The Cold War

Key Themes• Nuclear arms race• Spread of Communism• Massive military spending• Wars of containment Korean War, Vietnam War,

Cuban Missile Crisis• Space Program• East/West divide• U.S.S.R bankrupted and collapses• U.S. becomes only World Super Power

What was the Cold War• A non-violent (mostly) conflict

between the U.S. and U.S.S.R

• A struggle by each side to develop more powerful weapons to gain ascendency over the other

• Europe becomes divided into countries aligned with the U.S. (NATO) or those dominated by the U.S.S.R (Warsaw Pact)

• Cold War is also an ideological struggle between Capitalism (U.S.) and Communism (U.S.S.R)

• The Cold War lasted from 1945 until 1989

The Cold War Begins

Capitalism v. Communism

• The question this debate seeks to answer is this… Who should control the economy and the means of economic production? Is it the government, or private industry?

ScaleLess government control to more governmental control:

Capitalism-------->Socialism------>Communism

Founders

Capitalism

• Alexander Hamilton (1790’s)

Communism

• Karl Marx (1850’s)

Please refer to your sheet “Capitalism and Communism”:

The Cold War in Practice• U.S. began to test and

manufacture new types of Nuclear Weapons

• Russia followed suit in an ever more expensive and dangerous arms race

• This led to new the invention of new technology …

• Thth

• Nowhere on Earth is more than 1700 miles from the sea…

M.A.D. (Mutually Assured Destruction)

• Each side had enough Nuclear Weapons to annihilate the other

• Peace was maintained by this uneasy truth: any attack on the enemy would result in your own destruction

• With the invention of Ballistic Nuclear Submarines, this became the status quo, and a silent war was waged beneath the waves…

Typhoon class, shown by a beach for scale

Proxy Wars (Containment)• The U.S. fearing the spread of

Communism entered into a policy of “containment”.

• The Korean and Vietnam wars were both launched under this policy

• Containment was a military failure

• In both cases, the U.S. and its allies fought the communist governments of North Korea and Vietnam.

• In both wars, the U.S. was

unable to prevent the establishment of Communists governments.

• During the Cold War, Communism spread to dozens of countries.

An ugly war….

• U.S. forces raze a Vietnamese village trying to root out Communist insurgents…

Domestic Paranoia• The “Red Scare” in the 1950’s led to a

which hunt.

• Sen. Joseph McCarthy was the leader, trying to root out Communists in Congress, sports and entertainment especially.

• He turned the country in on itself as people became paranoid and scared in an atmosphere of fear artificially manufactured for McCarthy’s own ego.

• In the end he burned himself out, becoming discredited and isolated from the backlash

Cold War Economy• Reaganomics…

• Massive military spending in the 1980’s forced the U.S.S.R to keep pace…

• The U.S. economy was more able to cope than the Russians’

• However, Reagan did increase the national debt by a large margin in order to do this.

These things cost money

The Cold War was an Economic War!

• The communist system in Russia could not compete with the Capitalists

• In the end, the Cold War was won by the U.S. outspending the Russians

• In the end, the Russian economy collapsed, and the Communist government fell, to be replaced by a quasi-democracy that adopted many Capitalist principles

Leader’s meet in Iceland…1986

Mikhail Gorbechev

• Russian Premier when the collapse occurred.

• Tried to push through reforms to make Russia economically viable

• Was ousted in 1991 following the collapse…

U.S.S.R Collapses in 1989

• The once proud Russian Navy slowly rusts away….

New World Order

• With the Soviet influence in Asia waning, many rogue states emerged in the Mid – East in the vacuum…

• Was America safer with the Soviets in power?