Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • My Term Papers • Get Free Essays • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - Government & Politics Cold War Cold War Who can claim victory for the Cold War, if anyone? What has been termed as “the long peace” by some has proven to be the most intense time period in world history. A historical rarity, two superpowers fought rigorously across the globe for support, each carving out their own sphere of influence. The bi-polar of international affairs resulted in an arms buildup between the United States and the Soviet Union; including weapons that exceeded the atomic bomb, then the most effective and destructive weapon in price and devastation. Yet, to everyone’s surprise, the Cold War abruptly ended in 1990 with the collapse of the Soviet Union under its own economic weakness, its political conflict, and military farce. A decade later, we ask: Who can claim victory for the Cold War, if anyone? Could America, the champion of capitalism and democracy, the state that still stands tall as the present states of the former Soviet Union remain in economic and political turmoil? Could the Soviet Union, who for nearly half a century, successfully checked the power of the United States, and attained its own quadrant of loyalty from Eastern Europe? For approximately 45 years, the two forces brought the globe into its tension, making the prospect and fear of the nuclear , and claim victory for the Cold War. The United States lost just as much as the Soviet Union in the post Cold War era, when, presumably, it should have been the lone superpower, unchecked and free to do as it so pleased. The Cold War, ignited by post WWII tensions, heightened to near nuclear Armageddon following the Cuban Missile Crisis, and consisted of flexible tensions and a massive arms race. Never was a formal declaration of war announced; rather it remained a war of words, a clash of ideologies, a quest for world hegemony in which the other superpower constantly played the role as hindrance. In order to give such a question its proper justice, we must first explore the world near the end and directly following the second world war, the landscape, which in fact, birthed the Cold War. The second World War against Nazi aggression was fought by the Allies on two fronts; The British and Americans pushing from the West, the Soviets, alone, fighting German troops on the East. By 1945, without aid from the US or the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union began to gradually push the Nazi forces back West, as he other Allies pushed from the beaches of Normandy. Soviet troops would eventually occupy much of Eastern Europe, to the dismay of Roosevelt and Churchill. At Yalta, Stalin assured free elections in the region following the unconditional surrender of Germany. At Yalta, also, is where the Soviets, along with the English pledged support towards the United States in the Pacific Ocean. It was at this point in the war that the United States and the Soviet Union began competition, and possibly even earlier since the implementation of Lend Lease. Firstly, the United States, without informing Joseph Stalin, sent two atomic bombs on Japan, one on Hiroshima and the other on Nagasaki. Stalin’s ignorance, perhaps, was a ploy of the United States government, which feared the presence of Soviet troops in the region, believing that the Soviet Union would want territorial concessions in Asia as they did in Europe. The Soviets responded at war’s end when, while he rest of the Allies began to demilitarize, the Soviets kept their troops in Eastern Europe, looting machinery back to their desolate, and backwards homeland, and, once again, an aggravation to the West, began to preach revolution, of the coming conflict between communism and capitalism. The United States initiated the Marshall Plan, a policy they hoped would help sway the ailing, poor European countries, those thought to be the most vulnerable and accepting to the communist ideals towards capitalism. Not long thereafter came NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), a pledge of military backing from the United States to Western Europe. The Soviets, in turn, formed the Warsaw Pact, consisting of their European satellite states. Then end of European colonialism throughout Africa and in Asia provided an influx of new states with questionable alliances. This only fed the competition between the two superpowers of the world: America and the USSR., as both sides fought to show the world which system of government and economics proved more productive, more capable, more promising for the people. Perhaps the zero sum mentality of the Cold War brought its end. The belief that a gain for one superpower resulted in a loss for the other could only endure for so long before one competitor must admit defeat. Perhaps the zero sum mentality prolonged and intensified the Cold War, forcing each side to produce more advanced weaponry, and regularly intervene in the periphery, where the fight for influence was the most prevalent. However, the conflict, by no means , was constricted to the 3rd world nations. It extended to the UN (United Nations) as well, where both powers were apart of the Security Council; each side employing their power to veto to cut down any proposal from the other. In the 1980's, as the Soviet Union continued its economic free for all, Ronald Reagan announced his Security Defense Initiative (SDI). Although too few people took Reagan’s plan seriously, the Soviet Union took SDI, as it was famously abbreviated, to heart. The Security Defense Initiative showed the Soviet Union that the West was willing and capable of outspending then in nuclear arms. The Communist hegemony, headed by Mikhail Gorbachev, actualized their flailing economy and their inability to compete any further with the United States, and began, with the INF Treaty (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces), to negotiate arms reductions. The Soviet Union, plagued with economic instability and political conflict, watched idly as Eastern Europe, their sphere of influence, began to change. Poland, in a popular election, voted in Solidarity, a union of workers, and voted out Jaruselski, the Soviet appointed leader, who had outlawed Solidarity. Czechoslovakia, in yet another popular election, elected Vaclav Havel, a playwright and political dissident, to the executive office. To this day, the states carved out from the former Soviet Union: Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Ukraine, fail to capture the prestige and power of the Soviet empire in the 1920's. But the United States, despite popular belief, hasn’t been spared the effects and consequences of the Cold War. No longer can the United States see its enemy, patrol its ever move, and properly react to it in time. Such a reason remains why the United States, the lone superpower, has fallen prey to recent terrorist attacks. The two attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, however, came into fruition solely by our own shortcomings. Since the end of the Cold War, we have grown soft with comfort, a knowledge that we were the official military superior to the rest of the world. During the Cold War, with the entire globe monitored almost to an excessive degree, the perpetrators would have been dealt with the week before. Even more shocking, the weapons the United States handed to Afghanistan to fight off the Soviet Union in the 1970's and 1980's are now being used to terrorize the world. Who can claim victory for the Cold War, if anyone? Maybe the United States for it still stands economically stable and as intact as in 1945. Maybe the Soviet Union, for their successful opposition to the United States for approximately 45 years. Maybe no one. Both the United States and the Soviet Union have enjoyed a greater amount of markets since 1990, but unfortunately they each face their own turmoil, away from each other. The Soviet Union (Russia) still suffers from economic ailments brought about by its transition to capitalism, and the United States presently suffers from a security complex, which allowed the events of September 11 to take place. The Cold War, though over for an entire decade, still sends shock waves throughout the international order, still affecting the relations and actions of the two powers that dominated the era. Bibliography: Word Count: 1380
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