LAWLzoR

I'm back, and I hope you're ready to talk about the Cold War!

The Cold War is easier to think of as an era, because the Cold War itself isn't a war, despite its name. That isn't to say many battles and wars weren't fought and lives lost. The wars in Vietnam and Korea were serious too. During this era, it was one of the only wars between ideologies: Communism versus Capitalism. The US and NATO saw the Soviet Union's spread of communism as a threat to free markets, and the Soviet Union saw the US's Marshall Plan and rebuilding of Japan as a threat against communism and means of spreading their markets (which we were spreading our markets btw).

This era is a very serious era between the US and the Soviet Union. This wasn't just silly paranoia. Both sides wanted the other side to adopt their own ideology. The Soviet Union wanted as many countries as possible to adopt communism and other policies the Soviet Union adopted, and the US wanted as many countries to adopt capitalism and a more or less democratic form of government (which most governments we propped up weren't. I'll talk about it later in this lesson). This meant that we were classified into three worlds that we don't use too much, or very little of.

There was the First World - the US, Western Europe, Australia, and any place that adopted democracy and capitalism.
There was the Second World - The Soviet Union, its satellites, Cuba, and any place that adopted communism.
Then, the Third World - Everyone else.

The reason why we don't use Second and Third is because there's no true communist state and most of them are moving towards capitalism and democracy, even China. We don't use Third World because it lumps together a lot of people that are very different in their own way.

Also, you might be asking yourself "Why was there so much hassle? Democracy and capitalism is the right choice!" the thing is, is that at the time, the world was torn up because of the second World War. Many governments were fascist at the time of the second World War because they saw how democracy was so slow after the first World War and during the economic collapse. They saw democracy or any form of it as inefficient. Then after the second World War, fascism was at a decline because the big fascist powers were defeated in war. The world saw communism as the only answer to save them from poverty, corruption, and starvation.

But this wasn't just any era. It was the first "war" where destruction of the human species was entirely possible. If you include pre-history (before writing basically), you have yourself about 10,000 years in total of human history. We've had atomic/nuclear bombs for 69 of those years. So it's still new, and still a big threat. I'm sure that some of your grandparents might remember the news of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The same reason as to why we could all be dead is the reason why we're not. Think about it this way: You have yourself a weapon that could destroy entire cities, and kill thousands if not millions of people in a larger range. The enemy has that as well. If you send any military advancement to your enemy, they'll rain nukes on you until you are no more. That's what the USA and Soviet Union went through during the Cold War, and is the reason why we have M.A.D. which stands for "Mutually Assured Destruction".

M.A.D. was a program in which the US and the SU (Soviet Union) agreed to reduce the size of their nuclear arsenal, in order to maintain safety of both nations. Because as much as we hated communism and the spread of it, we didn't want to die in the process of stopping communism. Speaking of which, now's a chance we get to learn at the US's dirtier part of history: The US involvement in Latin America.

The US was already involved in Latin and Central America even before World War II broke out in Europe, so we already had our fair share of military coups and military involvement in Latin and Central America because we needed to protect our markets and companies' monopolies on mainly fruit. Fun Fact: the term used for countries who United Fruit Company (today known as "Chiquita") and other banana companies had monopolies and almost complete control over were called "Banana Republics". Those places were practically controlled by companies and corporations with the aid of the US military and navy.

But that's not all! When the US saw Latin and Central America start leaning towards communism, the US sent troops to many countries to try and stop those elections, or overthrow those leaders in exchange for leaders we prefered, most of whom were fascist. For example, Flugencio Batista was a fascist reformer in Cuba before Fidel Castro and "Che" Guevera overthrew him in exchange for a communist government (btw: Communism is a form of economy. When I say "communist government", I mean the government has adopted communism as its official system of economy). An example of government that we didn't get involved was Juan and Eva Perón in Argentina. They were a fascist government that got the approval of the people and ruled for a good amount of time in Argentina. Why didn't we topple over the fascist government? Because they weren't communist, and we didn't want to risk it.

So, the Soviet Union pressures its neighbors to go communist, and the US pressures its neighbors to go capitalist. During this time, the Soviet Union was seen as a definite winner in the Third World, because it promised so much more than capitalism. Capitalism was (and by some, still is) considered greedy and one-sided. Communism attracted the workers because of the benefits they would get, even though they're "lowly laborers".

However, even though the Soviet Union had a good possibility of winning in the Third World, there was one major event that stopped the Soviet Union completely. It was mainly the breaking of the Berlin Wall. People knew that a wall was constructed around West Berlin, and that's why the breaking of it was so effective of ending the Soviet Union. The people were uprising in the Soviet Union and its satellites, and Gorbechev opened up the government a bit with Glasnos and Paristroyka. This was basically less censoring by the government, and more autonomy for the people, and all of this more democratic stuff for the people. This gave the Second World a view of the richness and plentifulness(?) of the First World. This led to the ultimate destruction of the Soviet Union.

But why does this matter today? Well, the US still has an embargo on Cuba. Russia today is (probably) invading Ukraine because of its leaning towards entering NATO. Except for south of Siberia, Russia doesn't have many allies next to it. Estonia, Lithuania, and the Ukraine (technically) are part of NATO. That's 3 out of the 4 neighbors Russia had to its west. I would understand if Russia felt a tad threatened if NATO (who I think they still see as an enemy) started "invading" their neighbors. Not an excuse for invading Ukraine, but whatever.

The Cold War is also why a lot of countries are moving towards democracy and capitalism. They saw how the Soviet Union fell under communism and heavy socialism, and don't want to lose their country basically. You wouldn't want your country in peril would you? So what will happen now that we live in the aftermath of this era? Perhaps Russia will regain territory it lost after the Soviet Union fell. Perhaps Russia will join NATO, or perhaps become more democratic after this bit of not-as-democratic...ness...? It's difficult to predict things accurately, which is why historians and people who are experts in this sort of thing don't say "This this this and this will happen" they say "I predict" or "I THINK that..." or something along those lines. All we can do is see what happens, and hopefully clean up after our parents.

Thank you for reading this lesson. Please do suggest future lessons!