Cold War Essay

One of the most important conflicts in the history of the United States, was actually one that involved no fighting. For the second half of the twentieth century, the United States and Russia were in a race to develop the most nuclear weapons and to spread their political beliefs around the world. This conflict is know as the Cold War. It could have been one of the deadliest and most world involved wars know to man, but thankfully there was no fighting between the two nations. However, there was a decent amount of political arguments and tension between the United States and Russia.
Notably, the Cold War lasted for most of the second half of the twentieth century, starting at the end of World War II . Previously, tensions began to rise after the Russian Revolution in 1917 . Eventually the tensions rose to a high after World War II . Both the United States and the USSR shared a mutual distrust even though they fought as allies in the war (history.com). During the Potsdam Conference after the war, the allies negotiated a joint occupation of Germany, and in these negotiations, the tension between the democratic Americans and communistic Russians was clearly visible. Russia wanted a buffer zone between it and the rest of Western Europe so they claimed East Berlin and created many other satellite states in Eastern Europe (jfklibrary.org). The US saw what the USSR was doing and decided to impose a process of containment on the spread of communism . This …show more content…
After the USSR had gained China as a Communist ally, they invaded Korea with the intentions of spreading Communism further. The allies controlled the southern tip of Korea and the communists controlled the north. The fighting lasted for almost three years and yet nothing was resolved. North Korea remains a Communist country and is divided from South Korea by the 38th parallel (1.3 The Korean