by Matthew Adams

Created on: May 14, 2008

The Cold War, beginning in approx 1946 and ending in 1990, was the nuclear arms race between the USSR and USA. Equally, it was also a series of proxy wars fought between the Communist supporters and opponents. Much has been said of the causes of it.

The USA believed in free enterprise. The USSR was Communist, and as such opposed to private companies in favor of state ownership of industry in the form of worker's councils. The rival ideologies made the USA and USSR politically opposed to each other. Communism spoke of world revolution, and spreading Communism into other states. The Bolshevik inspired Russian Revolution in 1917 was the real beginning of east-west tensions.

Relations between the USA and USSR had become strained during the war. The death of President Roosevelt led to Harry Truman succeeding him. Truman was anti-Communist, and there was some certain distrust within the west of the dictator Joseph Stalin; his policies and his intentions within Europe.

August 1945 saw the dropping of the first Atomic-bombs on Japan. This is the only time nuclear weapons have been used. The destructive potential of this weapon was evident, to the USSR and everybody else. The USA were the first to develop it, and the USSR felt they needed their own nuclear deterrent to counter it.

With the USSR moving into eastern Europe, as World War 2 ended, a number of USSR puppet states were established in eastern European countries. This, Stalin claimed, was a necessary buffer zone. The west saw it differently, in 1946 Winston Churchill referred to the formation of the eastern bloc as: "An iron curtain has descended across Europe." And in many respects, that this was evidence of Communist expansion.

Truman believed that the spread of Communism had to be stopped. He believed the USA had a responsibility to lead the west in preventing Communism from spreading. In Europe, the Soviets could not expand any further west beyond the iron curtain. But elsewhere, in Asia for example, there was potential for new Communist states. Coined the 'Truman Doctrine', the USA would lend military and economic assistance to smaller nations to help them resist the spread of Communism. As a result, when a Communist uprising took place within Korea in 1950, the USA provided military support to the South Koreans to help prevent it. As such the series of proxy wars that the Cold War was started here, based on the policy of Truman.

For what it's worth, the USSR soon developed their own nuclear weapon in 1949 to level the nuclear playing field. With both the USA and USSR now having nuclear weapons, the arms race came into being to keep things level. Neither side wanted to fall behind in this most important weapons' technology. With the war in Korea escalating, and the Communist bloc now boasting nuclear weapons, the Cold War had truly begun by 1950.

As such, the Cold War was a result of Karl Marx & Lenin's Communist musings against western capitalism. The mistrust of Joseph Stalin also did little to help ease tensions during World War 2, even though the USA and USSR were war-time allies. The development of nuclear weapons by the USA and USSR during the period ensured an arms race. And the anti-Communist President Truman committed the USA to an indirect military confrontation with the USSR and Communism. That being, The Cold War.

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