such stark ideological terms would result in the United States getting on the wrong side of many conflicts, especially as former colonies sought to remove the bonds of empire and become independent nations. these interventions were however important as the goal was to stop. The spread of communism which a lot of people feared. the communist also shaped internal policies such as preventing Truman from extending the social policies of the new deal. A program that he called the fair deal would have increased minimum wage and extended national health insurance as well as increase public housing, social security, and educational aids. The American medical association, however, lobbied against Truman’s plan for national health insurance by calling it ‘ socialized’ medicine.

the government did, however, make some investments as a result of the cold war. Because of social security, the government spent money on education, research in science, technology such as computers and even transportation infrastructure. Not many people know that they largely have the cold war to thank for the interstate system which in real sense was build to enable easy evacuations in the event of a nuclear war.

A big part of the reason the Soviets were able to develop nuclear weapons so quickly was because of espionage. An instance of this was what physicist and spy Klaus Fuchs did. He worked in the Manhattan project and leaked information to the Soviet Union and then later helped the Chinese to build their first bomb. Julius Rosenberg also sold secrets to the Soviets which eventually led to his demise alongside his wife. this was one of the reasons that the Americans were paranoid and feared that the communist was among them. This began in 1947 with Truman’s loyalty review system which required government employees to prove their patriotism when accused of disloyalty. this all culminated with the red scare and which helped some leaders rise to power such as senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin who became powerful in February 1950 after claiming that he had a list of over 200 communists who worked in the state department something which was a lie.

The fear of communism, however, continues past this and In the 1951s case Dennis versus the United States, the supreme court upheld the notion that being a communist leader itself was a crime. This fear of communism allowed the government to also control the people as they feared that without to government protecting them they would be consumed by the communists. The cold war changed America profoundly, the United States has remained a leader of the world stage and continues to build a large, powerful and expensive national state. But it also changed what people imagined to be free and be safe.

Introduction: The Complexity of Blaming a Single Entity for the Cold War

To try place blame on someone is as human as breathing. We always tend to look for a specific cause to any sort of problem, be it in everyday life, historical events, or politics. However, trying to assign the moral responsibility of an event as complex as the Cold War is no easy task; in fact, this issue has historically triggered several discrepancies. The orthodox (or traditionalist) historical point of view placed all the fault on Stalin’s expansionist ambitions. Later on, the revisionist current leaned on towards the other side, blaming the US’ commercial and capitalistic goals. Finally the post-revisionist wave saw historians like John Gaddis maintain that ‘neither side can bear sole responsibility for the onset of the Cold War'(The United States and the origins of the Cold War). This new historical opinion tried toleave culpability aside in order to develop an objective analysis of events. With the fall of theSoviet Union and the opening of its archives however, several historians now tend to placeblame on the Soviet Union (aligning more often than not with the orthodox point of view), aclaim which happens to be supported with hard proof. In spite of all the information madepublic after 1991, it is impossible to negate the importance that preexisting circumstancesplayed in the outbreak of the cold war. For instance, World War II itself, the clashing natureof communism and capitalism, or distrust, paved the way for an imminent conflict. Asdetailed throughout the essay, it is impossible to objectively assign blame of any sort to a conflict which was in itself predestined to occur

The Origins and Definition of the Cold War

The term “Cold War” was coined after the end of World War II by George Orwell, who first used it to in the essay You and the Atomic Bomb. After the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Orwell warned of a ‘peace that is no peace’. To live in a world under the constant threat of nuclear war meant to live in a permanent state of war, a Cold War. Orwell could not have been more right. World War II “had been won by a coalition whose principal members were already at war—ideologically and geopolitically if not militarily— with one another” (John Gaddis, The Cold war, A new History). Within such coalition, the Anglo-American relationship with the Soviet Union had followed a “security dilemma” pattern (According to John Gaddis’ definition of such pattern given in The Cold War, A new History, this occurs “when one state acts to make itself safer, but in doing so diminishes the security of one or more other states, which in turn try to repair the damage through measures that diminish the security of the first state”) all throughout their alliance, which added to a growing sense of insecurity and distrust in all three countries. This already established sense of distrust meant that “each crisis that arose fed the next one, with the result that a divided Europe became a reality” (John Gaddis, The cold War, A new History). In addition to this, the joint casualties of American and British soldiers amounted for less than 700,000, while the

Soviets on the other hand lost “some 27 million citizens as a direct result of the war” (John Gaddis, The Cold war, A new History). This disproportionate burden (mainly due to the delay in opening the second front by the Americans and British) gave the U.S.S.R. a moral claim to substantial influence in shaping the postwar settlement, thus increasing tensions with its “allies” even more. If this was not enough, and returning to concerns that Orwell shared in 1945 regarding the A-Bomb, such weapon of mass destruction only served to heavily intensify the already existing distrust. Supposedly allies, the USA and Britain did not want to share any details of the so-called Manhattan Project with the USSR (who anyways found out thanks to their spies); furthermore, the fact that Truman did not share any details of his intent to bomb Japan with Stalin intensified the lack of trust and suspicion. In 1949, the Soviets successfully tested their first atom bomb, and due to the enormous wariness that had been built over the last 10 years, the two superpowers began to amass as many A-Bombs as possible (eventually developing the horrific Hydrogen bombs). The threat of a global nuclear war was now a reality (the americans even pondered the idea of deploying several A-Bombs along the Sino-Korean frontier during the Korean War), and Orwell’s thesis of a peace that is no peace now could not possibly be denied. In this atmosphere of increasing suspicion and tension, it is no wonder that the Soviets took everything the Americans did with a grain of salt. Everything the americans did was seen as an attempt to diminish the Communist system. The most clear example, the Marshall

The Marshall Plan: American Aid or Anti-Communist Strategy?

The plan was rejected outright by Stalin and any Eastern Bloc countries (Communistcountries in Eastern Europe whose economy and government system were modelled directly after that of the Soviet Union) for they considered that it was an strategic plan by the US to show everyone how much better capitalism was than communism. Consequently, the aid was only given to Western European Countries. While the plan itself was of great help for those countries who accepted the aid, it is hard to believe that the US did this as an act of sole charity, but rather, as Gaddis states, to defend their interests. According to Gaddis, “the gravest threat to western interests in Europe was not the prospect of Soviet military intervention, but rather the risk that hunger, poverty, and despair might cause Europeans to vote their own communists into office, who would then obediently serve Moscow’s wishes; that American economic assistance would produce immediate psychological benefits and later material ones that would reverse this trend; that the Soviet Union would not itself accept such aid or allow its satellites to, thereby straining its relationship with them; and that the United States could then seize both the geopolitical and the moral initiative in the emerging Cold War” (The Cold War, A new History). This moral initiative has been used by many to put the blame of the Cold War on the USSR. The idea that communism was a threat to liberty, freedom and humanity is widely spread, and the role of the United States in the Cold War was of paramount importance to ensure the prevalence of such rights.

The Moral Obligation and Realpolitik of the United States

No one will argue the horrific consequences that authoritarian regimes have had for humanity. Regarding the Communist regimes, particularly the USSR and Maoist China, their planned economies and reforms led to famine and starvation, causing millions of deaths that went impune. It is no question that the role that the US played in the Cold War was both fundamental and necessary. However, this “moral obligation” that they had to stop the spread of communism was tarnished by the obscure reality of what the United States was. The American country has always tried to establish itself as the most ferrous defender of liberty, morality and humanity as a whole; however, as stated by Gaddis, “the Americans did seek global influence in the realm of ideas: their Declaration of Independence had, after all, advanced the radical claim that all men are created equal. But they made no effort, during their first fourteen decades of independence, to make good on that assertion” (The Cold War, A new History). A country built upon the legacy of slavery, the near extermination of native Americans, and persistent racial, sexual, and social discrimination, was now trying to impose itself as a model of humanitarian values. The United States, driven by this moral obligation, did not have any problem to play judge in all sorts of external wars, even in those where the Soviets played no role, such as the Chinese Civil war. The Soviets, from the beginning, refused to involve themselves in such war (due to a lack of resources, little belief in the possibilities of Mao’s victory, and the desire to evade conflict with the US); the Americans on the other hand, decided to intervene in such war. As many historians argue, had it not been for the American involvement in the Chinese war, the nationalist party would have most possibly won. Instead, Mao’s communist party proclaimed the PRC in 1949, which led in the future to many conflicts and increased tensions which could have been avoided.

The Cold War as a Global Chess Game: No Side Without Fault

The Cold War can be seen, in my opinion, as a tennis match between the two most powerful Nations of the world of the Globe after WWII. In an atmosphere of pure distrust, every move that one country made was in response to a prior one; each crisis that arose fed the next one, with the result that a divided Europe became a reality. Excanching hits in order to defend their respective objectives and beliefs, both the United States and the USSR battled in a Cold War which gravely affected the Global Community as a whole, a Cold War which never could have been avoided due to the clashing nature of communism and capitalism. In spite of this, after the fall of the Soviet Union and the opening of their archives in 1991, the most prominent post-revisionist historians such as John Gaddis were forced to evaluate their own interpretation of history. Gaddis argued after 1991, in an orthodox fashion, that in light of all the new documentation made available, the Soviets should be held more accountable.

Conclusion: The Shared Responsibility in the Cold War’s Inception

As stated in his 1997 book We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History, “Geography, demography, and tradition contributed to this outcome but did not determine it. It took men, responding unpredictably to circumstances, to forge the chain of causation; and it took Stalin in particular, responding predictably to his own authoritarian, paranoid, and narcissistic predisposition, to lock it into place”. It is of course no question that Stalin was everything but a good person, and that his own personal interest played a huge role in the outbreak of the Cold War; however, as detailed throughout the essay, it is impossible to objectively assign blame, of any sort, to a particular state for the outbreak of a conflict which was in itself predestined to occur.

The two articles contrast each other on several points in which I came up with the assumption to explain the significance of the Cold War and its consequences. Disagreeably, the article I misprinted on how the Cold War occurred in East Asia and other regions. It only addresses the actions and ideology of superpowers and the irrelevance of nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, to argue with the first one, article II, agreeably, comprehensively notes the misperception of the previous article and recognizes the role of nuclear weapons in maintaining stability. East Asia is significant to describe the production and relations which has been shaped by the Cold War until nowadays.

To these extents, I set out to explain accordingly what the first article overlooks; 1.) Cold War significantly took place in East Asia. 2.) Conventional War that stemmed from Superpowers’ policy, and 3.) the existence of nuclear weapons that made the Cold War never find its end. Cold War largely explained the severe tension between the United States and the Soviet Union in influencing its proxy states. Article I significantly notes that there are merely 3 significances taking into account of Cold War; Superpowers (US and USSR), Ideologies, and Nuclear weapons. However, first off, East Asia too was one of the regions that suffered from the brunt of the Cold War, being divided on the line of alliances to side with two hegemon powers. China, Japan, and North and South Korea interacted with one another in a way that they were politically, ideologically, and economically compiled into an alliance until nowadays. In China, the solidarity of the Communist world was concerned in East Asia at the very beginning of the Cold War by the Chinese leader Mao Zedong. Although communism in China and the USSR are defined differently due to interpretations and practical applications of Marxism–Leninism, namely the Sino-Soviet split, they are still put in a similar category of the communist bloc. During the period of the Cold War, the Chinese involvement in the Korean peninsula in the early 1950s marked the beginning of several decades of unfriendly confrontation between the Chinese communist regime and the United States. The two countries were also on opposing sides in Indochina during the 1960s when the US tried to prevent losing Southeast Asian countries to the Communist camp through the domino effect. Aside, the US also supported the Kuomintang government that retreated to Taiwan after it was defeated by Communist forces on mainland China. The tension of the communist bloc against the US arose not only with the USSR but also with China. Moreover, after losing in World War II, Japan acted by the US in implementing the capitalist and democratic regime. The system also allowed access to the American market and other economic benefits to US allies in the region. During the Cold War era, Washington’s approach to regional security was based on an alliance system with bilateral security treaties between the US and key allies in the Asia-Pacific region, mainly in Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. Japan was pulled indirectly into the Cold War as a US supporter. Markedly, following to Korean War in 1953-1955, Korea was most affected by the Cold War. The main concerns of political, economic, military, and ideological contest between the Soviet Union and the United States of America, intervened in the Korean War. The Soviet Union and China backed North Korea, while the United States allied the performance of the United Nations (UN) to support the South. And, with both superpowers possessing nuclear weapons, the outcome of the Korean War determined the United States to maintain large military forces to constrain communism. Therefore, without finding a compromise, Korea was divided into North and South, implementing each ideological legacy, communism, and democratic capitalism, as the result of the Cold War.

Second, the article only addresses the ‘Cold tension’ between the superpowers but fails to look at the proxy states, which were having the conventional war, or hot war, inside their lands. With the prospect of nuclear annihilation, the Cold War was only fought in proxy form in peripheral nations, including Korea. The only considering superpowers were only operating with the policy and possibility, for themselves, to gain victory by tactics. Both the US and USSR launched the Brinkmanship as a risk-taking policy in which during the Cold War, the nuclear weapon was used as an escalating measure whether it would utilize the threat of a nuclear attack or not. On the US side, the Truman Doctrine assisted in politics, economics, and military to any nation resisting the threat of communism, while, in the USSR view, it supported the ally by supplying material needs. An attempt to prevent the spread of the Soviet Union’s ideology also occurred along with the use of a Containment policy to keep communism from spreading to other places. These are the ways of collecting alliances between the two blocs, which the proxy states, then, were made to be a battlefield for a conventional war, or the supply lines as well as supporters for these two powers to prevent the massive retaliation between US and USSR that could end up with a use of nuclear weapons on a massive scale. Thus, Korea was proxied to the Hot War.

Third, Nuclear weapon is still a vastly relevant part that occurred from the Cold War and it is made to the endless arms race between states until the 21st century. The cold war continues. Started with the launch of a bomb in Japan by the Americans, nuclear weapons were recognized as to operating arms race between the USSR USA, and another country. Nuclear weapons made states realize that they too need to hold one for stability and security. For China, its nuclear development started as the US claimed to be its hostility and Russia became its unsure friend, so, to hold on to a strong position in the Asian region, Nuclear weapons are necessary. Meanwhile, when North Korea began to own weapons of mass destruction, South Korea too needed to develop its nuclear program to not prevent the North from easily threatening. Several times, North Korea took aggressive action in the experiment of nuclear proliferation to fear other neighboring states. This creates huge provocative threats not only to South Korea but also to Japan. This made Japan start to raise the concern for its nation to hold the nuclear weapons – the nuclearization in East Asia then took place. As such, nuclear weapons have importantly built serious tensions among countries, which continues the arms race and nuclear dominoes in East Asia.

This question is important because it was raised during the Cold War, a period in history that has been marked for over forty years by intense warfare between the US and the USSR. Pop culture was a major force that arose during this period that influenced all cultures in the middle of this period with superpowers competing for nuclear supremacy. Pop culture, and Hollywood films, in particular, influenced Russian society.

American popular culture reflected the concerns which emerged between the United States and the USSR in the years following World War II. However, in several ways, popular culture has helped to subvert Cold War fears by challenging both the government and the public’s prevailing assumptions

The Cold War was an important period of public, yet restrained, tension between Western world democracies and the Eastern communist countries. The United States led the Democratic West, while the Soviet Union – the two world superpowers at the time. Although the two superpowers never declared war on each other directly, they clashed indirectly through proxy wars, an arms race, and the space race, to achieve political and cultural supremacy.

The federal government itself created a series of so-called factual ‘documentaries’ documenting the dangers of a communist society: Communist Blueprint for Conquest (1955), Red Nightmare (1955), The Communist Weapon of Allure (1956), and Communist Target: Youth (1962), featuring then-Procurator General Robert Kennedy, just to highlight a few. In a series of pamphlets, books, and films about how to withstand the bomb, the government paid equal attention to the nuclear threat. Propaganda was subsequently the topic of the 1982 film The Atomic Café directed by Jayne Loader and Kevin Rafferty and was satirized in a 1997 episode of the South Park cartoon series

Nowadays, James Bond is such a familiar representation of British style that it’s difficult to keep track of his Cold War history. In early novels by Ian Fleming, Bond was simply a blunt weapon to combat the Communists. On the screen, however, Bond’s Cold War connotations were slightly toned down: for example, his early rivals worked for the international crime network SPECTRE, the Soviet intelligence agency SMERSH, while the films’ obsession with design, fashion, and architecture seemed a long way from Fleming’s fiery conservatism. And even the violent product placement of Bond films was in its way a tactic in the wider Cold War.

Only days after Japan’s surrender, an embassy clerk defected in Canada, exposing for the first time the scale of Western Soviet spy operations. Paranoia over Communist infiltration and control took place in the United States within a few years. Before long the box office hit Secret Agent, the first Soviet spy movie, by Boris Barnet. Secret Agent has set out a framework for subsequent popular representations of heroic Communist spies with its Third Reich setting. Soviet films will rarely depict the Cold War explicitly, giving preference to the backdrops of the Russian Civil War and World War II.

From the beginning of the Cold War, music has been viewed by governments as a powerful instrument for persuading people that their particular way of life was superior, a ‘soft power’ to be used in the cultural struggle that succeeded in the armed conflict raising the stakes of atomic power. However, in the messages they created and accepted, artists and audiences were not without influence, and their messages also came into conflict with both communism and the Western world. The analysis of music’s impact on Cold War politics and people’s relationships with their governments offers evidence of music’s ability to manipulate historical events and illuminates the lengths that government agencies have gone to regulate that influence.

Introduction: The Complexity of Blaming a Single Entity for the Cold War

To try place blame on someone is as human as breathing. We always tend to look for a specific cause to any sort of problem, be it in everyday life, historical events, or politics. However, trying to assign the moral responsibility of an event as complex as the Cold War is no easy task; in fact, this issue has historically triggered several discrepancies. The orthodox (or traditionalist) historical point of view placed all the fault on Stalin’s expansionist ambitions. Later on, the revisionist current leaned on towards the other side, blaming the US’ commercial and capitalistic goals. Finally the post-revisionist wave saw historians like John Gaddis maintain that ‘neither side can bear sole responsibility for the onset of the Cold War'(The United States and the origins of the Cold War). This new historical opinion tried toleave culpability aside in order to develop an objective analysis of events. With the fall of theSoviet Union and the opening of its archives however, several historians now tend to placeblame on the Soviet Union (aligning more often than not with the orthodox point of view), aclaim which happens to be supported with hard proof. In spite of all the information madepublic after 1991, it is impossible to negate the importance that preexisting circumstancesplayed in the outbreak of the cold war. For instance, World War II itself, the clashing natureof communism and capitalism, or distrust, paved the way for an imminent conflict. Asdetailed throughout the essay, it is impossible to objectively assign blame of any sort to a conflict which was in itself predestined to occur

The Origins and Definition of the Cold War

The term “Cold War” was coined after the end of World War II by George Orwell, who first used it to in the essay You and the Atomic Bomb. After the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Orwell warned of a ‘peace that is no peace’. To live in a world under the constant threat of nuclear war meant to live in a permanent state of war, a Cold War. Orwell could not have been more right. World War II “had been won by a coalition whose principal members were already at war—ideologically and geopolitically if not militarily— with one another” (John Gaddis, The Cold war, A new History). Within such coalition, the Anglo-American relationship with the Soviet Union had followed a “security dilemma” pattern (According to John Gaddis’ definition of such pattern given in The Cold War, A new History, this occurs “when one state acts to make itself safer, but in doing so diminishes the security of one or more other states, which in turn try to repair the damage through measures that diminish the security of the first state”) all throughout their alliance, which added to a growing sense of insecurity and distrust in all three countries. This already established sense of distrust meant that “each crisis that arose fed the next one, with the result that a divided Europe became a reality” (John Gaddis, The cold War, A new History). In addition to this, the joint casualties of American and British soldiers amounted for less than 700,000, while the

Soviets on the other hand lost “some 27 million citizens as a direct result of the war” (John Gaddis, The Cold war, A new History). This disproportionate burden (mainly due to the delay in opening the second front by the Americans and British) gave the U.S.S.R. a moral claim to substantial influence in shaping the postwar settlement, thus increasing tensions with its “allies” even more. If this was not enough, and returning to concerns that Orwell shared in 1945 regarding the A-Bomb, such weapon of mass destruction only served to heavily intensify the already existing distrust. Supposedly allies, the USA and Britain did not want to share any details of the so-called Manhattan Project with the USSR (who anyways found out thanks to their spies); furthermore, the fact that Truman did not share any details of his intent to bomb Japan with Stalin intensified the lack of trust and suspicion. In 1949, the Soviets successfully tested their first atom bomb, and due to the enormous wariness that had been built over the last 10 years, the two superpowers began to amass as many A-Bombs as possible (eventually developing the horrific Hydrogen bombs). The threat of a global nuclear war was now a reality (the americans even pondered the idea of deploying several A-Bombs along the Sino-Korean frontier during the Korean War), and Orwell’s thesis of a peace that is no peace now could not possibly be denied. In this atmosphere of increasing suspicion and tension, it is no wonder that the Soviets took everything the Americans did with a grain of salt. Everything the americans did was seen as an attempt to diminish the Communist system. The most clear example, the Marshall

The Marshall Plan: American Aid or Anti-Communist Strategy?

The plan was rejected outright by Stalin and any Eastern Bloc countries (Communistcountries in Eastern Europe whose economy and government system were modelled directly after that of the Soviet Union) for they considered that it was an strategic plan by the US to show everyone how much better capitalism was than communism. Consequently, the aid was only given to Western European Countries. While the plan itself was of great help for those countries who accepted the aid, it is hard to believe that the US did this as an act of sole charity, but rather, as Gaddis states, to defend their interests. According to Gaddis, “the gravest threat to western interests in Europe was not the prospect of Soviet military intervention, but rather the risk that hunger, poverty, and despair might cause Europeans to vote their own communists into office, who would then obediently serve Moscow’s wishes; that American economic assistance would produce immediate psychological benefits and later material ones that would reverse this trend; that the Soviet Union would not itself accept such aid or allow its satellites to, thereby straining its relationship with them; and that the United States could then seize both the geopolitical and the moral initiative in the emerging Cold War” (The Cold War, A new History). This moral initiative has been used by many to put the blame of the Cold War on the USSR. The idea that communism was a threat to liberty, freedom and humanity is widely spread, and the role of the United States in the Cold War was of paramount importance to ensure the prevalence of such rights.

The Moral Obligation and Realpolitik of the United States

No one will argue the horrific consequences that authoritarian regimes have had for humanity. Regarding the Communist regimes, particularly the USSR and Maoist China, their planned economies and reforms led to famine and starvation, causing millions of deaths that went impune. It is no question that the role that the US played in the Cold War was both fundamental and necessary. However, this “moral obligation” that they had to stop the spread of communism was tarnished by the obscure reality of what the United States was. The American country has always tried to establish itself as the most ferrous defender of liberty, morality and humanity as a whole; however, as stated by Gaddis, “the Americans did seek global influence in the realm of ideas: their Declaration of Independence had, after all, advanced the radical claim that all men are created equal. But they made no effort, during their first fourteen decades of independence, to make good on that assertion” (The Cold War, A new History). A country built upon the legacy of slavery, the near extermination of native Americans, and persistent racial, sexual, and social discrimination, was now trying to impose itself as a model of humanitarian values. The United States, driven by this moral obligation, did not have any problem to play judge in all sorts of external wars, even in those where the Soviets played no role, such as the Chinese Civil war. The Soviets, from the beginning, refused to involve themselves in such war (due to a lack of resources, little belief in the possibilities of Mao’s victory, and the desire to evade conflict with the US); the Americans on the other hand, decided to intervene in such war. As many historians argue, had it not been for the American involvement in the Chinese war, the nationalist party would have most possibly won. Instead, Mao’s communist party proclaimed the PRC in 1949, which led in the future to many conflicts and increased tensions which could have been avoided.

The Cold War as a Global Chess Game: No Side Without Fault

The Cold War can be seen, in my opinion, as a tennis match between the two most powerful Nations of the world of the Globe after WWII. In an atmosphere of pure distrust, every move that one country made was in response to a prior one; each crisis that arose fed the next one, with the result that a divided Europe became a reality. Excanching hits in order to defend their respective objectives and beliefs, both the United States and the USSR battled in a Cold War which gravely affected the Global Community as a whole, a Cold War which never could have been avoided due to the clashing nature of communism and capitalism. In spite of this, after the fall of the Soviet Union and the opening of their archives in 1991, the most prominent post-revisionist historians such as John Gaddis were forced to evaluate their own interpretation of history. Gaddis argued after 1991, in an orthodox fashion, that in light of all the new documentation made available, the Soviets should be held more accountable.

Conclusion: The Shared Responsibility in the Cold War’s Inception

As stated in his 1997 book We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History, “Geography, demography, and tradition contributed to this outcome but did not determine it. It took men, responding unpredictably to circumstances, to forge the chain of causation; and it took Stalin in particular, responding predictably to his own authoritarian, paranoid, and narcissistic predisposition, to lock it into place”. It is of course no question that Stalin was everything but a good person, and that his own personal interest played a huge role in the outbreak of the Cold War; however, as detailed throughout the essay, it is impossible to objectively assign blame, of any sort, to a particular state for the outbreak of a conflict which was in itself predestined to occur.