What events started and ended the Cold War?

Answer 1

RESPONSE 1

Stalin started the Cold War by invading Poland and reneging on his promise to allow free elections there. This was followed by Soviet occupation of much of the rest of Eastern Europe, as well as aiding communist expansion in Asia.

RESPONSE 2

Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War by following through on his promise to stand up to and to outspend the Soviets in the Arms Race. The Soviets realized Reagan said what he meant and meant what he said. When he proposed to build SDI or Missile Defense, some of the press laughed, but the Soviets saw in Reagan a track-record of following through on his commitments, so they raised the white flag.

The Cold War began in a series of events from the conferences of the Big Three in 1943-45 to the complex events of the post-war era, in which both sides contributed. In any case, the Cold War began because the U.S. would not allow the Soviets a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, and because the Soviets took a series of aggressive actions to expand their areas of control and influence all over the World.

The Cold War ended not because of Reagan's actions: his increased armament only antagonized the USSR and intensified the Cold War. The Cold War ended because a reformist faction of the Communist Party came to power in the USSR, with Andropov, and then again with Gorbachev, because the old-guard, and just plain old, Soviet leaders kept dying. Gorbachev, from a younger generation, had a much more critical attitude toward the USSR and was much more open-minded, educated, intelligent, and worldly than any other previous leader - even more than Reagan, too.

There was, however, one other group responsible for the end of the Cold War: the peoples of Eastern Europe and the USSR, who organized and protested at great personal risks. Their protests, and Gorbachev's acceptance of their roles, brought about the end of the Cold War, not U.S. arms deployments, which may have delayed the whole process.

RESPONSE 3

The origins of the Cold War came from a lot of things. One of these, for example, was when Lenin took Russia out of World War I in 1919. This left the West with a lot more to do. Also, just the ideologies on their own led to a very strong rivalry among the superpowers. According to communism, there is an ongoing inevitable worldwide revolution that will occur. This means that the world will turn communist. This is what the USSR and the US believed, which is why the latter was afraid of the Soviets and put a lot of work into breaking it down. The reason as to why the US was involved with the Marshall Plan, Korean War, Vietnam War, etc. was to hold communism back.

When Reagan upped the defense spending, the Soviets tried to keep up. When forced to choose between guns and food, the Soviets ALWAYS chose guns. However, this was an arms race that their economy just could not support without their people suffering extreme hardships. Their economy simply wasn't strong enough to maintain the grip on their satellites. They really had no choice but to let their satellites go. On the other hand, if the U.S. hadn't forced the USSR into upping the ante on defense spending, perhaps they would have had the resources to maintain their control over their satellites for a few more years.

President Nixon wrote a book THE REAL WAR. It was published in 1980. It recommended that the U.S. increase defence spending massivly and that if we did there was no way the Soviets could keep up and would in fact collapse.

It is amazing to me that a published volume gets no credit.

Nixon also recommended the U.S. stay out of the Middle East. At the time the book was written 15 of the 23 Muslim nations had been overthrown in the prior 10 years or so.

Nixon was probably aware of the siege of Vienna in 1683 when the invading army of the Ottoman empire asked for the keys to that city, citing their treatment of a city who had recently surrendered to their army and had in fact been massacred.