Cold War and the Ideology of Freedom
Cold War is the term used to describe the intense rivalry that developed after World War II in 1945 between groups of Communist and non-Communist nations. On one side were the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) and its Communist allies, often referred to as the Eastern Republic. On the other side were the United States and its democratic allies, usually referred to as the Western Republic. The power struggle was called the Cold War because it did not actually lead to fighting, or “hot” war, on a wide scale (The World Book Encyclopedia 1994).
The Cold War was a decades-long struggle for supremacy in the 20th century. Soviet Union and the United States continuously provoked each other through political maneuvering, military alliances, undercover activities, propaganda, nuclear development, economic activities, and indirect wars with other nations. The Soviet Union wanted to create a barrier zone, between its borders and the Western Europe. The Eastern Bloc was created, as communist regimes were established in Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Albania, and later on East Germany in 1948. In contrast, the United States prevented the spread of Soviet communist influence in Western European nations, including France, Italy, and Greece through a policy of containment. The United States became involved in the affairs of the European nations. The Truman Doctrine (1947) promised aid to governments that were subject to communist subversion. In the same year another doctrine was formed, The Marshall Plan, the economic assistance of the United States to democratic governments in Europe. The superpower gave billions of dollars to help them eradicate the political instability, which could attract the communist regimes. In 1948, the Soviets cut off all road and rail traffic to the city, in which the United States and Great Britain retaliated with a massive airlift, supplying the surrounded city for 231 days up until the blockade ended. In 1949, the United States merged with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which provided mutual security and military alliance. Soviet Union was threatened with the Western Bloc, which led to its alliance with communist governments of Eastern Europe, formalized as the Warsaw Pact in 1955 (The Cold War n.d.). The USSR wanted to impose Communism to the world, while America just wanted to end the conflict (Block n.d.) The Cold War was a battle of ideas, mainly the American liberalism as opposed to Soviet Communism. Americans have high regard for freedom. They believed that they fought wars to preserve the political freedom and for the rest of the world. America was known as “the land of the free”, and the government’s role is to protect the rights of every individual. United States abide by capitalism and liberal democracy together with its allies. Western liberal democracy embodies for freedom of speech, religion and press. People are given the power to elect their leaders that will govern them. Americans particularly realized that the issues at stake in the conflict between the Soviets are the survival of freedom. It was a war between democracy and domination, which would determine the future not only of the United States, but of the rest of the world. |