The end of World War II ushered in a new era of war between the United States and the Soviet Union. It was a war between ideologies. Some would say it was not as bloody as previous wars. In fact, there was no direct military fighting between the rival countries, which earned it the name of the Cold War. The war was fought in other ways though, through containment and by proxy, both of which had devastating effects. In this paper, we will examine the Cold War’s conflicting ideologies, the strategies to win, and the effects on other nations caught in the middle.
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system where competition is encouraged in private business, which in theory, keeps prices reasonable and perpetuates market growth. Capitalism…show more content… saw communism as a threat to the free world. After fighting two wars and experiencing the Great Depression, the U.S. was in no position to challenge a country like the Soviet Union militarily. They could neither afford to allow the unchallenged spread of communism into countries that they had fought so hard to free from the grips of a dictatorship. The answer came in what was known as the Long Telegram. The author of the Long Telegram was George Kennan, a U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union. He studied the situation in the Soviet Union and first suggested a policy of containment after learning that communism pressures neighbors to adopt the ideology, and seeing evidence of that in Europe and China. The U.S. adopted the policy as the primary tool against the Soviet Union and the spread of communism, but the success of the policy is…show more content… During the Cold War the communist movement also began to appear in Central and South America. Feeling the expansion of communism growing closer to the borders of the U.S., the U.S. looked to another method of control. They decided to support the lesser of two evils and began backing dictatorships. While this did prevent the further spread of communism, it came at a great humanitarian cost. In the 1960s in Brazil, for instance, the U.S. backed a coup for what would turn out to be one of Brazil’s most brutal dictators, Castelo Branco. The U.S. provided training and financial support with the agreement that Branco would keep the communist movement at bay. Branco came through on his end, but only by killing and torturing all who opposed
