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"AMER., RUSSIA & THE COLD WAR, 1945-1992" (WALTER LAFEBER).   Term Paper ID:21604 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Critical analysis of work on causes, effects, evolution & demise of conflict, economics, military, detente, propaganda, future.... More...

6 Pages / 1350 Words 1 sources, 3 Citations, MLA Format $24.00 Return to List of Papers

Paper Abstract: Critical analysis of work on causes, effects, evolution & demise of conflict, economics, military, detente, propaganda, future. Paper Introduction: This study will provide a critical analysis of Walter LaFeber's America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-1992. The study will argue that LaFeber gives a portrait of the Cold War, its origins, development and demise, which is comprehensive, fair, and insightful. LaFeber focuses on the role of the United States in the Cold War, but he cannot be said to be a biased reporter. He tries to discover the causes and effects of the Cold War from both sides, and he does this effectively, without blaming either side. He shows how the Cold War actually had its origins in the last century, when the United States and Russia met, one expanding westward and the other expanding eastward. Both sides in the Cold War had their own mixed motivations for their part in the conflict, which LaFeber sees as the result Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. The Soviets had suffered far more than the United States in the war. The problem with such a focus is that it ignores the fact that the Americans were involved in just as many activities which served their own self-interest and ignored the rights of indigenous people around the world. Both were willing to do whatever they needed to do to bring about the desired results. In both wars, the superpowers sacrificed so many of their own people that the wars became unpopular and were brought to an end. Would the United States create a world of capitalism and democracy, or would the Soviet Union shape a world of totalitarianism and socialism? Each side by that time simply had too much invested in too many ways to try to back out of the conflict. The Cold War had been in the making since the end of the 19th century, and the turbulence of the world after the war brought the conflict to a head: Which side would decide the nature of the world? The people of those nations died as substitutes for the people of the Soviet Union and the United States in the ideological struggle of the Cold War. We see in this coverage the problem in the book related to LaFeber's point of view. LaFeber's most important conclusion is that the Cold War has come to an end, and that the leaders of the world must be careful to ensure that the post-Cold War world is not worse than the Cold War world: The Russian and the American, once bitterly locked in Cold war, now agreed that if the world's people did not use "their minds" to solve the growing . The major point is that neither was right or wrong in a moral sense. they . It is likely that a scholarly work in the future will pinpoint those two wars as the primary reasons for the end of the Cold War. One conclusion of Lafeber's book is that the economic, political, strategic, ideological and military aspects of each side's involvement were so intertwined that once the Cold War was under way in earnest, stopping it was impossible. Neither side trusted the other, and they had had different conflicts between them for over half a century, even before the United States took action to prevent the success of the 1917 Russian Revolution. Both sides in the Cold War were operating according to their own self-interests, and both sides were generally willing to do almost anything and everything they had to do to outflank the other side, short of outright war with one another. Two exceptions to this rule, of course, were Vietnam and Afghanistan. . The concern with the takeover of Eastern Europe by the Soviet Union, and the loss of Third World nations to the Soviets, was more a matter of economics than liberty or democracy, as Truman made clear in a speech by Truman: The President frankly declared that if the expansion of state- controlled economies (such as the communists') was not stopped, and an open world marketplace restored for private businessmen, depression would occur and the government would have to intervene massively in the society (54). New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993.----------------------- 16 They recognized for the first time that the world had changed dramatically and that new strategies for dealing with the Third World had to be devised. Work Cited LaFeber, Walter. problems [of the world], then . Their foreign policies were so tied into the concept that the other side was pure evil, to have backed off from that position would have been to admit that their own vision of reality had been illusory. "the law of our members" (355). Because he focuses on the American side of the Cold War equation, at times we forget that American responses were only one side of that equation. The fact is that the American leaders, up to Truman, were guided by economic desires rather than fear of any military threat from the Soviet Union. He tries to discover the causes and effects of the Cold War from both sides, and he does this effectively, without blaming either side. . LaFeber seems to blame the leaders on both sides for creating a situation in which the Cold War could begin and flourish, and for keeping it going through misleading rhetoric aimed at their own people and at the world. This study will provide a critical analysis of Walter LaFeber'sAmerica, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-1992. Both were guilty of massive immoral actions around the world, though it is true that the Soviets were "more immoral" in mistreating their own people and the people under their control in Eastern Europe. The study will argue thatLaFeber gives a portrait of the Cold War, its origins, development anddemise, which is comprehensive, fair, and insightful. Both were pursuing goals which they saw as expressions of their self-interest. . could too easily resort to . Of course, that devising is still in the process of unfolding. For example, the author writes that the Americans helped bring detente to an end because they had become disillusioned with the actions taken by the Soviets which seemed to defy the spirit of detente: Soviet activities in Angola and Cuba, and continued repression of dissidents within Russia, had soured many Americans on the idea that detente could work (284). He shows how the Cold War actually had its origins in the last century, when the United States and Russia met, one expanding westward and the other expanding eastward. LaFeber ends his book with appropriate words from Gorbachev, himself since a casualty of changing political reality in what was once the Soviet Union. Instead, they staged wars around the world in Third World nations. With respect to the latter factor. LaFeber focuses on the role of the United States in the Cold War, but he cannot be said to be a biased reporter. Both hated and feared the other side, and both had to and did manipulate their own people with propaganda. The Soviet Union has collapsed, and the United States is increasingly aware of its reduced clout, if not its impotence, in affecting its goals around the world. LaFeber shows that the Cold War from the very beginning was the result of the conflict between the United States over how the world would be shaped after World War II. They were wounded in every sense, especially economically. Neither side is all-good or all-bad in LaFeber's view. LaFeber effectively covers the periods in which the two sides seemed to be leaning toward a lessening of tension, such as the decade of detente from 1966-1976. . LaFeber's major conclusion with respect to the future is that that future is as dangerous as any period in the Cold War, if not moreso. Both sides had spent obscene amounts of their national income on military expenditures which robbed their people of money which could and should have been spent on life-affirming programs. Both sides in the Cold War had their own mixed motivations for their part in the conflict, which LaFeber sees as the result of blunders and misperceptions on both sides. What Truman was saying, then, was that democracy depended on capitalism. America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-1992. Economics became the stated purpose behind the Cold war. . . . The logic behind the argument might have been flawed, but LaFeber makes clear that the United States, just as much as the Soviet Union, was capable of using any propaganda ploy to frighten its citizens into supporting further steps into the darkness of the Cold War. The leaders and people of the superpowers in both wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan for the first time had to accept that they were not as powerful as they had believed. In that statement, Gorbachev warns that "It would be a supreme tragedy if the world, having overcome [the Cold War], were to find itself once again in a 1914 model" (355), that is, in the chaos preceding World War I. Both sides had a tiger by the tail. However, on the other hand, he seems to paint an historical picture in which the Cold War appears to have been inevitable. For example, he exposes Truman's deception in scaring the American people after World War II at a time when the Soviets were too wounded to pose a threat. Perhaps that is LaFeber's point---that there is a certain amount of "inevitability" in such a huge phenomenon as the Cold War, but at the same time leaders do have a certain amount of freedom in the way they respond to that "inevitability." In any case, both sides' leaders seem to have taken almost every opportunity to escalate the tension. In other words, LaFeber is saying that unless the lessons of the Cold War are learned and applied to the "New World Order," the disruptions and wars around the world will be worse than those of the Cold War. LaFeber writes that after World War II the Soviet Union was far from being a threat to the United States. . In other words, Truman was saying that the personal freedoms of Americans could be put into serious jeopardy if the totalitarian policies of the Soviets were allowed to run rampant in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. The only reason that the Cold War did come to an end, of course, was that, essentially, the Soviet Union went bankrupt before the United States. However, the United States was spewing completely deceptive propaganda when they claimed throughout the Cold War that they were trying to protect the rights of poor helpless people all over the world, while the Soviets were merely trying to enslave people at home and abroad for purely evil purposes. 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