Encompassing a majority of the world, the Cold War hit Americans closest to home with the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Faulkner's fear of “when will I be blown up” never held such real ramifications for the US. With the rising to power of Fidel Castro and the straying from American influence Cuba began to identify with the Soviet Union producing its own communist regime. In 1961 the US tried to overthrow the newly communist government of Cuba with the failed invasion known as the Bay of Pigs, this failure resulted in Cuba seeking help from their Soviet counterparts and with the compliance of USSR and Nikita Khrushchev the Cubans were handed missiles to defend themselves from American attack. This sprung to play the most possible and real
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Wars in Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan and even through Latin America and Cuba emphasized the heat of the proclaimed Cold War, as European states and the iron curtain identified what made it cold. The war's end however, can be directly correlated to the fall of the Soviet Union with Mikhail Gorbachev at its helm. Coming to power as general secretary of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party in 1985, Gorbachev enacted a process of reformation, reforming the communist states and institutions through Glasnost and Perestroika. Once begun these reformations took on a snowball effect gaining increased momentum and size exceeding the initial intentions of Gorbachev and by Christmas Day 1991 all 15 Soviet republics gained their own independence and soon thereafter the former Soviet states collapsed. To assign fault and blame to one party in an intentionalist manner for the entirety of the Cold War is simply impossible. The responsibility can not individually fall on either the United States or the Soviet Union, but it can, and does fall equally on both. The respective spreading of capitalist and communist ideologies and fear of ideological inferiority lead to the world’s sanctity being held in check by mutually assured destruction and the real fear of being blown
Wars in Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan and even through Latin America and Cuba emphasized the heat of the proclaimed Cold War, as European states and the iron curtain identified what made it cold. The war's end however, can be directly correlated to the fall of the Soviet Union with Mikhail Gorbachev at its helm. Coming to power as general secretary of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party in 1985, Gorbachev enacted a process of reformation, reforming the communist states and institutions through Glasnost and Perestroika. Once begun these reformations took on a snowball effect gaining increased momentum and size exceeding the initial intentions of Gorbachev and by Christmas Day 1991 all 15 Soviet republics gained their own independence and soon thereafter the former Soviet states collapsed. To assign fault and blame to one party in an intentionalist manner for the entirety of the Cold War is simply impossible. The responsibility can not individually fall on either the United States or the Soviet Union, but it can, and does fall equally on both. The respective spreading of capitalist and communist ideologies and fear of ideological inferiority lead to the world’s sanctity being held in check by mutually assured destruction and the real fear of being blown