Effects of the Cold War on America and the USSR

The Cold War began because of a clash between two world superpowers, the United States and the USSR. These two countries were in a battle for superiority but this battle never once led to a 'hot' war as the United States and the USSR never actually fired at each other. The main reason there was such an initial clash between these superpowers is that each country had completely different ideologies. The USSR functioned in a Communist fashion and the United States operated with Capitalism. The Containment Policy came about because of these different ideologies and played a major role in the conflict between these two superpowers. Both of these countries were competing blow for blow and both of the countries strengthened their development in technology and weaponry with the space race and arms race. All of these events led up to the development of a Cold War between these two powers because each country wanted to be the superior and there was no want to compromise. They were both so adamant to the fact that their side was greater than the other and this thought led up to the start of the Cold War.

The primary reason that the Cold War began was the differing ideologies between the United States and the Soviet Union. The United States had a solid grasp on Capitalism and planned on other countries converting to the same economic policy that they were under. The United States' belief was that individuals should be paid based upon their own individual production while the Communists believed that everyone should be equal no matter what their output is. This differing in economic policies is the most important reason the Cold War got out of control and became such a concern (Gokakin, 2). This can be attributed to Harry Truman's 'Containment Policy' (Gokakin, 5). This policy, one of the most important policies in the United States' history, was the plan to keep Communism 'contained' in just the country of the Soviet Union (Brayton, 885). The United States has continued to carry out this policy for years and is still in effect to this date. In the short run, it succeeded in containing Communism from spreading out from the Soviet Union, as no other countries were influenced to embark on communism in their own given country.

After the United States dropped the atomic bombs on Japan, the Soviet Union was furious. They were considerably neutral countries before this, but when the United States dropped the bombs, the Soviet Union was unhappy because of the fact that the United States had gone behind their back and secretly developed the bomb. This caused the Soviet Union to begin work on their own atomic bomb. This put the Soviet Union far behind in the arms race that developed before the Cold War, because after this happened the United States began work on their own new bomb, the hydrogen bomb. The increasing of weaponry and arms continued to feign strength throughout the pre-Cold War and during the Cold War. Even though the numbers of arms that both countries claimed to have were, for the most part, over exaggerations, the United States and Soviet Union still had an overwhelmingly and unnecessarily large amount of weapons and bombs.

With the development of new technology for both the United States and the USSR, the space race became much more important. The USSR needed to show more strength in their battle for superiority against the United States, and in October of 1957 they accomplished that by launching the Sputnik I satellite (Roland, 1181). This left the United States feeling inadequate compared to the Soviet Union. To combat this, the United States sent their own satellite into space a year later (Roland, 1181). In what ended up being a battle that the United States won in 1969, this was after the Cold War, when they put a man on the moon, until then it was an ongoing neck and neck race for superiority.

After the United States ended up winning the Cold War and the Soviet Union collapsed, the United States became the only world superpower and still is today. The United States became a much hated nation in the eyes of many countries because of this. Even though another superpower is building in the country of China, it seems that the world is turning away from the superpowers that it once had. There used to be four or five superpowers at a given time in the past 100 or so years, but now there is only one and it is the United States. Although the Soviet Union did collapse, it is still building and emerging as a decent country. The United States, on the other hand, has become without a doubt, the world's most powerful and dominating country. Even with the economic crisis that the United States is in right now, it could be said that the United States will be the only superpower in existence for another decade; China is almost to the point of a superpower. The Cold War proved to be one of the most important issues in the recent history. The two largest superpowers of its time went into a war without fighting, yet only one country survived.

Annotated Bibliography

Brayton, Abbott. "International Politics." American Political Science Review 74(1990): 884-885.

Although I really enjoyed this article, some of the information that I found was unclear. It gave me a lot of information on the Containment Policy that Truman initiated, but I just didn't like how the information was presented to me. I understand that I cannot criticize the entire book, because I only needed to use two pages out of it but I did not like that it was presented in the fashion that it was. Aside from the negatives already stated, I found the information very valuable and interesting. It showed me a lot of different aspects of the Containment Policy and how it was implemented. I would recommend this article because this is such a major part of the Cold War that this information must be known. Once I read it over a few times it became a lot more clear as to what Abbott Brayton was trying to say.

Gokakin, Ozlan. "Cold War 1945-1960." Cold War. 2006. The Corne. 17 Dec 2008 .

This was by far the best source that I could find. It covered all aspects of the Cold War and I used this a lot in my paper. I found that it gave a lot of opinionated information though, which I did not really care for. I also liked the length of the article because I learned a lot about the Cold War just from this page. I would definitely recommend this site to anyone who would be doing a project or report on the Cold War because it has so much useful information that can be put forth toward a paper.

Roland, Alex. The Journal of American History 78(1991): 1181.

Although this was not a very long or big source, it gave me some valuable information on the space race involving the Sputnik I. It also showed what the United States' response was toward the Soviet Union's jump toward the top in the space race. This was not my best source, but it did give me valuable information about the technological advances of both countries during the Cold War. I would probably not recommend this source to someone else working on a Cold War project, just because of the fact that it does not give much valuable information. The only reason I used it was because I needed specific information on the space race.