Cold War Opportunity Analysis

Opportunity is when you gain chances to change something because of something that happens. In war people’s opportunity changes depending on what is happening during the time. Opportunity can change in many different ways and in many different scenarios. The types of opportunity can change throughout different wars like World War II, the Cold War, and the Vietnam War. These three different wars all had changes in opportunity and while some are the same there are ones that are different.

During World War II Social, Technological, and physical opportunities were affected. In WWII the Japanese air force bombed the Pearl Harbor, this led to America to not trust their Japanese citizens and to start putting them into internment camps. Nutsu H. was …show more content…
The Cold War was an aggressive fight between communist and noncommunist countries mainly the US and the Soviet controlled countries. The Korean War was to try to keep communism from spreading throughout all of Asia by first spreading through Korea and then after Korea through the other countries in Asia. In 1951 Chinese and Korean forces were pushed back to the 38th parallel and the war became a series of small battles. (textbook 772). Because of the Chinese and Korean forces were pushed back soldiers opportunity improved because they would be able to have a chance to relax and get to improve their situation in the war. The red scare was the fear that communism is around you and you are being spied on. Duck and Cover made to help teach people about what to do if an atomic bomb was dropped at anytime and anywhere. Duck and cover was an ad that warned everyone about how there could be an atomic bomb that is launched at any time and how you should always be prepared (Duck and Cover worksheet). Because of always fearing communism and being told that there could be an atomic bomb dropped on the US at any time negatively affected the psychological opportunity of the american citizens because they had to think about what would happen if a bomb was dropped and who would be spying on them or who is a communist. Joseph McCarthy was a senator from Wisconsin who claimed to have information …show more content…
The USS Maddox was shot at by a Vietnamese torpedo while the ship was in international waters. The USS Maddox was shot at in the Gulf of Tonkin by the North Vietnamese. President Johnson made a resolution that made it so the President could do anything necessary like starting a draft and sending troops to stop and repel any attacks against the US. (Video Notes). Military opportunity was affected because there was nothing that the president couldn’t do with the military to try to stop attacks on the US so soldiers had to go to Vietnam and fight. There were people in the US who did not believe that the US should be involved in the war so they started protests and eventually split the country into two different factions. By 1968 the country was separated into two groups the Doves and the Havks. The Doves wanted to leave the Vietnam War and the Hawks who wanted to stay in the War. (1965-1968 The Draft, Protests, and Johnson’s Decision). The US had lost psychological opportunity when the country was split because neither side trusted the other and the country as a whole was weakened. The Pentagon papers was a series of papers that proved that the US had provoked the involvement of the US into the Vietnam war. “Pentagon papers revealed that the US may have