Cold war history and international relations

Cold War Geopolitics

During the decades that the Cold War encompassed, anti-Communist world politicians were viewed as belligerent and bellicose and yet, the strength that was so vocally decried by various Soviet sympathizers around the world, eventually led to the destruction of one of the most tyrannical governments in recorded history. American nuclear power incensed Soviet leaders and left leaning politicians around the world but for differing reasons. Soviet leaders understood that the great power the United States was amassing would be difficult if not impossible to overcome but, sympathizers for the communist way of thinking viewed American nuclear power as the ultimate threat to world peace.

Soon after World War II, the lines of demarcation were drawn up and the world was sliced up and distributed to either Soviet or American powers. As the cold war progressed, the threat of mutually assured destruction made war impractical but never removed the danger. Both Soviet and U.S. scientists worked frenetically with giant defense budgets at the ready. For the U.S., great debt resulted from the expenditures but for the Soviet Union, economic collapse loomed nearer with each new weapon system. Eventually the Soviet empire fell as a result of both internal and external pressures growing out of economic despair, political repression and the hope for something better. To understand the global political implications of the cold war it is helpful to briefly examine some of the specific time periods and individuals that directly impacted world wide politics.

Cold War Periods

The Cold War can be divided into different time periods marked by various initiatives, approaches to the problem and major political figures. These time provide a sense for how the cold war was "heating up" and help to illustrate the nature of global politics.

One period that illustrates a specific movement in geopolitics begins after the 1945 Conference at Yalta where the Soviets and the Americans drew up specific agreements that were designed to direct international affairs. It matters little what the accords were because Stalin immediately began violating the agreement. Roosevelt was alarmed by Stalin's Soviet expansion into Eastern bloc countries but was incapable of doing anything about it. One by one, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, East Germany, Poland, Albania and Czechoslovakia fell to Soviet domination often without an official shot ever being fired. In response, the Western bloc formed NATO in 1949 with founding members Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, United Kingdom and the United States.

The wise men of the Cold War embraced collective security, forged NATO, created a host of other multilateral institutions, and grasped the interdependence of the modern global economy. (Leffler 22)

Soviet communist expansionism had an inevitable quality to it that claimed that it would permeate the entire world. Great angst gripped the Western world as it faced the Communist workers revolution. What made the force especially irresistible was that a stockpile of nuclear arms were being developed that would help assure that the world would eventually embrace Communist ideals.

Detente

The idea behind the policy of detente was that rival blocs would increase diplomatic, commercial, and cultural contact in an attempt to reduce tensions. Periods of detente dot the Cold War timeline however, the end of each detente was marked by a specific and flagrant inequality that invariably led to additional hostilities. It is interesting to note two of the events that ended periods of detente. Specifically, the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Communists and the erection of the Berlin Wall marked the end of two of the most notable periods of detente. Those events also helped to shape world opinion about the Soviet Union and opened the Communist movement to many criticisms from former allies.

An Uneasy Truce

President John F. Kennedy led the world through the Cuban Missile Crisis and faced down the Soviet enemy. Out of the resolution from the Cuban Missile Crisis came an uneasy truce that essentially began the next to last stage of the Cold War. Soviet designs on America were clear to everyone in the world.

Future policies enabled the U.S. To further enhance the concept of mutually assured destruction which tied the hands of the Soviets, and enabled the Americans to focus on winning the hearts and minds of the individuals in the puppet states of the Soviet regimes. As the latter part of the twentieth century progressed, serious cracks in the Soviet empire became visible and were exploited by American policies.

The Soviet Destruction

In 1981, President Ronald Reagan assumed the Presidency of the United States and faced off with the nuclear armed Soviet Union.

Reagan pursued policies that angered U.S. allies and produced vast crowds of European protestors; he was scorned and derided by the chattering classes on both sides of the Atlantic. But his eyes were on the Kremlin. Reagan's ability to rearm in the midst of a deep recession, and his readiness to decry the Soviet empire while remaining popular, made a deep impression. (Sicherman)