The Political Legacy Of The Cold War - 1447 Words

Every once in a while a new International world order is set. The first two events that had the biggest effect on international structure were World War I and World War II, the third was the Cold War. Though the Cold War did not end in a direct war, it caused the fall of the Soviet Union which shifted the world to a unipolar front – The United States of America. With the fall of the USSR, came the cementing of the United States geopolitical influence, new additions to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the continuation of military development and spending. The Cold War changed the course of many lives, and affected international relations to this day. This essay will address the political legacy of the Cold War. To do so, the†¦show more content†¦The advantage that the Soviet Union held was greater flexibility in its capacity to invest in the military due to it being a non-democratic country where no citizens could question expenditure, unlike Western democratic countries. While the USSR led people to believe that their armament program was defensive, the intelligence community found evidence that it was in fact purely offensive tactic. On the other hand, the USSR viewed the Western world and forces, as an ideological enemy of the Union that feel threatened by the success of communism. They felt that the West was liable to attack for purely ideological reasons (Mccgwire, 1987). Stalin, a political realist, prior to the cold war beginning would not comply with unrealistic American demands. As a socialist country that could not comply with capitalist demands from earlier in 1947, the USSR believed that the cold war was a w ar between capitalism and the success of Socialism. Both sides – the Western Allies and the USSR, had valid threat perceptions as they felt that the other side was liable to attack first. This was exacerbated by the deployment of Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missiles (SS20) in the 1980s in Western Europe. This reduced the warning time for a strike to a miniscule 5 minutes, and significantly elevated the risk of war breaking out by accident, or without thought, as there was no time for a proper decision making