Cold War

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Cold War PropagandaThe Cold War never presented any real threat on America. It was nothing more than thepropaganda of two battling super powers. The two super powers involved in the Cold Warwere The United States of America and The Soviet Union. The two countries were constantlybattling over who is the most powerful on the planet. The supposed threats were meretechniques of propaganda used to scare the other countries public into believing theywere more powerful. Over and over again the U.S would flex it\'s muscles and then TheSoviet Union would flex it\'s muscles until eventually one country couldn\'t. The Cold Warlasted a very long time and it was fought through battles such as the Korean War andVietnam. Each battle split the country and the U.S would take a side and The Soviet Unionwould take a side and they would use the country as a battle ground. This was the onlyactual fighting that occurred. The Cuban missile crisis was an important event that took place during the cold war. Inthe Cuban missile crisis, America was fearing that The Soviet Union had certain missileinstalations in Cuba . The U.S found out about these missile installments from satelliteimagery that showed the missiles being transported to Cuba and show the missile sitesinside Cuba. With Castro\'s approval, the Soviet Union began building secret missile basesin Cuba. On October 16, President Kennedy was shown photographs of the missileinstallations in Cuba. (Rawnsley, 7) On the surface one would get scared by somethinglike this and that is exactly what The Soviet Union wanted to happen. The whole Cold warwas propaganda so by scaring the U.S into thinking they had missiles in Cuba gave themthe edge on the war. If The Soviet Union wanted to bomb the U.S they could have easilysnuck the missiles in and hidden them. They knew about the satellites and purposelyexposed the missiles. A naval blockade was imposedosed on Cuba to stop the constructionof the sites. On October 26, Krushchev sent a letter to Kennedy suggesting that the siteswould be dismantled if the United States gave its reassurance that it would not invadeCuba. (Whitton, 22) America\'s true leaders knew that this was never truly a threat to theU.S but to humor the citizens they did something about it. If the U.S did nothing thecitizens would get scared, even more so. The Soviets had a good strategy in using Cuba against the United States and there idea toget the missiles found worked out perfectly for them. The missiles never posed a threatto us, but just gave the Soviets an opportunity to flex there muscles at the UnitedStates. Another big instance of Cold War propaganda was in the Afghanistan situation. TheAfghanistan\'s had a communistic government which was supported by the Soviets. There wasa group opposing the communist government called the Mujaheaden. The Mujaheadens were arebel group who operated out of the mountains in Afghanistan. They wanted to abolish thecommunist government. The Mujaheadens were very hard to hit by the Soviets army becausethey were very mobile and were stationed in the mountains. The United States supportedthe Mujaheaden rebel group because it was against communism and The Soviet Union. In the Afghan war the U.S and The Soviet Union were fighting each other but it wasn\'ttruly there war and they weren\'t involved in a head on confrontation. The U.S was onlyinvolved in this war to fight communism. The U.S needed to fight in this war because ifthey didn\'t then The Soviet Union would gain a significant lead in the cold war. Becausethis war was fought in Afghan and neither the U.S nor The Soviet Union had any realreason to be fighting , it was all propaganda. They both wanted to become the super powerof the world and they both wanted there respective government system to prevail. The Cold war extended into space when in the Kennedy administration the U.S and TheSoviet Union took there battle of the super powers to the sky. The Soviet Union startedoff by putting there Sputnik into space. Shortly after a man named Yury Gargaran was thefirst to orbit Earth on April 12, 1961. Kennedy promised that with his new Apollo programwe would land a man on the moon before the decade is out.The Vietnam war was another instance of Cold War Propaganda. During the time of theVietnam war, the cold war was going on. The Vietnam war was between the north and thesouth. The north was supported by The Soviet Union. The Soviet Union gave weapons andsupplies to the North Vietnamese. Since The Soviet Union took the side of the North, theUnited States took the side of the South. The South was given supplies and weapons andthe U.S soldiers also fought. Communist victory in 1975 had profound ramifications forthe United States; it was not only a setback to the containment of communism in Asia buta shock to American self-confidence. (Bernhard, 16)The United States citizens disagreed with going to war in Vietnam because we really hadno business in the war. The reason we went into the war was because we were battling TheSoviet Union for the spot of the world super power and by letting the communism spreadthey would be losing there power. If the citizens had been more involved in the war thenmaybe the United States wouldn\'t have suffered such a loss. Again we see that the Sovietsare prevailing over the United States.Although the United States and The Soviet Union were fighting each other, it wasn\'t trulythere war. There was no head on confrontation between The Soviet Union and the U.S. so ina way this war was only propaganda to see who was more powerful. The Soviets flexed theremuscles and again the United States was drawn in. It is sort of like when someone triesto start a fight with you and if you back off you look like a wimp, but if you step up to the

plate you look like a big man. Well the U.S. didn\'t want to be the wimp.During the Korean War the U.S supported South Korea because of an invasion by NorthKorea. North Korea was supported by The Soviet Union and allied with China in this war.This was a big war because communism was spreading in Europe and Asia and the U.S wantedto stop it because if communist grew than the U.S would lose its power and then fall toThe Soviet Union in the cold war. In 1959 Cuban control went to Fidel Castro who was a communist. Fidel quickly took overthe U.S. oil refineries in Cuba and