Cold War Essay Research Paper Cold War

Cold War Essay, Research Paper

Cold War Propaganda

The Cold War never presented any real threat on America. It was nothing more than the propaganda of two battling super powers. The two super powers involved in the Cold War were The United States of America and The Soviet Union. The two countries were constantly battling over who is the most powerful on the planet. The supposed threats were mere techniques of propaganda used to scare the other countries public into believing they were more powerful. Over and over again the U.S would flex it.s muscles and then The Soviet Union would flex it.s muscles until eventually one country couldn.t. The Cold War lasted a very long time and it was fought through battles such as the Korean War and Vietnam. Each battle split the country and the U.S would take a side and The Soviet Union would take a side and they would use the country as a battle ground. This was the only actual fighting that occurred.

The Cuban missile crisis was an important event that took place during the cold war. In the Cuban missile crisis, America was fearing that The Soviet Union had certain missile instalations in Cuba . The U.S found out about these missile installments from satellite imagery that showed the missiles being transported to Cuba and show the missile sites inside Cuba. “With Castro’s approval, the Soviet Union began building secret missile bases in Cuba. On October 16, President Kennedy was shown photographs of the missile installations in Cuba.” (Rawnsley, 7) On the surface one would get scared by something like this and that is exactly what The Soviet Union wanted to happen. The whole Cold war was propaganda so by scaring the U.S into thinking they had missiles in Cuba gave them the edge on the war. If The Soviet Union wanted to bomb the U.S they could have easily snuck the missiles in and hidden them. They knew about the satellites and purposely exposed the missiles. “A naval blockade was imposedosed on Cuba to stop the construction of the sites. On October 26, Krushchev sent a letter to Kennedy suggesting that the sites would be dismantled if the United States gave its reassurance that it would not invade Cuba.” (Whitton, 22) America.s true leaders knew that this was never truly a threat to the U.S but to humor the citizens they did something about it. If the U.S did nothing the citizens would get scared, even more so.

The Soviets had a good strategy in using Cuba against the United States and there idea to get the missiles found worked out perfectly for them. The missiles never posed a threat to us, but just gave the Soviets an opportunity to flex there muscles at the United States.

Another big instance of Cold War propaganda was in the Afghanistan situation. The Afghanistan.s had a communistic government which was supported by the Soviets. There was a group opposing the communist government called the Mujaheaden. The Mujaheadens were a rebel group who operated out of the mountains in Afghanistan. They wanted to abolish the communist government. The Mujaheadens were very hard to hit by the Soviets army because they were very mobile and were stationed in the mountains. The United States supported the Mujaheaden rebel group because it was against communism and The Soviet Union.

In the Afghan war the U.S and The Soviet Union were fighting each other but it wasn.t truly there war and they weren.t involved in a head on confrontation. The U.S was only involved in this war to fight communism. The U.S needed to fight in this war because if they didn.t then The Soviet Union would gain a significant lead in the cold war. Because this war was fought in Afghan and neither the U.S nor The Soviet Union had any real reason to be fighting , it was all propaganda. They both wanted to become the super power of the world and they both wanted there respective government system to prevail.

The Cold war extended into space when in the Kennedy administration the U.S and The Soviet Union took there battle of the super powers to the sky. The Soviet Union started off by putting there Sputnik into space. Shortly after a man named Yury Gargaran was the first to orbit Earth on April 12, 1961. Kennedy promised that with his new Apollo program we would land a man on the moon “before the decade is out.”

The Vietnam war was another instance of Cold War Propaganda. During the time of the Vietnam war, the cold war was going on. The Vietnam war was between the north and the south. The north was supported by The Soviet Union. The Soviet Union gave weapons and supplies to the North Vietnamese. Since The Soviet Union took the side of the North, the United States took the side of the South. The South was given supplies and weapons and the U.S soldiers also fought. “Communist victory in 1975 had profound ramifications for the United States; it was not only a setback to the containment of communism in Asia but a shock to American self-confidence.” (Bernhard, 16)

The United States citizens disagreed with going to war in Vietnam because we really had no business in the war. The reason we went into the war was because we were battling The Soviet Union for the spot of the world super power and by letting the communism spread they would be losing there power. If the citizens had been more involved in the war then maybe the United States wouldn.t have suffered such a loss. Again we see that the Soviets are prevailing over