What are some cause and effects about the Cold War?

Question

I am doing a history project and we need some things to put on our poster about the cold war. It is supposed to be like a pic. with info about it and we need some that explain the cold war.

Answer 1

This is copied and pasted from someone else's question I answered several weeks ago, but it pretty much answers the same question. Here it is:

There are five main points to the Cold War:

For the purpose of simplification, the Soviet Union = Russia and Allies. Allies = U.S., U.K., France, ect...

The Cold War was not actually a war in which bullets were fired or bombs were dropped. It was more of a political and economic standoff between the U.S. and Soviet Union detailed below. Although the U.S. and Soviet Union never actually fought each other directly, they did so indirectly all over the world. The Soviet Union armed countries such as North Korea when they invaded South Korea, while the U.S. fought the North Koreans. Although we were not actually fighting Soviet Troops, we fought against their weapons. We did the same thing. The Soviets went to war in Afghanistan in the early 80's. The U.S. supplied their enemies in Afghanistan. These are only two examples of what happened repeatedly throughout the Cold War. Your five main points are outlined below.

1. The Cold War was a conflict in which the Soviet Union and United States competed for global hegemony. During World War II the Soviet Union and United States were allied against Nazi Germany (not because we liked each other, but because we both saw Hitler as the bigger threat). Following WWII Germany as we know it today was split in to East and West Germany. The Soviet Union occupied and controlled everything east of and including East Germany. Everything west of and including West Germany remained allied with the United States and remained free. Arguments over what Europe would look like after WWII was a large part of what the Cold War was about. The allies wanted a unified economically strong Germany as a trading partner. The Soviets wanted Germany to be fragmented and weak. If Germany became strong again, they might invade Russia again.

2. The Soviet Union transformed the countries in eastern Europe in to what are called "Satellite States." The Soviets had been invaded by western Europe numerous times in the past (Napoleon, WW1, WW2) and wanted to protect their borders. The Satellite States acted as a buffer zone. If someone decided they wanted to invade the Soviet Union, they would have to go through the Satellite states first, absorbing most of the attack and damage. In addition to the creation of Satellite States, the Soviets tried to export communism to other regions of the world. The U.S. obviously did not want communism to spread, because the U.S. was very anti-communist. Not only did communism not contain representative government, which was what we have always believed in, but it also took away basic freedoms of the people. The Soviets believed that communism would spread all over the world, therefore they supplied and aided communist revolutions, namely in Korea, China, Cuba, ect...

3. The United States wanted to contain communism. We did not want it to spread outside the Soviet Union. We provided economic aid in the form of the Marshall Plan to western Europe to keep their economies strong, and communism unattractive. In addition, we supplied Greece and Turkey against communist insurgents. We pledged to always help countries remain free of communism, no matter where they were in the world. This became known as the Truman Doctrine, otherwise known as containment. Containment meaning we wanted to "contain" communism and keep it from spreading. The Korean War is a good example of containment in action. When North Korea invaded South Korea, we aided South Korea in an effort to keep it free. We also had this theory known as "the domino theory." The domino theory stated that if one country fell to communism, one by one, other countries in the region would as well.

4. The U.S. wanted to keep the world free, so it would have markets for trade. (Make money). The Soviets wanted to export communism all over the world. This basic disagreement is the very essence of the Cold War.

5. The Arms Race. We got our first nuclear weapons in 1945. We had a Nuclear Monopoly and no one else dared stand up to the U.S. The Soviets got their Nukes in 1949. All of the sudden the U.S. and the Soviets had the ability to destroy each other. This idea became known as M.A.D. (Mutually Assured Destruction). If one country launched it's nukes at the other, the other would launch it's own nukes back. Both countries would be destroyed, so starting a nuclear war would be pointless because both countries would be destroyed. This is probably why nuclear war never occured (although it almost did several times, most notably during the Cuban Missile Crisis, in which the Soviets placed their own nuclear weapons in Cuba, 90 miles from the Florida coast). None the less, the U.S. and Soviets raced to build the biggest, best, and most weapons.

That's pretty much it. Hope it answered your question. I don't know of any good Cold War sites on the internet, but I would reccomend www.wikipedia.org. I wouldnt trust the actual facts in it, but to get a good idea about what the Cold War is about, it could help you out. Good luck.

Answer 2

The Cold War was the continuing state of conflict, tension, and competition that existed after World War II between the Soviet Union and its satellites and the powers of the Western world under the leadership of the United States from the mid-1940s to the early 1990s. Throughout this period, the conflict was expressed through military coalitions, espionage, weapons development, invasions, propaganda, and competitive technological development, which included the space race. The conflict included costly defense spending, a massive conventional and nuclear arms race, and numerous proxy wars; the two superpowers never fought one another directly. Although the Soviet Union, the United States, Britain and France were allied against the Axis powers during the last four years of World War II, disagreements existed both during and after the conflict on many topics, particularly over the shape of the post-war world. At the war's conclusion, most of Europe was occupied by those four countries, while the United States and the Soviet Union possessed the two most powerful military forces. The Soviet Union created an Eastern Bloc of countries that it occupied, annexing some as Soviet Socialist Republics and maintaining others as Satellite states that would later form the Warsaw Pact. The United States and various western European countries began a policy of "containment" of communism and forged myriad alliances to this end, including NATO. Several of these western countries also coordinated efforts regarding the rebuilding of western Europe, including western Germany, which the Soviets opposed. In other regions of the world, such as Latin America and Southeast Asia, the Soviet Union fostered Communist revolutionary movements, which the United States and many of its allies opposed and, in some cases, attempted to "roll back". Many countries were prompted to align themselves with the countries that would later either form NATO or the Warsaw Pact, though other movements would later emerge. The Cold War saw periods of both heightened tension and relative calm. International crises arose, such as the Berlin Blockade (1948–1949), the Korean War (1950–1953), the Berlin Crisis of 1961, the Vietnam War (1959–1975), the Soviet war in Afghanistan (1979–1989), NATO exercises in November 1983 and especially the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. There were also periods of reduced tension as both sides sought détente. Direct military attacks on adversaries were deterred by the potential for mutual assured destruction using deliverable nuclear weapons. The Cold War drew to a close in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. The United States under President Ronald Reagan increased diplomatic, military, and economic pressure on the Soviet Union, which was already suffering from severe economic stagnation. In the second half of the 1980s, newly appointed Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the perestroika and glasnost reforms. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, leaving the United States as the dominant military power, though Russia retained much of the massive Soviet nuclear arsenal. Good luck.

Answer 3

CAUSES: The disagreements of what should happen to Germany and Europe after WWII ended.

Different political ideologies: Capitalism vs. Communism.

EFFECTS: Led to nuclear arms race.
Also led to space arms race: Sputnik and NASA.

The use of Containment Policy by the U.S.

The Detente in the 1970s.

The Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Reuniting Germany and Europe as one in 1990.

The end of Communism and the USSR.

Answer 4

Iknow it was called the cold war because neither side was talking to each other...Like a cold shoulder

Answer 5

I love the first answer - but be sure to do your own research and talk to people as well! Learn from this, too, it's so important.