The Cold War And Long Peace Between The United States And The Soviet Union

The cold war is a geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union which commenced shortly after the cease of world war 2. All throughout world war 2, the two superpowers (The Soviet Union and the United States) fought collectively as allies but their relationship was a disturbing one. I agree that during the period of the cold war the ‘long peace’ was maintained.[the long peace is the period in which no major wars (like the world wars) took place.].The timeline of the long peace is from 1945 to this date.

Primarily the berlin blockade (which occurred in 1948) became the primary open manifestation of the East-West confrontation. As stated by means of Norman Lowe[1] ‘The purpose of the Berlin barricade was to force the West to withdraw from West Berlin by lessening it to starvation point’. A consequence of this was that Berlin was completely cut out from the United States. Robert McMahon [2] disclosed that ‘Subsequently, the United States together reacted by initiating around-the-clock carrier of supplies and fuel to the two hundred thousand inhabitants in West Berlin which turned out to be one of the foremost storied, and tension-filled, scenes of the early Cold War.’ The Berlin airdrop exercise’ Gary. B Nash[3] said ‘ included over 200,000 flights in one year, providing West Berliners up to 8,893 tons of fuel and food each day ’. Another article by Lynn Heinzerling[4] expressed that planes carrying tons of nourishment arrived at the Templehof airplane terminal at 8-minute interims. This ended up pleasing a lot of residences in Berlin and prevented mass death due to starvation. The Soviet Union eventually making the realization that a blockade is no longer efficient, lifted the blockade on 12th May 1949. Hence as in this period, no bloodshed took place we can consider the start of the cold war as the long peace.

Another major event that led to a confrontation between the communists and capitalists was the Korean War. The Korean war started on June 25, 1950, when a few 75,000 officers from the North Korean People’s Armed force poured over the 38th parallel, the boundary between the Soviet-backed Demotratic People’s Republic of Korea to the north and the pro-Western Republic of Korea to the south.This was the first encounter of the two superpowers which included military power. Though this was a border dipute between North Korea and South Korea.