History: The Cold War

Improved Essays
Sydney Carter
Civ 202-06
Gao
Final
12-7-16

Question Number 2:
The Cold War was the battle between two of the world’s strongest powers, the USA and the USSR. It began in 1947 after the end of World War II and until the dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 26 of 1991. The cold war started for a list of reasons; American fear of communist attack, USSR’s fear of American attack, Stalin’s dislike by President Truman, USSR’s fear of the US’s atomic bomb, USSR’s disagreement of capitalism and aim to spread world communism, USSR’s acts in the Soviet zone in Germany, America refusing to share nuclear secrets, USSR’s expansion west into Europe as well as broken election promises, and USSR’s need for a secure western border. There was widespread
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Partially because President Ronald Reagan’s restart of the Cold War in November of 1986. It was discovered that the White House had illegally and secretly sold weapons to Iran trying to free hostages from Lebanon. After, they redirected the sales money to rebels of Nicaragua, the Contras. John Poindexter and Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, national security advisor and a member of the National Security Council, were tried and convicted for the Iran-Contra affair. Reagan’s cold war budgets challenged the easement and the Soviet’s ability to match the spending to the US. One of the main reasons the cold war ended was because of the internal changes of eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The superpowers back down from their isolated parts of the world and the cold war began to fall apart starting in eastern Europe.There was a series of revolutions throughout Europe and people gained back their independence, formed democracies, and switched to market-based economies. During the 1980s,the economic and political structures of the Soviet Union were falling apart and it wa00s becoming increasingly obvious. In 1985, with Mikhail Gorbachev in power, the Soviet Union was entangled in catastrophic economic problems. Also, the Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe began successively abandoning …show more content…
Coexistence was a theory developed and put into action by the Soviet Union during the Cold War and was used by Soviet "Socialist states", that they could peacefully coexist with the capitalist bloc. During the 1960s and 1970s, the People 's Republic of China argued that an aggressive attitude should be sustained towards capitalist countries. So initially, they refused the peaceful coexistence theory as Marxist revisionism All of this was under the authority of its founder, Mao Zedong. The two sides joined forces to defeat Japanese invaders. At first, the US tried to mediate the two sides in China but with no success, AMerica tried to set up a peace treaty which also

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