The Cold War And The Soviet Union - 1858 Words

Though the Cold War was mainly between the two super powers, the United States and the Soviet Union, it also encompassed their European allies, split by the Iron Curtain. It divided the world into the Warsaw pact and the NATO, cementing Europe’s role in the Cold War though its alliances. The constant threat of the nuclear weapons meant that the Cold War became more psychological war rather than of military actions1. .The United States developed their nuclear weapons to strengthen their own military potential after WWII, but the Soviet Russia took this to be more an offensive tactic after the bombs the devastation of the atomic bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The Cold War then largely became an arms race, due to the†¦show more content†¦This brought together Great Britain, France, Italy, Canada, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and Portugal together with the United States, creating N.A.T.O (North Atlantic Treaty Organis ation). This created a powerful alliance that threaten or contained the USSR’s power, which made them bring together all the Soviet bloc countries it dominated in Eastern Europe into the Warsaw Pact 2. With the Soviets creating and successful testing their first atomic bomb sooner than the Americans expected, it meant that the Americans had lost the strategic upper hand. The United States could no longer say that they had the power advantage from nuclear bombs, so set about creating more deadly weapon – ‘the H-Bomb’. Due to the threat of nuclear weapons, this stopped any involvement from the United States during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, that Russia crushed. The United States supported the ‘liberation of captive peoples’ 3within communist controlled areas, yet were unwilling to involve themselves in yet another war. (2) Due to the losses Europe experienced, Russia and the United States were on a power stage above the rest of the world, due to nuclear proliferation. Nuclear proliferation is ‘the spread of nuclear weapons, either by their acquisition by more states or other actors (horizontal proliferation), or their accumulation by established nuclear states