U.S.A Role in the Cold War

The United States role in the cold war was... the political role in the post-World War II world: by 1989 the US held military alliances with 50 countries, and had 1.5 million troops posted abroad in 117 countries.The Cold War also institutionalized a global commitment to huge, permanent peacetime and large-scale military funding. The United States kept fighting back on the attacks. America had been engaged in a very costly war in terms of dollars as well as lives. But, despite the expense the United States came out of World War II better than any other nation that was involved.

My Analysis Of the Cold War

The Cold War was basically continuing state of political conflict, military tension, and economic competition existing after World War II (1939–1945), primarily between the Soviet Union and its satellite Nations and mainly United States. The Soviets became big enemies with the United States. Basically also the United States kept making things worse and was wanting to find out everything on the Soviets and the Soviets were keeping everything "hush hush" rather than telling anybody. So then the United States took things further and began spying on the Soviets causing people to loose there lives. Truman tried to give Khrushchev a chance to admit to what he was building (Missals) in Cuba. Khrushchev then lied to Truman so things were taken in hands and Then they had a conference and pictures were showed of what Khrushchev was building and he began to get angry and walked out of the conference.

U-2 Incident

During the cold war there was a incident called the U-2 incident which meant CIA makes secret flights over the Soviet Union with U-2 to take photos. Later during this time the Soviets began to find out what actually was going on and they saw the U-2 planes flyin over them. Eisenhower wanted to discontinue U-2 to allow for negotiation with Khrushchev. In the end; Fransis Gary Power made one last flight in the U-2 plane in May of 1960. During this flight Power was shot down by soviet pilots and was taken in as a prisioner; but then found out later that the Soviets lyed to us. Then in 1960 Eisenhower took responsibility and Khrushchev left the summit and the tensions got worse in 1960.

Nuclear Arms Race

The nuclear arms race was central to the Cold war . Many feared where the Cold War was going with the belief that the more nuclear weapons you had, the more powerful you were. Both America and Russia massively built up their stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

The world greatly changed when USA exploded the H-bomb in 1952. This one bomb was smaller in size than the Hiroshima atomic bomb but 2500 times more powerful. The Russians produced an H-bomb in 1953 and the world became a much more dangerous place.

However, it is possible that the sheer power of these weapons and the fear that they evoked, may have stopped a nuclear war.

USA produced a bomber - the B52 - that could fly 6,000 miles and deliver a nuclear pay-load. Such a development required massive financial backing from the government - something which America could afford to do and which Russia could not. Russia concentrated on producing bigger bombs - a far more cost effective procedure.

In October 1957, the world was introduced to the fear of a missile attack when Sputnik was launched. This was to lead to ICBM’s : Inter-continental ballistic missiles. As a result, America built the DEW line around the Artic - Defence and Early Warning system.

At the end of the 1950’s, American Intelligence estimated that in a Russian missile attack, 20 million Americans would die and 22 million would be injured.

H- Bomb

Robert Openheimer was the scientist involved with creating the A- bomb. On Jaunary 31st, 1950: Truman authorized the creation of the H- Bomb because the polictical pressures going on. On November 1st, 1952 the first H-bomb exploded. In August 1953 the soviets of the U.S.S.R exploded the their H- Bomb on us.

Korean War

On 25 June 1950, the young Cold War suddenly turned hot, bloody and expensive. Within a few days, North Korea's invasion of South Korea brought about a United Nations' "police action" against the aggressors. That immediately produced heavy military and naval involvement by the United States. While there were no illusions that the task would be easy, nobody expected that this violent conflict would continue for more than three years.

Throughout the summer of 1950, the U.S. and the other involved United Nations' states scrambled to contain North Korea's fast-moving army, assemble the forces necessary to defeat it and simultaneously begin to respond to what was seen as a global military challenge from the Communist world.

Though America's Armed Forces had suffered from several years' of punishing fiscal constraints, the end of World War II just five years earlier had left a vast potential for recovery. U.S. materiel reserves held large quantities of relatively modern ships, aircraft, military equipment and production capacity that could be reactivated in a fraction of the time necessary to build them anew. More importantly, the organized Reserve forces included tens of thousands of trained people, whose World War II experiences remained reasonably fresh and relevant.

In mid-September 1950 a daring amphibous invasion at Inchon fractured the North Korean war machine. In the following two months UN armies pushed swiftly through North Korea. However, with victory seemingly in sight, China intervened openly, and the Soviet Union not-so-openly, on the side of their defeated fellow Communist neighbor. The UN was thrown back midway into South Korea. Early in the new year, the Chinese army was in turn contained and forced to retreat.

By the middle of 1951, the front lines had stabilized near where the war started twelve months earlier. Negotiations began amid hopes that an early truce could be arranged. But this took two more frustrating years, during which the contending forces fought on, with the U.S. Navy providing extensive air and gunfire support, a constant amphibious threat, relentless minesweeping and a large logistics effort.

Finally, on 27 July 1953, with a new regime in the USSR and the blunting of a final Communist offensive, negotiations concluded and fighting ended. However, the Cold War, considerably warmed up by the Korean experience, would would maintain its costly existence for nearly four more decades.

Tension began to mount

The cold originally started because the former allies crashed under the foll0wing three circumstances economically, militarily, politically. During the start of the cold war Truman was president. He held a big confrence called " The potsdam confrence" in 1945. The confrence was held with the group called " The Big Three". Tension began to mount spreading democracy and Stalin was demanding for territory. Leading Soviets to tighten up the grip on the eastern front. They needed more communist so the "Satellite Nations" were created and they took over their nations. Which also became a battle capitalism vs. communism. When the policy of containment was created for the United States the Soviets became a major threat to us. Truman is the one that created the new foreign policy called " Containment".

Cold War

In 1945, just after World War II, the alliance between the United States, Britain and the USSR ended. An intense rivalry between communist and non-communist nations led to the Cold War. It's called the Cold War because it never led to armed conflict. At the end of World War II, at the Yalta Conference, Germany was divided into four occupied zones controlled by Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States. Berlin was also divided into four sections. Lack of a mutual agreement on German re-unification marked the start of the Cold War. When the USA decided to drop the atomic bomb on Japan, the USSR was upset that America had secretly developed the bomb. Churchill, Truman and Britain's Atlee were angry that Stalin had already signed a border treaty agreement with Poland.
The Cold War was the result of a clash between communism and capitalism, two opposing world-views. Another cause of the build up to the Cold War was the intransigent attitude of both sides. The Soviet Union was extremely concerned about its security after having been invaded twice.