The Cold War – By Anton Muir

The Cold war was a time of which there was extremely high military tension, political and economic competition after world war two, between the USSR and U.S.A, although the main two participants never physically had an out break of a “hot war”. Instead they expressed the conflict through the arms race, espionage, propaganda, technological competition and proxy wars.

The two super powers at the time had two different ideology’s on how society and government it self should be run. USSR thought that a “system of political and economic organization in which property is owned by the community and all citizens share in the enjoyment of the common wealth, more or less according to their need” would be the right choice to the war stricken areas of Eastern Europe. But U.S.A‘s political system Capitalism was a system based on economic growth which is characterized by freedom of the market and people.

Both these super powers wanted to maintain there foothold, so both of the super powers would make it in there best interests to try make nations follow there ideology, an example of this is after World War two,

Soviet Russia quickly devised a strategic plan to get together a group of nations that wanted to follow Communism in Eastern Europe, as these countries were poor and economically challenged hence joined a group of nations known as the USSR (United States of Soviet Russia),

The USSR was very much despised by democratic and capitalist nations and was even considered a hypothetical Iron Curtain by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. U.S.A ‘s foothold was kept strong by a treaty known as NATO,  which meant member states agree to offer mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party.

As both Countries Recruited and played the dangerous game of proxy wars it started to heat up around 1954 when communists took over Indo china, so U.S.A countered the threat by creating a treaty known as SEATO, this treaty’s intention was to block off further Communist gains in south east Asia. U.S.A based its defense very much on the “domino theory” of expanding communist empires and thought that SEATO would be a good counter Offensive matter to this problem. But as Soviet Russia started to leave North Korea, North Korea’s Communist ideology clashed with its sister country South Korea and war broke out between the two different nations. South Korea had good relations with U.S.A and the Truman doctrine stated that America would assist governments resisting communism, so U.S.A and the U.N took action against the North Korean militants, Resulting in the North Korean attack being pushed back, and to this day the border between the two nations being the most heavily fortified in the world.

After The Korean war U.S.A moved there worries to Vietnam, when Ho Chi Minh ruler of Communist North Vietnam invaded South Vietnam in 1959-1975. U.S.A immediately sent a moderately large portion of its army, and its allies helped in countering the invasion. The treaties and polices that played the biggest part in the Vietnam war was SEATO, as Australia and New Zealand were one of the first countries to help aid U.S.A .

The cold war inevitably ended in 1989 when the Berlin wall fell, the Soviet Union had been defeated. The foundation of the Soviet Union had been crumbling for a decade most scholars of the cold war  say it had never actually been solid . Many people believe that the former USSR could not keep up with the USA and UK on a financial level and broke apart from the inside out. The Soviet Union spent billions to try to keep up with the arms race but could no longer afford to do so. They could no longer afford to produce basic goods for its people and the economy and system collapsed. Inevitably ending the Cold war.