America the brave.

During the cold war, communist Russia tried to be better than America! But in the end they found out that red, white, and blue always come out on top. We went through a lot before we became enemies. When our beloved FDR died, Truman came into office. When it came to Truman's opinion of what to do with Germany, Stalin wanted nothing to do with it. He thought our president was stupid and didn't like him. So we obviously didn't like the U.S.S.R. from the beginning. But it grew worse when they were trying to influence other countries to begin communist! The Soviet Union was messing with the wrong super power. We desperately tried to save China, and Vietnam from becoming communist but we soon failed... It was even worse when they were able to copy our H-Bomb and A-Bomb. Then they even beat us to race! when we felt as if all was lost and we were falling short, they sent missiles to Cuba. But we had enough! We surrounded Cuba and told them to move their missiles and we'd move ours from Turkey. They realized we meant business and we were not going to back down.nearly 50 years later in 1991, we officially ended the Cold War. Russia's economy was falling apart and we were beating them at every thing (when it comes to competition). Now in 2010, we can be proud to be an American, because in the time of adversity against a strong force, we can be called, "one of the greatest counties" in the world.

The cold war today.

Although the cold war was several years ago, there are some good and bad lasting effects. We got a lot of things from the cold war. Because of the competition between America and Russia, we made and found a lot of new technology, weapons, medicines and more. We built our country economically, financially, and militarily. Because of our need to one-up them and them to one-up us, the "nuclear weapon" was created. We've all heard of the H-bomb and the A-bomb, but after we made those, we kept making bigger and better weapons until America and Russia today own 90% of the world's nuclear weapons. Good thing we're not enemies anymore... Recently, the U.S. and Russia signed Russia and U.S. Sign Nuclear Arms Reduction Pact, which cut the 2 countries nuclear weapons in half! Although the Cold war is behind us we could still see a little "we'll only do it when you do" as we signed this pact.

Cold War Tensions

There were a lot of cold war tensions that had their effect in the cold war. Some involved invents, what people said, or the people themselves. One major event was the H bomb. America ended the war in the pacific with the A-bomb, and later the Russians learned how to make it. So we tried to overpower them with the H-bomb with over 60 times the power of an A-bomb. But less than a year later they were soon able to create one as well, so their eyes of competition looked somewhere else. Another major event, was the space race. The USA's and Soviet Union's competition rose even more when it came to getting to space first. This time, America was behind with the launch of the Russian satellite Sputnik. For a while, Americans' heads looked down to the ground in defeat from losing to the Soviet Union. One major individual involved was senator McCarthy. He was known for accusing people of being communist. He would accuse senators, people, and soldiers, which eventually lead to his downfall. Because of him, America's tensions were high. Another incident was the U-2 incident. We were sending over planes to take pictures of Russia and find out information. The soon found out and Dwight D. Eisenhower promised we would stop. We continued anyway and the Russians shot down the pilot and captured him. But what really drove the wedge between Russia and the USA the most was the Korean war and China's civil war. In both wars, the two countries were on different sides. America had a belief in containment, or containing communism so that it doesn't spread into other countries. Russia had the opposite view and wanted to spread communism. Because of these five influences tensions between the US and Russia grew.

America and Democracy, Russia and Hipocracy

A time where the two super powers, allies against the Nazis, soon grew apart competing over everything. America an the Soviet Union were far from friends after WW2. It all started in the late 1940's and the early 1950's. America believed in containment, containing communism so that it wouldn't spread around the world. Russia tried to spread communism, which was one more reason we didn't like them. We did all we could to protect liberty, life, justice, and the world. This war continued through China, Korea, and Cuba. "The Cold War isn’t thawing; it is burning with a deadly heat. Communism isn’t sleeping; it is, as always, plotting, scheming, working, fighting." -Richard Nixon