Cold War Practices 1

Generally, when we talk about and analyze wars, the conflicts can be broken into to three categories. Caused, Practices and Effects. This breakdown allows us to cover most aspects of the war while also providing a chronological base for our understanding. As we’ve discussed in the previous article, the Cold War doesn’t have a set time stamp. This means it is up to us to consider what would count as the practices of The Cold War. So instead of focusing on Practices, let’s start by looking at the nature of the war to guide our understanding of how this conflict developed.

The concept of containment is one we must understand when talking about this war. It is a policy that was issued by the American government, and it basically tried to limit (or contain) the spread of communism around the world. The US also issued the Marshall Plan early after WWII ended. Enacted in 1948 the Marshall Plan, also known as the ERP (European Recovery Program), sent support in the form of material goods and money to destroyed European countries. Of course, there was a sense of propaganda involved with this, as this program was aimed to put Americans in favor for these newly developing countries. However, the Soviet Union did not particularly like that America was gaining such popularity with Europe, the Soviet Union wanted Europe to follow its lead and adopt communist regimes. We can already see that there are tensions present that were not around when the US and the Soviet Union worked together to defeat Nazi Germany.

Another key characteristic of the Cold War was the arms race. Both the Soviet Union and the US wanted to gain military superiority in case another war broke out. This caused for there to be massive government spending on developing atomic bombs. There was an ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation around the world, so much so that many American households in the 1960s built bomb shelters and had regular drills to prepare for such attacks.

It should have become clear by now that this was not a conventional war. It was fought in many arenas, the two sides both desperately trying to out-do the other. This constant back and forth was not even limited to Earth. The space race provided another field for competition. In 1957 the Soviets launched the Sputnik missile. At this stage in history, space was even more of a mystery than it is today. Americans became paranoid that they were being spied on by Sputnik and launched their own missile in 1958 called the Explorer I. The same year NASA was created and even more government spending was dedicated to space exploration. Of course, knowing that both sides sought superiority, it is no surprise that there was an attempt to explore the military potential had in space. After missiles, it was men who were next to endeavor into this unknown terrain. The Soviets launched the first man into space in April 1961, followed by the American astronaut in May of 1961. The space race cooled down when the USA put a man, Neil Armstrong, on the moon in 1969. This boosted morale for the USA and proved to most American people that their system was far superior to the Soviet Unions.

I have complied a timeline, which can be seen on the infographic here. It is useful to have a visual aid to guide our learning, because seeing the order in which events took place can ensure a clear chronology in our head.

In the next article, we will continue looking at some more important aspects of the Cold War.