The Cold War was not won on the battlefield by the United States but instead won through the economic side. When Ronald Reagan came into power as the United States 40th President his thoughts on economic growth being most effective by lowering the publics barriers to produce services will then in return help the consumers by being more supply at a lower price. This economic way of thinking was called "Reaganomics". It had four main foundations that involved the reduction of: government spending, federal income tax and capital gains tax, government regulation, and tightening the money supply to reduce inflation. The whole bases of Reaganomics was to use the United Staes strengths against the USSR. The Strategic Defence Initiative( Star Wars) was created to prevent missile attacks from Russia. Because of this idea of Star wars the US had installed into the Russians minds, they wasted extensive amounts of money trying to match the US and solve the problem, but the never did. Destroying their economy. This left the United States way a head of Russia with their economy. The US used their strength -money- against the Russians and prevailed in winning the Cold War through economics.
Detente was used in the cold war as an act to lessen the tension. There was four events that were involved in Detente: the Helsinki Accords, the Nuclear non- Proliferation Treaty, Ostopolitik, and the SALT talks. Out of these four the Nuclear non-Proliferation treaty was the most successful in lessening the tension during the Cold War. The Nuclear non- Proliferation Treaty created in 1968 was international. The idea was to stop more countries from creating nuclear weapons this in return would lessen the threat of nuclear war. Therefore the countries that had nuclear power was limited to five: United States of America, Russia, China, France, and UnitedKingdom. The non-proliferation treaty was a big aspect in lessening the cold war tension.
The United States fought in the Vietnam war because they wanted to stop the spread of communism, caused by their belief of the domino theory. They became involved due to a torpedo being fired at them. Even though there is no evidence that this attack ever occurred. The war ended up becoming a bombing match , ending with Vietnam having had more bombs dropped on it then used in the entire WWII. The US pulled out due to the image shown below. This image sends a negative image to the public. Since the US pulled out they failed to contain the spread of communism with in North Vietnam.
The domino theory did prevail in the fact that the other countries around Vietnam did turn communist, two being Laos and Cambodia. This could be because the US failed to confine Vietnam, but during the war Vietnam built trials through both of these countries showing they already supported the communist ideology. |
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