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1. What was the Cold War, and how did it affect the nations of the world?

What
methods did the superpowers use to fight the Cold War? What legacy did the Cold
War leave, both inside the superpowers and outside them?

The Cold War was essentially a chess match played out by the United States and
the Russian USSR over the spread of communism, and the potential for a deadly
worldwide revolution or a World War Three. Battles were never actually fought between
the two countries but they affected all of the developing countries around them by using
them as proxies for their “cold” war. The Cold War led to an arms and space race, with
both countries trying to outdo each other and become dominant. While the two
superpowers jockeyed for position they affected all of the other countries around them, as
well as the rest of the world. Some countries benefited or took advantage of the conflict to
gain industrial strength, weapons, or money. Other countries were destroyed as they
served as bloody grounds for civil wars, with the US supporting one side and the USSR
supporting the other. At the end of the Cold War, both countries left behind a legacy of
world dominance, but not control. The United States emerged as the dominant and only
superpower while maintaining its democracy and free trade.
After World War Two, the Allies were trying to recover and the Axis powers were
desperately trying to keep up. On October 24, 1945, China, the US, France, Great
Britain, and the Soviet Union signed the United Nations Charter, effectively creating the
UN. The UN was much like the League of Nations with one major difference, the means
to enforce rulings. The United Nations was made up of two bodies: the General Assembly
and the Security Council. Unlike the League of Nations where votes had to be unanimous
to pass, the UN worked on majority rule. However the five major founding countries
(mentioned above) could veto any motion. The system proved to be cumbersome in Cold
War and early stages of the Cold War as most of the colonized areas and the Soviet
Union wanted decolonization, but the other major powers (who controlled these colonies)
vetoed it and vetoed in favor of their allies. This opposition in the UN along with NATO left
the USSR feeling very isolated and hostile.
NATO was the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that was established by the
United States and the countries of Western Europe when they realized the potential of
the USSR. They saw the USSR and communism as a center for world revolution and
realized that the Soviet Union had not only the means but also the military might to
launch a third world war. The Soviet Union felt incredibly vulnerable after these new
developments. They began to systematically to influence countries to its West like
Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia, building
a buffer from another invasion like the one they suffered in World War II from the Nazis.
This was called the iron curtain, or the Warsaw pact and represented the area where
communism reigned.
The United States and the USSR were two dramatically different countries to
begin with. The United States featured a representative democracy with a free trade and
capitalist market. The Soviet was a bureaucratic state with government-controlled
economy, and it challenged the traditional western thinking. Unlike the US the Soviet
Union created a closed market economy after the Great Depression and it a vast amount
of people and resources at its disposal, and it modernized very quickly. Other countries
just beginning to gain freedom from the imperial control of the western countries quickly
reproduced this system in favor of it over their “mother country’s” capitalist system. It was
not an exact replication in most places though. Places like Holland used a slow system of
agricultural cultivation while copying the USSR’s industrial model, allowing to quickly
prosper. The NATO countries quickly realized the growing threat of Russia’s influence
and began to try and recruit countries before communism could reach them. Countries
would align themselves with either the US or the USSR, gaining support, money, trade,
and arms. Most countries though preferred to remain “unaligned”, allowing them to milk
both sides for profit. The United States and Korea used these developing or Third World
countries to play out their Cold War, supporting each respective revolutionary side and
providing them with money and arms. A good example of this was in Vietnam when the
communist North, supported by Russia tried to attack the US backed South Vietnam. The
two countries provided support while not actually fighting one another face to face.
During the time period following World War II an arms race between Russia, the
US, France and Britain broke out, with each side racing to obtain the most advanced and
effective weapons. France and Britain dropped out early, unable to economically keep up,
while the US and the USSR continued amassing nuclear weapons. A very public race
between the two countries was the ‘space race’, where both sides tried to be the first to
land on the moon and control the skies above the earth. The Soviets had a head start
with Sputnik (the first orbiting satellite) but the Americans eventually won, landing Neil
Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon. The main reason for the two countries using
proxies to fight the cold war (countries like Korea and Vietnam) was because of this arms
race. Had the two countries launched their nuclear weapons against one another, both
countries, and large portions of the world would have been completely destroyed.
Knowing that they could not launch their missiles without incredible consequences they
fought the war through proxies, trying to align countries to their views.
The Soviet began to lose in the decades after WWII. Their bureaucratic system of
economy that had skyrocketed their economy began to wane and the Soviet Union was
unable to keep up production on such a massive scale along while meeting the people’s
needs and continuing on a weak agricultural system. As world wealth began to be based
on production of consumer goods instead of the surplus of natural resources, the USSR
began to lag behind. Despite the massive amounts of nuclear weapons owned by both
sides, testing and developing these nuclear weapons were put under certain restrictions.
Thanks to the agreement in 1963 by the United States, Soviet Union, and Great Britain,
neither side could test their nuclear weapons underwater, in the atmosphere, or in space.
This led to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to be signed by 137 counties in
1968, and was recognized by the United States and Soviet Union in 1972 when they
began to make negotiations on weapon limits. The Helsinki Final Act, or Helsinki Accords,
made the agreements that there would be no changing of boundaries by military force, as
well as social and economical cooperation methods (one dealing with the iron curtain)
that helped bring together the nations as well as pave the way for human rights. This was
the final nail in the Soviet Union’s coffin. Eventually the Soviet Union and communism
collapsed and the US emerged as the only remaining superpower.
Even though the Cold War was not a bloody or fierce one, it had incredible
implications and left a long legacy. The cold war helped countries like Japan who was
trying to recover from the Second World War. They were able to reindustrialize and
recover thanks to the large demand of the US and USSR during the Cold War. Other
countries that remained non-aligned faced bloody civil wars as both sides gained support
from the world’s only superpowers. Concepts like Mutually Assured Destruction were
realized and nuclear limitations were implemented. During the Cold War both of the
superpowers struggled for control but only the United States came out victorious.
However during this entire time period both countries dominated the world, but they did
not control it. Both also left legacies of capitalism, modernization, communism, and
industrialization.
2. Discuss the formation of Israel. How did this country come into being? What
does Israel mean to Jews? What groups were displaced in the formation of the
Jewish state? How have these issues impacted the Middle East in the long term?

The Israeli state was formed when the Zionist Jews declared independence in
May 1948. The Zionist Jews and Palestinians had been coexisting in the area for years
but had often fought with one another over religious differences. Israel represented
freedom for them after being prosecuted over the past centuries, and it also held religious
meaning. As the Zionists declared independence they displaced over 700,000
Palestinians who were pushed out into bordering countries. These issues have affected
the Middle East for decades, as the Israelis and Palestinians still violently confront each
other, and resources like oil being affected by the ongoing conflict.
In the Middle East Arab countries like Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt
were granted independence slowly from their mother country. Israel was different, as it
had two feuding groups contained within it and presented a unique dilemma. Zionist Jews
had immigrated to the Palestine areas because of the British Balfour Declaration. The
Palestine Arabs began to become more and more nervous as massive amounts of Jews
began to enter their country and started to take over, and force the Arab people out. The
Jews viewed the area as the ‘promise land’, or an area of freedom where they would be
safe from political prosecution. The Palatines grew even more threatened as millions of
Jews fled to the country to escape the harsh regime and rule of the Nazis in World War II.
This social and political unrest among the Arabs led to a fierce guerrilla-tactic revolt in
1936 against the British. The Jewish people began to take up arms too and the Arabs
soon worried about the Jewish taking over their country and declaring independence.
Revolts, riots, unrest often occurred in Palestine, proving that there could never be peace
in the Palestine state with the Jewish and Palestine feuding. Britain, frustrated by the
state of things handed control over to the UN to decide. The UN officially decided in late
1947 that Palestine should be split into two separate countries, much to the horror of the
Palestinians. They armed themselves and prepared for a string of violent revolts, but
before they could, the Jews declared independence in May 1949.
When the Zionist Jews declared their break-off, the Palestine along with their Arab
allies prepared to go to war a crush the puny, weak Israeli state. What they didn’t expect
was the Jews displacing close to 700,000 people. In 1967 Israel preemptively attacked
Egypt and Syrian airbases after threatening movements were made by both. The Israelis
gained control of their holy city Jerusalem when Jordan entered the war, even though
Islamic peoples saw it as their capital. A guerrilla-terrorist war was led against Israel after
that, led by Yasir Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization. The superpowers
began to grow interested in this conflict as they realized their flow of oil from the Middle
East might be affected. The US supported the Israelis and when in 1973, they stepped in
to call for a cease-fire between Israel and Egypt, they were punished by the Arab
controlled Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), when they cut off
the US’s supply of much needed petroleum.
3. How did the nations often called nonaligned or third world view their
international role? What challenges faced them? How did they attempt to
overcome these challenges?

Nations described as nonaligned during the Cold War were usually


developing and saw themselves as a minority in the overall world. They were
usually the countries that manipulated or took advantage of the two superpowers
during the Cold War (The US and the USSR). These nations were often politically
weak, having either just gained political independence or having undergone
political upheaval. These countries were also often economically challenged
because they could not build up their economies efficiently enough to have any
sort of foreign influence or power.
Non-aligned countries often took advantage of one or more superpowers
during the Cold War, and by remaining ‘nonaligned’ they were able to milk both
countries for money, weapons, or other desired things. In Egypt Anwar as-Sadat
was able to do this fairly successfully, convincing the US to build a dam in Aswan
to aid Egypt’s irrigation. He then turned towards the Soviet Union for an arms
deal, forcing the US to withdraw in 1956. The USSR volunteered to finish where
the Americans left off and completed the dam as well as provide arms. Both the
US and the Soviet Union helped to push out countries invading Egypt to try and
take control of the Suez Canal in 1960, and then in 1973 Sadat used the weapons
he obtained through the Soviet Union to attack the Israelis, a state being
protected by the US. After failing to gain a foothold in Israel and essentially losing,
Sadat turned towards the United States and asked for help fixing their economical
and political problems. This is just on of the examples of a nonaligned or third
world country taking advantage of a superpower during the Cold War. They could
afford to do so because the USSR and the US were so desperate for allies to use
as pawns in their nuclear chess match that they kept coming back to help these
countries. They got free arms, economic help, political support, and anything else
they needed. Most third world countries or newly developing countries preferred
to be nonaligned because they would receive financial support from both sides,
while both the US and Soviets tried to persuade them one way or another.
Countries like Nehru, Nkrumah, and Sukarno received financial aid and military
support from the Soviets in an attempt to sway them towards communism in their
developing countries.
Indonesia’s president Sukarno, one of the more successful leaders during
the decolonization movement, hosted a summit in 1955 consisting of twenty-nine
African and Asian countries, which was known as the Bandung Conference. This
conference had the sole purpose of trying to give third world countries a voice in
the international scene. They were politically weak compared to most other
countries and had the unique challenge of trying to gain a voice in the
international forum.
4. How did the environment change due to the wars (including the Cold War)
of the twentieth century? What resulted from these changes and how did
people react?

The environment of the twentieth century was radically changed because of


the new, untested, and incredibly destructive weapons used. Pollution
skyrocketed due to the massive industrialization required during all three of the
major wars of the 20th century (WWI, WWII, and the Cold War) and general
pollution that was not recognized before. People began to place responsibility on
the government and they were forced to take action when this happened.
In the late 1960s and 1970s there was a great deal of unrest and unease
among the young generation due to the environmental issues that were now
popping up everywhere after the major wars of the 20th century. These problems
were mainly a result of the terrifying new weapons tested and used in the late
stages of WWII and the Cold War, especially nuclear power and the
industrialization byproducts created when making war machines. People began to
realize the impact of industrial dumping, car exhaust, radiation, chemical waste,
and pesticides on the environment. More emphasis was put on conserving the
limited natural resources like coal and timber, which was used freely and in
extreme quantities in the Cold War.
This young generation thrust the responsibility to act upon the
government, forcing them to enact environmental controls and regulations. In
1970 the Environmental Protection Agency was created in response to the
mounting pressure put by activists upon governments.

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