World Civilization - Ideologies - Term Paper Example

?World Civilization - Ideologies The Cold War All war is a war of ideologies. However, the difference between a cold war and a hot war is that in a cold war, there is no combat involved. The term cold war has been used in the context of the tensions between America and the Soviet Union, in the years that followed the second world war, till the USSR disintegrated in 1991. Neither the USA nor the USSR ever actually fought a war, but they did fight proxy wars, each one supplying arms and ammunition to the side that believed in their ideology. The war between North and South Vietnam is a case in point. Although both the USA and the USSR stayed out of the war, South Vietnam which was anti communist had the backing of the Americans and was supplied with the materials needed to fight the North Vietnamese who were communists. The USSR in its turn, backed the North Vietnamese and supplied them with war material. One would have thought that if Russia and America fought side by side during the second world war, there would be a friendly relationship between them. However, a closer look reveals that it was only the common enemy - Hitler, who brought these two nations together and their underlying differences took a backseat till the end of the war. Once the war was over, as Winston Churchill famously remarked, "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent." (Churchill, 1946) No one person can be held responsible for the cold war. The clash of ideologies - USSR’s Communism and Socialism versus America’s Democracy and Capitalism; and the fact that each thought that her own ideology was best, and felt threatened by the opposing ideology, is the real cause of the cold war. One could argue, that the cold war came about due to Russia’s aggression in Eastern Europe. On the other hand, if the US had only had the good sense to see that Russia was just trying to create a buffer zone between the east and the west, possibly to prevent further invasion from Germany; perhaps the world might have been spared the tensions and problems created by over four decades of the cold war. Each side viewed the ideology of the other with suspicion and fear, and was lulled into a false belief that it alone held the key that would ensure the happiness and prosperity of mankind. It seems that both the USA and the USSR tried to push their own interests, and in so doing created misunderstandings, that at times brought them to the brink of nuclear war. In the beginning, the cold war was limited to taking sides in wars that were fought by other nations, that subscribed to opposing ideologies; but the real danger was posed when both the USA and the USSR began to amass weapons of mass destruction. Although the cold war was spread over a period of over four decades, it went through periods of high tension followed by phases of relative calm. The Bay of Pigs crisis in Cuba in 1962, when the two superpowers came to the brink of war, had the effect of sobering the two nations, who decided to set up a hotline between them to be able to speak directly in times of crisis. Soon after this both the USA and the USSR agreed to a Nuclear test ban Treaty. According to some historians, this was the beginning of the end of the cold war. In 1972, the USSR and the USA led by Brezhnev and Nixon, announced a policy of peaceful coexistence, strengthening economic ties and signing agreements for increased trade. By the time Reagan became president, the Soviet Union had once again become the “empire of evil”, till in the second term of his presidency, Reagan was lauded as the architect of ending the cold war. Jack Matlock Jr, who was the US ambassador to Moscow under Reagan, says, Reagan "wanted to reduce the threat of war, to convince the Soviet leaders that cooperation could serve the Soviet peoples better than confrontation and to encourage openness and democracy in the Soviet Union." (Matlock, Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended) At the time the USSR too had got a leader whose ideas differed from those of his predecessors, and Gorbachev too, was in the the process of introducing his now famous reforms of Glasnost and Perestroika. When Reagan himself was asked about his role in ending the cold war, he replied that “Mr. Gorbachev deserves most of the credit”. (Reagan,1988) Today over two decades after the end of the cold war, the world is still grappling with its dangerous legacies. One of the legacies of the cold war was the high level of military spending. A new industry was spawned as a result of the increasingly greater levels of military spending, as a result of which this military industry became an important part of the economies of the USA and USSR, as well as of their growth and technological development. The cold war was responsible for a mood of fear and hatred, and a paranoia of being threatened by another nation that led to international tension. As Barack Obama summed it up, “generations lived with the knowledge that their world could be erased in a single flash of light”.(Obama,2009) It also caused every nation to seek to have a nuclear arsenal, that it looked upon as a deterrent to invasion. The effects of the amassing of nuclear warheads is a reality that cannot be denied. “The existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War”,(Obama,2009) is how Barack Obama describes it. The contamination of groundwater, soil, vegetation and wildlife by radioactive waste, is another long lasting legacy of the cold war. Nuclear accidents like the one in Chernobyl in 1986, where thousands of people were exposed to dangerous levels of radioactivity, are a constant reminder of what such waste carelessly dumped for decades, can do to humans as well as the environment. On the one hand, there is today a greater awareness that man must save the environment for future generations, and on the other there remains this huge task of finding a remedy for the mistakes of the past. Besides, with some nations that have governments who have less control over their own nuclear facilities, there is the constant threat of these weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of misguided zealots who would not hesitate to use them for their own ends. If both these world powers had had the good sense to accept and tolerate the fact that another ideology, different from their own, could work and be good for people, the world would be a safer place today. The cold war is a lesson to the world that tolerance is the key to peace. A mistake like the cold war can lead to dangerous consequences; that will affect not just the present generation, but will leave its scars on generations to come. Works Cited Churchill, Winston 1946 Sinews of Peace speech , Westminster College, Fulton Missouri March 5 1946 web 5 May 2012 Matlock, Jack.Jr. 2004 Reagan and Gorbachev: Shutting the Cold War Down . Review of book Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended The New York Times August 01, 2004 web 5 May 2012 Obama, Barack, 2009 The White House Office of the Press Secretary,April 5, 2009 REMARKS BY PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA Hradcany Square, Prague, Czech Republic web 5 May 2012 Reagan, Ronald 1988 Reagan and Gorbachev: Shutting the Cold War Down . Review of book Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended The New York Times August 01, 2004 web 5 May 2012 Read More