The cold war American History Top

Looking back over the span of centuries that makes up American history, it's easy to point to major military engagements that represent the country's major wars. From World War II to the Civil War to Korea to World War I, America has been involved in many military engagements and won all but a few of them. But one of the strangest and longest wars that America entered into was the one called the "Cold War." For many in America today, the Cold War was a fact of life for decades. The reason it was the Cold War was because there was no battlefield, no armies deployed, no body counts, and no major clashes to report. Instead, it was a long period of quiet hostility between the United States and the Soviet Union that lasted from the end of World War II until the early 1990s. The strange thing was that the Cold War grew out of our relationship with the Soviet Union during World War II, which was a relationship of friendship. But the seeds of "conflict" were in place by the end of this terrible war. With the presence of nuclear technology, the concept of a "superpower" was born. This in itself was not a source of tension until the Soviet Union developed the bomb  and a long cold pause ensued in which both nations trained thousands of these weapons on each other to warn each other never to consider detonating these weapons. It was a staring contest that lasted nearly fifty years and created a huge strain on both economies. Both countries had to maintain "parity" in their nuclear weapons so that neither country received more than the other, thus throwing off the balance of power and giving one combatant an unfair advantage. It was a strange logic in that both countries had enough weapons to destroy the Earth many times over but still insisted on "parity" during the Cold War. It was clear that no battle between the Soviet Union and America could ever be tolerated. The potential result of deploying these weapons had the power to destroy life on planet Earth. However, neither country was ready to lay down their arms and begin the process of making peace with the other. So the guns kept pointing at each other, day after day, year after year, for fifty years. So instead of directly fighting battles with each other, the two countries fought through small wars around the world. The Soviet Union, in cooperation with China, happily contributed to the humiliating loss suffered by the United States in Vietnam. But the United States then turned around and armed the Afghan Mujahideen, leading to the defeat of the Soviet Union in its occupation of the country. From proxy wars, space races, and occasional clashes like the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Cold War continued for decades, testing the will and determination of both countries to never look away and give the other an advantage. Finally, the strain on the economies of both countries took its toll in the early 1990s, especially in the Soviet Union, as the stress of maintaining such an expensive and unproductive war forced the Soviet economy to collapse and the empire crumbled. The United States won the Cold War by sheer will to endure and stubborn refusal to yield. An element of the American spirit is rarely talked about, but the Soviets learned to their own disaster not to try. Hopefully, no other "superpower" will ever think they are equipped to test it again.