...To what extent was the nuclear arms race a stabilising factor in the Cold War between 1949 and 1963? (June 2011) The view that the nuclear arms race was a stabilising factor in the Cold War between 1949 and 1963 is a view that should be viewed as correct as the stabilising factors outweigh the de-stabilising factors because a nuclear weapon was never used aggressively. It allowed the Cold War to be just that, a Cold War, and not one of direct aggression between the USSR and the United States. Despite this, the anxiety of both nations increased drastically and there were also de-stabilising factors such as the pressure of domestic politics and the fear of each other from both nation’s publics. Also, the ‘hot wars’ in Korea and Vietnam show that indirect aggression remained. Moreover, Mutually Assured Destruction, or MAD, shows how the nuclear arms race was much more a stabilising factor than a de-stabilising one. There were many de-stabilising factors that occurred due to the nuclear arms race. The secrecy of the two countries was a major issue as it led to constant beliefs that one was in front of the other. An example of this is the ‘missile gap’ of 1957 that led to many Americans believing they were behind Russia in the arms race and therefore pressurised the increased development of nuclear missiles therefore costing the U.S a lot of money. This also shows de-stabilisation as it meant that the missile stockpiles continued to unnecessarily increase therefore unnecessarily...
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...Cause and Effect of War American Intercontinental University Abstract The following paper will look at a couple of major consequences the cold war had on the United States as a society. The paper will also go into the way the cold war affected the American population as a whole. The paper will also look at the reason the war could have been beneficial or detrimental on the United States. Cause and Effect of War The cold war took place during the mid-40’s and on into the late 80’s. The cold war got its name cold war due to the fact that there was not an active war at all. The cold war later on would cause other hot conflicts or active wars to arise in different parts of the world it led to destructive conflicts like the Korean War and the Vietnam War. The inactivity of the cold was partially due to the fact that the weaponry was stronger than ever, the world had been introduced to nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons if set off could literally destroy the world. This was something on everyone’s mind. The cold war was a long period of tension and hostility between the United States and the Soviet Union. The cold war was a conflict that began at the end of the second world war by the two dominant powers or the superpowers left from the aftermath of world war one. The United States and the Soviet Union both had their views; the Soviet Union advocated communism and most Americans wanted freedom or Democratic society. The Soviet Union wanted to spread it’s ideology of communism...
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...The development of the cold war between the USA and the Soviet Union between 1945-53 was primarily due to traditional great power rivalry The USA and the Soviet Union worked together to defeat Hitler in WW2. Towards the end of the war relationships between them began to break down, although in 1945 there remained possibility of continued cooperation. By 1947, this prospect had disappeared and tensions between the two powers continued to increase for the rest of this period. Some historians, including those belonging to the economic revisionist school of thought, argue that traditional great power rivalry was primarily responsible for this development. This is defined as developing power through trade in order to achieve financial dominance. Undoubtedly, this factor was a major contributor to cold war tensions, however other factors such as ideology, individuals and WW2- many of which are invariably linked to economic influence- also played a large part. Great power rivalry can be seen as the main cause of increased cold war tensions between 1945 and 1953 as both powers sought to increase their relationships with other countries to obtain economic dominance. America, although benefitting economically from the war, feared the possibility of a recession, both as demand for arms fell and poverty in Europe threatened an insufficient international demand for US goods. They believed free trade would prevent this from happening, as well as increasing interdependence between countries...
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.... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Introduction On April the 6th 1994, the Hutu population of Rwanda attacked the Tutsi minority. In the short period of hundred days approximately 800,000 Rwandans, mostly Tutsi’s, were killed. Even the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide which was adopted in 1948 by the United Nations did not prevent this genocide. Not even the U.S., the remaining superpower after the end of the Cold War and a firm believer of Wilsonian idealism, remained immobile and even urged the UN to refrain from action. Therefore the main research question will be: which factors contributed to the non-intervention by the United States in the Rwandan genocide?...
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...usually hear casual chatter about how the day is going to be or something funny a child saw on television. Now, imagine waking up and being afraid, the same question running over and over through your head," Is my family going to perish in a nuclear explosion, are we going to war with America today?" This is what it was like for many people living in the Soviet Union, a.k.a the USSR, or present day Russia, around 1985 during the Cold War. The Cold War was a period of tension and, on many occasions, near-war conflicts mostly between the Soviet Union and the United States. It was basically started after so-called diplomatic relations between the USA and the USSR started to dissolve after World War II. The war ended in 1991,leading to the downfall of the Soviet Union. Many factors brought upon the end of the Cold War. One major thing that led to the end was the internal problems the Soviet Union was facing. Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, also contributed in more ways than most to the end of the Cold War. Ronald Reagan, the American president at the time, was considered one of the greatest factors. One of the less frequently mentioned issues leading to the end was communism itself. The Cold War, by the late 1980's, had been going on for about forty years. The Soviet Union was racing against the United States to develop better weapons and more of the weapons they already had. This cost the Soviets a pretty penny. In fact, they were spending an estimated fifty percent...
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...“An economic growth lag of 1-2 per cent per annum below the United States would have had devastating effects on the Soviets’ ability to keep up with their Cold War competitors” (1). As a consequence, this inability to compete with the United States economically meant that Gorbachev had to reshape Soviet foreign policy in order for Gorbachev to create economic reforms to revitalise the Soviet Union’s domestic economy Cold war competition between...
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...non-state actors * Not all conflict is between states, much if not most is below the level of state-state conflict * Conflict maybe driven by man interests- ethnic conflict, material resources, land * Cooperation * Lots of Conflict and lots of Cooperation * Examples * Cooperation focused on economic issues, why? * All sides gain from economic exchange so it literally pays to cooperate * Is cooperation or conflict the natural state? * Economic cooperation mitigates conflict * Globalization or Fragmentation? * France-Germany and the European Union * Free trade agreements and NAFTA * What is Globalization * Examples: * Increasing level interconnectedness * What it means for international relations * More interdependence * Cultural aspects, both positive and negative * Is globalization a new phenomena * Less and less dialogue more usual stuff happening * 50 million died as a result 1918 Spanish Flu and parallels to Ebola Virus * Fragmentation * EU- Lack of defining borders * Europe as example- integration into EU has diminished power of national governments * Regional identities have become stronger: example- Scotland and Wales * Not all peaceful- Yugoslavia * Globalization can lead to integration but also fragmentation...
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...The cold war took place from 1947 to 1989. The term “Cold War” was first used by an American journalist called Walter Lippman. The reason that this term was used was because the war could not be described in the same way “conventional” war. The term was really used to describe the mistrust that existed between the two superpowers, The USA and The Soviet Union. However it is no argued that the war was just like any others but it was fought over other peoples countries and caused destruction for others rather than the two sates actually "at war” There was a huge amount of mistrust between these two major powers which is strange as they had been allies against Germany in the Second World War which had only ended a few years earlier. This alliance was one of mutual need in order to defeat the Germans and once the war was over a massive rift opened between the two countries because they had radically different views on world politics. This then raises the question of whether either country had any right to try and ‘influence other countries and world politics, which of course many argue they did not. Both countries wanted their politics and views to be adopted throughout the world, mainly simply for defensive purposes. The fact that that this was the main aim of the two major players in the war (and the world) meant almost by definition that the third world would be brought into the “Cold War”. The fact that both countries did not want to fire on each other for fear of total world...
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...（1） In 1945, just after World War II, the alliance between the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union 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 or "hot" 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 was a important background of the Cold War. And on March 5, 1946, Winston Churchill, gave his "iron curtain" speech while at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, which marked the start of the Cold War. The cold war did not end until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. During this period, the United States and the USSR confronted each other in politics, economy, ideology, and so on. And they nearly divided this world into two camps, socialist camp and capitalist camp, what made the conflict on ideology especially sharp. Every incident in the world could not happened without reasons, and the original cause may happened quite long ago. So there are long term causes and short causes of the Cold War. One of the short term causes is that the US President had a personal dislike of the Soviet leader Josef Stalin. At the Potsdam Conference starting in late July 1945, serious differences emerged over the future development of Germany and...
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...There were many successes and failures in Franklin Delano Roosevelt's wartime diplomacy. His policies were successful in that they led to the end of the war with Germany and Japan. However, they failed in that his actions led to an overall mistrust of Russia and Stalin and the postwar conflict that followed known as the Cold War. Roosevelt could see no way to prevent the Russians from dominating Europe. His 4 Policemen strategy would act as trustees for colonial societies not ready for full independence and that the great powers were the only ones who could "police" Europe after the war was over. FDR was determined that "something 'big' would come out of this war; a new heaven and a new earth." He was convinced that only the United States could offer any innovative thinking in intervention. He presumed that the Soviet Union's need for postwar economic aid would give the United States continued leverage. Although he didn't factor in the Soviet Union's industrial performance. Also, he could not find a way to prevent the Russians from dominating Eastern Europe after the war. One thing that was agreed on by all three powers was that they would only accept the unconditional surrender of Germany and of Japan. Roosevelt avoided the specifics about what reparations that would be applied to post war German because he was unsure of what to do. His strategy in dealing with Stalin was to avoid tension and confrontation. The resulting Yalta peace summit created an era of peace that lasted...
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...between individuals of this party. The tensions that existed between the USSR and the USA in the 1920s and 30s Communism was viewed as an unstable force that threatened social and political order and Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik Revolution, was to represent this. Allied countries Britain, France, USA and Japan had sent help to Bolshevik enemies during the Civil War therefore there were some hostile feelings towards them even after the war. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (March 1918) was a result of Russia withdrawing from the war, leading to a feeling of betrayal amongst the allies who were left to fight Germany alone. Communist groups in Spain and France grew in strength in the 1930s in response to the hardships of the Great Depression which placed strains on the USA. Britain’s appeasement policy towards Germany under Hitler’s leadership led to Stalin seeing it as an attempt to placate Hitler and a sign of Britain’s lack of enthusiasm for halting Nazi foreign policy. This meant mutual mistrust and hostility remained between the countries. The strains that existed in the Grand Alliance during World War 2 Despite the meeting at Tehran in November 1943 there were divisions amongst the Big Three. The opening of...
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...the Cold War? The forty-five years from the dropping of the atom bombs to the end of the Soviet Union, can be seen as the era of the new conflict between two major states: United States of America (USA) and Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). According to Hobsbawm, ‘cold war’ was the constant confrontation of the two super powers which emerged from the Second World War. At that time the entire generation was under constant fear of global nuclear battles. It was widely believed that it could break out at any moment. (Hobsbawm, 1994) The consequences of the ‘power vacuum’ in central Europe, created by the defeat of Germany, gave rise to these two super powers (Dunbabin, 1994). The world was divided into two parts. The USSR controlled the zone occupied by her Red Army or other communist armed forces. On the other hand, USA exercised control and dominance over the rest of the capitalist world as well as the western hemisphere and the oceans. (Hobsbawm, 1994) It is rather very difficult to argue that a particular country like the USA has won the cold war completely. Cold war gave birth to lots of problems in the world. During the cold war period, various events occurred subsequently. So the whole period was a combination of different issues and various factors related to it. Yet, evaluating the climax and the aftermath situation of the cold war, it can be argued that USA and its allies have succeeded to a great extent. On the other hand, as a consequence of the cold war...
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...It can be said that 'Without great power rivalry and the ideological differences the Cold War between the USA and the USSR would not have happened'. The main reason for this view would be that if great power rivalry and the ideological difference did not exist then other factors such as the Yalta and Potsdam Conferences, the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan would not have occurred. Furthermore, it can be said that if great power rivalry and ideological differences did not exist that alliances and organisations such as NATO and the Warsaw Pact. All of these factors are linked together with the main two factors of great power rivalry and ideological differences, therefore it can be said that without these two factors the war would not have occurred. In addition, some may say that great power rivalry and ideology link to personalities of Stalin, Roosevelt, Truman and Churchill as they clearly shows a relation through certain situations as some have said that if Roosevelt had not have died, the Cold War would not have developed as much as it did, but the Cold War did develop through Truman’s deliberate contrasting personality. Before the Cold War, the USSR was a one party state dominated by Stalin. Individuals did not have the choice to choose alternative politicians in free elections; industry and agriculture was owned by the state. In the 1930s, Stalin had transformed the USSR into a modern industrial state through the Five Year Plans, Collectivisation and the Purges. The...
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...would be considered a good President but there are many more reasons that he would not. Reagan’s ratings were higher than the averages of his three immediate predecessors, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, and Richard Nixon (Frank Newport, 2004). When rating Reagan, many factors show that he is indeed overrated, not only as a president but an individual as well. During Reagan’s term in office Americans faced recession, debt, high unemployment, questionable foreign policy and wasteful spending among other things. As Reagan was sworn, one of the first incidents, which were the release of the 51 hostages from the American Embassy in Tehran, occurred. It seemed as if the Iranians feared the win of future President Ronald Reagan. However, there were a few incidents that occurred prior to the inauguration of Reagan that actually set the stage for the emanate release of the hostages (United States History). The Shah of Iran died right before the presidential rae was over. Shah’s return, one of the requests in negotiations with the Iranians, was neutralized. The negotiations were now closer to closure. Iraq then invaded Iran which caused them to need weapons. Iranians negotiatiated arms-for-hostages once again. However, with what was called “October Surprise” in the 11th hour, negotiations delayed and the hostages were released five minutes after the inauguration of President Ronald Reagan (United States History). It is still up for debate as to whether or not there were prior meetings with...
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...Past Papers, Marks Scheme indicative content and examiners Report comments June 2010 A) How far did ‘peaceful coexistence’ ease Cold War tensions between the Soviet Union and the USA in the years 1953–61? Mark Scheme: Candidates should have knowledge about the main features of ‘peaceful coexistence’ in the period 1953-61. Developments which helped to ease Cold War tensions might include: the end of the Korean War (1953); Soviet settlement of border disputes with Turkey and Iran (1953) and recognition of Israel (1953); Austrian independence and improved Soviet-Yugoslav relations (1955); the ‘Geneva spirit’ based on east-west summit diplomacy and Khrushchev’s visit to the USA in 1959. Developments which sustained Cold War tensions during the period might include: US attitudes towards communism in the 1950s (domino theory, ‘roll back’, Eisenhower doctrine); Soviet concept of peaceful coexistence based on long-term victory of communism; the impact of the Hungarian Rising (1956) and the launch of Sputnik (1957); the U2 spy plane incident (1960) and the issue of Germany (1958-1961). At Levels 1 and 2 simple or more developed statements will provide either only simple or more developed statements about peaceful coexistence with either only implicit reference to the extent tensions were eased or argument based on insufficient evidence. At Level 3, students should provide some sustained...
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