Cold ar was a period of great danger and international tension, brought on by the power struggles between the United States and the Soviet Union. The communist ideology -- which the Soviets were aggressively trying to spread through Europe and elsewhere -- was seen as an enormous threat to the U.S., while the capitalist / democratic ideology was seen by the Soviets as a threat to their way of life as well. This paper delves into the post-II background to the Cold ar and reviews the situation in the U.S. given the threat of nuclear war between the two superpowers.
How did the Cold ar Begin?

The Cold ar began after the conclusion of II due to the political struggle for ideological control of countries, including several European nations. The question asked by Allied leaders was this: how would post-war Europe be shaped now that Nazi Germany is defeated?

By 1948, the Soviet….

Cold War
Truman 1945-1953 and expansion of communism

As the 21 century approaches, there was every indication on the firmness of Present Harry S. Truman's reputation on the subject of his stewardship of foreign policy even though, as luck would have it, he took over Oval Office in the year 1945 inexperienced in affairs of the world. As he was approaching the end of his reign in the White House, there were accusations from the epublicans that his administration had surrendered about fifteen nations as well as subjecting five hundred million persons to communism and further sent close to twenty thousand Americans to the so call their "burial ground" in Korea. This deepened Truman's public favorable rating leaving it at 23%.

President Harry Truman adopted an international relations policy that he did set in his speech in March 1947. The speech stated that the United States would assist Turkey as well as Greece….

As counties in Europe began to align themselves behind the Soviet sphere of influence or the U.S. - Western influence each side looked to fortify their positions. For the U.S. this meant the development of the policy of containment of the Soviet advance. Containment developed along a number of varying lines including political diplomacy, military expansion, and economic aid. President Truman articulated an economic aid package, the Truman Doctrine which provided some 400 million dollars to Greece and Turkey in an ostensible move "of a general war against communism" (the History Guide.org. N.D.). Additionally, an enormous package of economic aid known as the Marshall Plan was put into place by the U.S. To revive the ailing economies of Europe.

n June 5, 1947, in a commencement address at Harvard University, Secretary of State George C. Marshall first called for American assistance in restoring the economic infrastructure of Europe. Western Europe responded….

S.S.R., which would ostensibly eliminate the threat posed by the U.S.S.R.'s capabilities. The report takes on a tone almost encouraging that to happen. It was very much the public mood of the time that would have supported that initiative. That the world came so close to the use of nuclear confrontation during the Cuban Missile Crisis is indicative of this, and it was only the ability of JFK to resist the military and other forces that would have plunged the world into nuclear war and disaster.
The single purpose of this document was to provide the rationale for an assault against the U.S.S.R. It provided the basis for foreign policy for most of the Cold ar era, and that is supported by the poised position of the United States and other free world nations to strike out, and by the build up of nuclear arms in the U.S. And across Radio….

cold war 'By the beginning of the twentieth century, weapons of war were themselves contributing to the outbreak of wars ... It comes as something of a surprise, then, to realize that the most striking innovation in the history of military technology has turned out to be a cause of peace and not war," (Gaddis 85). In fact, the most striking military innovation until that point, the creation of nuclear weapons, did turn out to be a cause of war, albeit the Cold War. In his book We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History, author John Lewis Gaddis examines the development of nuclear arms, their impact on the Cold War, and the impact of the Cold War on the development of nuclear arms. In fact, early nuclear armament closely mirrored Cold War ideology, especially the way nuclear weapons were used as a sort of political collateral. The Manhattan Project also….

Cold ar began very shortly after the end of orld ar II when the Soviet Union built the Berlin all -- and made other moves in its campaign to spread communism -- and the United States and its allies worked to protect democratic states and to foster democratic advocacy in those states. It was called a "Cold ar" because even though both super powers had ample nuclear capability to destroy the world, the two countries engaged in a war of words, political theories, and a war of wills -- but no direct military conflict occurred between the two superpowers.
Results of Three Interviews

My neighbor Shelly is in her early 50s and she said she has studied the Cold ar in high school and college. She was willing to be interviewed and said she believed the Cold ar "…was the reason Lyndon Johnson got us into Vietnam" and hence it was also….

Cold war refers to the post world war 2 period till 1991 when there was a geopolitical game being played by two nations that emerged as super powers from the shambles of the world wars. This period was noted for the polarization of power and Russia and America were intensely battling out a strategic war game between them. It was a global conflict in every sense and even the continents of sub-Saharan Africa and South America which had immunity from the catastrophe of the previous two world wars were affected by it. The proxy war that was fought between these two global powers brought severe economic implications for the Middle East, Africa and other third world nations. The Truman doctrine (1947) is generally regarded as the important strategic initiative to counter the domination of communism in the European continent. Under the cushion of the United States the western European nations….

Cold War
Polarity constitutes a system-level notion which associates with the distribution of power, actual or apparent, within the international system.

For roughly the first 350 years of its being which means from about the culmination of 16th century to the middle part of 20th century -- that system had been a multipolar, with five, or six or seven powers of approximately analogous might continually manipulating for gains. Thereafter, since the middle part of 1940s till the end of late 1980s, it came to be a bipolar system, with the two superpowers, the United States and ussia, matching one another in a long-drawn-out impasse.

The Cold War bounded the main outline of the global backdrop. It remained, at its hub, an ideologically stimulating altercation between the West, which is, the United States and its partners, and the Soviet Union and its subsidiaries. The citizens of America acknowledged that the ventures implicated were safeguarding….

Cold War and Globalization
The Cold War, and the U.S. And Asia and Globalization

What was meant by the Cold War? Before defining the cold war, authors Bentley and Ziegler go into great depth to lay the foundation for the origins of the Cold War. More than sixty million people perished during WWII (965), including twenty million Soviets, fifteen million Chinese, six million Poles, four million Germans, two million Japanese, three hundred thousand Americans and four hundred thousand English. The Holocaust, meantime, resulted in the slaughter of nearly six million Jews of European ancestry.

At the end of WWII, approximately eight million Germans fled their native land to apparently avoid the torture they believed they would receive at the hands of the marauding Soviets, who "pillaged and raped with abandon in Berlin" (966). On top of those eight million people who were displaced, there were an estimated twelve million prisoners of war of….

Cold War
Prior to World War II, American foreign policy had been predicted upon isolationism. Afterward, determined to avoid the mistakes of the pre-war period, American leaders embarked upon an unprecedented era of worldwide commitments. This included entry into a number of alliances with foreign nations, interventions in foreign conflicts (either covertly or overtly) and an unlimited commitment to maintain the nation's military readiness. In doing so, they irrevocably changed this nation forever.

For most Americans, the effect of the Cold War was that any illusions that being separated from Europe by an ocean provided safety was shattered. The United States had chosen to end World War II in the Pacific by use of two atomic bombs. At the same time atomic energy was being harnesses for use in weapons, both the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) were developing rocket-propelled systems that could carry these weapons for….

elations with West improved a lot. Economic liberalization process also started after the rise of Gorbachev as many economic and social problems plagued Soviet Union. In the face of economic issues facing the empire the cost of managing the cold war with respect to the Cold War arms race almost endangered its survival. The Chernobyl catastrophe in 1986 made matters even worse for the Soviet epublic. On American front epublican government came into force with onal eagan sitting in the Washington D.C. with a stern stance on the foreign policy. The result of these two new governments came in the form of meeting of the respective head of states for reducing their military arsenal. The two super powers then started negotiating on a continuous basis resulting in a number of treaties between the two states. "During his second term he held five summit meetings with a Soviet leader --….

Marshall feared that their poverty might make them vulnerable to Soviet wooing, causing them to attach them to communism. America, therefore, felt that it had to preempt potential ussian manipulation by stepping in there first. Although Marshall emphasized that the program was open to all European nations, he structured it in such a way (by making capitalism part of its expected character and linchpin of performance) that it effectively debarred communist-related nations from participating.
A few years later, in 1950 Truman expanded his strategy of containment by issuing a report (the NSC-68) that stressed employment of U.S. military to impede communist expansion. Observed the National Security Council:

It was and continues to be cardinal in this policy that we possess superior overall power in ourselves or in dependable combination with other likeminded nations. One of the most important ingredients of power is military strength (Shmoop.com)

To that end, the NSC called for….

The U.S.S.. eventually had its way in Eastern Europe as seen with the triumph of communism in countries such as Poland and Czechoslovakia. The U.S.S.. even extended its communist influence in countries such China, Afghanistan and Cuba. The Eastern European communist countries were collectively known as the Iron Curtain.
In response to the efforts of the Soviet Union to increase her sphere of influence, the U.S. conceptualized the Truman Doctrine and implemented the Marshall Plan. Both policies were formulated with the specific intention of mitigating the spread of communism in the international community. The world during the Cold War era became a battleground of communist and democratic ideals. The Marshall Plan involves financial aid to countries ravaged by World War II. The U.S. is working on the pretext that helping impoverished countries to rebuild would rear them away from the clutches of communism because the U.S. believes that poverty and….

Periods of detente dot the Cold ar timeline however, the end of each detente was marked by a specific and flagrant inequality that invariably led to additional hostilities. It is interesting to note two of the events that ended periods of detente. Specifically, the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Communists and the erection of the Berlin all marked the end of two of the most notable periods of detente. Those events also helped to shape world opinion about the Soviet Union and opened the Communist movement to many criticisms from former allies.
An Uneasy Truce

President John F. Kennedy led the world through the Cuban Missile Crisis and faced down the Soviet enemy. Out of the resolution from the Cuban Missile Crisis came an uneasy truce that essentially began the next to last stage of the Cold ar. Soviet designs on America were clear to everyone in the world.

Future policies enabled the….

Cold War on the Periphery
When hearing the words "Cold War," what normally comes to mind are the events between the U.S.S.. And the United States following World War II including the arms race. Competition for the Third World was included in this period, but receives little exposure in comparison. In the book Cold War and the Periphery, obert McMahon explores in detail how the United States' alliance with Pakistan increased the tension between India and Pakistan and encouraged the Soviet Union to establish closer ties with India.

In the 1940s, almost all of the Central Intelligence Agency's strategic studies showed that the Indian territory including Pakistan was of considerable importance to the U.S. because it consisted of one-fifth of the world's population, had a land mass as large as Europe, and was located in a significant geographical area. The CIA also concluded that the resources were numerous: "It ranks first or….