Did The Us Win The Cold War? The Sucesses and Failures of The Cold War

The cold war was a battle between ‘Communism’ and ‘Capitalism’ during the 20th century. The main countries behind it all were the Soviet Union and the United States. The USSR was attempting to spread communism while the U.S. tried to reverse those actions. The US policy of stopping the spread of communism was known as “containment”; it was a policy of blocking soviet influence and stopping the expansion of communism in order to prevent a domino effect. Much of the ‘fighting’ between the countries were proxy wars. Many different events came out of this including the arms race, the Korean War, the Vietnamese War, and the Cuban missile crisis. The US policies in the cold war had its successes and its failures; some times the actions led by the nation lead to decreasing the expansion, and other times it would have been better to just stay out.

            After WWII in China, a previous civil war had reestablished itself once again. It was a battle between the nationalists and the communists. The nationalists were the original party, led by Jiang Jieshi and backed by the United States. The communists were the new rebels, led by Mao Zedong and they received aid from the Soviet Union. At first the nationalists outnumbered the communists three to one. But the communists were supported by peasants and soldiers from the nationalist party left to join the communist side due to a failing economy. In addition, the nationalist’s forces did little to or nothing to win popular support. In 1949, many of China’s cities fell to the communist, or ‘Red’ forces. This resulted in Jieshi and his army fleeing to the south where the new nationalist nation would be set up, in Tiwan. Mao Zedong took control of China and he along with other directors took many steps in attempting stabilize the country. This turned out to be a bad move for the United States because the attempts to block Communism in China failed and the result was a loss of lives and money.

There were also similar disputes in Korea and Vietnam. Like before, the communist countries were supported by the Soviet Union and whichever groups opposed the communists received support from the United States.

Korea was divided into two different nations at the end of the last world war at the 38th parallel. The communists of North Korea attacked the anticommunists of the south in 1950; international troops were sent by the UN to stop the invasion. The new forces from the UN along with the South Koreans pushed the North Koreans back into North Korea and after more fighting, a cease-fire was agreed on. The result of all of this was a death toll of four million casualties and Korea still divided with a border still near the original 38th parallel. In other words, a waste of time, effort, and lives.