The Vietnam War: The Four Stages Of The Cold War

When you think about war, what do you think about? Maybe airplanes dropping bombs, fighter jets, people at war fighting, mass destruction? Is there a war that didn’t involve any of these actions, but involved tension between multiple countries that lasted numerous decades? Yes, there is a war like this, it’s known as the Cold War. Even though the Cold War wasn’t a war, it consisted of wars and events that almost lead to world destruction. This event lasted a little more than four decades, from 1947 to 1991. The Cold War was a major event because it affected most, if not all, of the world, caused other events such as the Space Race, and consisted of many wars.
In the early stages of the Cold War, there were tensions during the Potsdam Conference, …show more content…
The United States was dedicated to stop the spread of communism. Even though the Cold War was not really a war, it consisted of multiple wars. The Korean War was a well-known war, it had two sides, the Communist backed North Korea and the United Nations backed South Korea. The war dragged on for two or more years beyond Truman’s presidency and the war ended in a stalemate and an armistice was signed, and the two countries were divided at the 38th parallel. Another well-known war was the Vietnam War, and it was the longest war in United States history, lasting for about 20 years. The war was between the Communist North Vietnam and the United States backed South Vietnam, but the US lacked public support. This was a major loss for the US, and showed how limited the US can be. Neighboring countries of North Vietnam, such as Cambodia, Laos, and South Vietnam, soon fell to communism; on top of that, returning Vietnamese Veterans found change and even acceptance difficult. ("The Korean War.") ; (“The Vietnam …show more content…
This also led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the shredding of the Iron Curtain; these were signs of the end of the Cold War. The unraveling of the Soviet Bloc began in Poland in June of 1989, in which they elected a noncommunist opposition government. Eastern Europe Communist dictatorships fell one by one and by the autumn of 1989 East and West Germans were tearing down the Berlin Wall. Over the course of two years, countries were declaring independence and by December 1991, Ukraine Byelorussia, and Russia itself, declared independence and the Soviet Union was disbanded. In the end, the United States spent trillions of dollars aiming themselves for a direct confrontation with the Soviet Union that fortunately never happened. ("The End of the Cold