Cold War
Who can claim victory for the Cold War, if anyone? What has been termed as "the long peace" by some has proven to be the most intense time period in world history. A historical rarity, two superpowers fought rigorously across the globe for support, each carving out their own sphere of influence. The bi-polar of international affairs resulted in an arms buildup between the United States and the Soviet Union; including weapons that exceeded the atomic bomb, then the most effective and destructive weapon in price and devastation. Yet, to everyone's surprise, the Cold War abruptly ended in 1990 with the collapse of the Soviet Union under its own economic weakness, its political conflict, and military farce. A decade later, we ask: Who can claim victory for the Cold War, if anyone? Could America, the champion of capitalism and democracy, the state that still stands tall as the present states of the former Soviet Union remain in economic and political turmoil? Could the Soviet Union, who for nearly half a century, successfully checked the power of the United States, and attained its own quadrant of loyalty from Eastern Europe? For approximately 45 years, the two forces brought the globe into its tension, making the prospect
The two attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, however, came into fruition solely by our own shortcomings. Never was a formal declaration of war announced; rather it remained a war of words, a clash of ideologies, a quest for world hegemony in which the other superpower constantly played the role as hindrance. The United States initiated the Marshall Plan, a policy they hped would help sway the ailing, poor European countries, those thought to be the most vulnerable and accepting to the communist ideals towards capitalism. Firstly, the United States, without informing Joseph Stalin, sent two atomic bombs on Japan, one on Hiroshima and the other on Nagasaki. The Soviets, in turn, formed the Warsaw Pact, consisting of their European satellite states. The Communist hegemony, headed by Mikhail Gorbachev, actualized their flailing economy and their inability to compete any further with the United States, and began, with the INF Treaty (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces), to negotiate arms reductions. Perhaps the zero sum mentality of the Cold War brought its end. Soviet troops would eventually occupy much of Eastern Europe, to the dismay of Roosevelt and Churchill. The United States lost just as much as the Soviet Union in the post Cold War era, when, presumably, it should have been the lone superpower, unchecked and free to do as it so pleased. No longer can the United States see its enemy, patrol its ever move, and properly react to it in time. Since the end of the Cold War, we have grown soft with comfort, a knowledge that we were the official military superior to the rest of the world. Who can claim victory for the Cold War, if anyone? Maybe the United States for it still stands economically stable and as intact as in 1945. Not long thereafter came NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), a pledge of military backing from the United States to Wester Europe. Even more shocking, the weapons the United States handed to Afghanistan to fight off the Soviet Union in the 1970's and 1980's are now being used to terrorize the world.
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Acceptance Essays
