What was the Cold War About by John Muller, Summary (original) (raw)
Related papers
Palgrave Macmillan, 2020
According to popular Western understanding, the Cold War was a political, geopolitical, and ideological confrontation between capitalism and communism, pitting the advanced capitalist economies of Western Europe, North America, andJapan, led by the USA, against the Communist Soviet Union and allied Eastern Bloc. It began after the Second World War and turned nuclear when the Soviets acquired atomic weapons in1949. Though the prospect of nuclear Armageddon prompted mass movements against nuclear weapons, and though the world came very close to it at least once, there was no nuclear war: deterrence worked.
1. There were many conflicts that made up the Cold War: the Berlin Wall crisis, The Korean War, The Bay of Pigs, Vietnam and of course, the arms race. The Yalta conference is often cited as the beginning of the Cold War. This meeting of the "Big Three" took place on 4th February 1945. Both Roosevelt and Churchill recognized the reality of Soviet power in Yalta. After the war, disputes between the Soviet Union and the Western democracies, particularly over the Soviet takeover of East European states emerged.
Did the Cold War Ever Really End
The official end of the Cold War era in 1989 brought during the first coming years a kind of international optimism that the idea of the " end of history " really can be realized as it was a belief in no reason for the geopolitical struggles between the most powerful states. The New World Order, spoken out firstly by M. Gorbachev in his address to the UN on December 7th, 1988 was originally seen as the order of equal partnership in the world politics reflecting " radically different international circumstances after the Cold War ". 1 Unfortunately, the Cold War era finished without the " end of history " as the US continues the same policy from the time of the Cold War against Moscow – now not against the USSR but against its successor Russia. Therefore, for the Pentagon, the Cold War era in fact never ended as the fundamental political task to eliminate Russia from the world politics still is not accomplished. Regardless the fact that in 1989 Communism collapsed in the East Europe, followed by the end of the USSR in 1991, that brought a real possibility for creation of a new international system and global security 2 , the eastward enlargement of the NATO from March 1999 (the Fourth enlargement) onward is a clear proof of the continuation of the US Cold War time policy toward Moscow which actually creates uncertainty about the future of the global security. After the end of the USSR and the Cold War, there were many Western public workers and academicians who questioned firstly why the NATO has to exist at all and secondly why this officially defensive military alliance is enlarging its membership when the more comprehensive Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (the CSCE, today the OSCE) could provide the necessary framework for security cooperation in Europe including and Russia. 3 However, the NATO was not dissolved, but quite contrary adopted the same policy of the further (eastward) enlargement likewise the EU. The Kosovo crisis in 1998−1999 became a formal excuse for the enlargement of both these US client organizations for the " better security of Europe ". The EU Commission President, Romano Prodi, in his speech before the EU Parliament on October 13th, 1999 was quite clear on this matter. 4 However, if we know that the Kosovo crisis followed by the NATO military intervention (aggression) against Serbia and Montenegro was fully fuelled exactly by the US administration, it is not far from the truth that the Kosovo crisis was provoked and maintained by Washington, among other purposes, for the sake to give a formal excuse for the further eastward enlargement of both the EU and the NATO. However, can we speak at all about the end of the Cold War in 1989/1990 taking into account probably the focal counterargument: the NATO existence and even its further enlargement? As a matter of fact, the NATO is the largest and longest-surviving military alliance in contemporary history (est. 1949, i.e., six years before the Warsaw Pact came into existence). No doubts today that the NATO was established and still is operating as a fundamental instrument of the US policy of global imperialistic unilateralism that is, however, primarily directed against Russia. The deployment of the US missiles in West Europe in the 1980s, regardless on achieved détente in the 1970s in the US-USSR relations, became a clear indicator of a real nature of Pentagon's geopolitical game with the East in which the NATO is misused for the realization of the US foreign policy objectives under the pretext that the NATO is allegedly the dominant international organization in the field of West European security. Although the NATO was formally founded specifically to " protect and
What Caused the Cold War, and the Winners and Losers of it? Background to the Study
COLD WAR. GEOPOLITICS, 2014
Background to the Study The Cold War was essentially a period of time that was characterized by political, military and economic tensions between the major powers of the Eastern Bloc and the Western Bloc following the end of World War II. The Eastern powers were the Soviet Union and other powers in the Warsaw Pact. The Western Bloc, on the other hand, consisted of the United States of America (US) and its NATO allies (Fousek, 2000). It is not clearly known when the Cold War officially started; and different dates have been given. However, the most commonly cited date for the commencement of the Cold War is 1947. The War ended in 1991. This happened following the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The Cold War was simply a period of intense political and military tensions between the world’s major powers; but did not involve any direct military confrontations. Instead, the confrontations often took place in the form of proxy wars fought in other countries and places. The Vietnam War, the Korean War, and the first Afghanistan War are notable proxy wars between these two sides. The Eastern Bloc and the Western Bloc supported different sides in these wars; and this was the closest that they came to confronting each other (Gaddis, 1989). The Cold War, therefore, can be said to have been a supremacy and hegemonic battle to determine the greatest power in the world after the end of World War II and the devastating defeat of Japan and East Germany (Gaddis, 1997). Although the US and the Soviet Union had been allies against Nazi Germany during World War II, they were split by the Cold War. This split would prove to be quite disastrous for both sides both economically and politically. The major differences were that the Soviet Union pursued a Marxist-Leninist political ideology while the US and its allies pursued a capitalist ideology (Fousek, 2000). Although there was no full-scale armed combat between the two superpowers, they nonetheless armed themselves heavily in anticipation for a possible real war. With both sides owning nuclear and other lethal weapons, there was an expectation that a worldwide nuclear war might erupt (Grenville, 2005; Nalebuff, 1988). However, it was largely because of their possession of nuclear weapons that each side was able to deter the other. Both the US and the Soviet Union were not willing to initiate a direct nuclear confrontation for fear that the nuclear weapons held by the other would be used. The state of tension between two continued until 1991 when the Soviet Union disintegrated (Freedman, 2004).
A look at the cold war, its stages and results.