America as Superpower—Confrontation in a Nuclear Age (1947-Present)

Assignment 3: America as Superpower—Confrontation in a Nuclear Age (1947-Present)

Cold War strategic concerns: Containment, Cold War confrontations: Berlin Airlift; Korean War;

Post-cold War strategic concerns: WMD. Post-Cold War confrontations: First Persian Gulf War

HIS 105: American History After 1865

Introduction– Cold War confrontations: Berlin Airlift; Korean War

My cold ward choice was: Berlin Airlift; Korean War; Vietnam War; Cuban Missile Crisis, the Cold War was a long fight between the United States and the Soviet Union that began in the result of the submission of Hitler’s Germany. The two superpowers slowly built up their zones of influence, dividing the world into two opposing quarters. In Western Europe, the European union process began with the support of the United States, while the countries of Eastern Europe became dependencies of the USSR. From 1947 onwards, the two factions, employing all the devices at their direction for intimidation and destruction, clashed in a long diplomatic and ideological fight punctuated by crises of altering power (J. Arnold, 2012).

Introduction– Terrorism & Persian Gulf War

Preventing International Terrorism and the Rogue States ultimately proves that poor offensive and defensive strategies have led US policymakers to pursue open-ended policies without sufficient concern for supply trade-offs, overreach, and unintended outcomes. (J. Lebovic,2007).

Persian Gulf War, also called the Gulf War, 1990–91, an international dispute that was triggered by Iraq’s attack of Kuwait on August 2, 1990. Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, organized the invasion and occupation of Kuwait with the apparent aim of getting that nation’s vast oil reserves, canceling a massive debt Iraq owed Kuwait and expanding Iraqi power in the region.

HISTORY AND ISSUES

Containment was a post-WWII strategic policy of the Western allies intended to prevent the expansion of Soviet communism, a global strain that continued until the destruction of the USSR. The airlift was their response to Soviet closure of ground routes to Western-occupied parts of Berlin. Blocking Western access through Russian-controlled East Germany was one of many tactics tried to force the West to cede total control of Berlin. The airlift showed Western resolve to maintain further territorial attack, a vital component of the containment strategy.

Arriving at the end of the Cold War, Bush determined that such open aggression could not be allowed to stand, or no small country would be supported. Bush soon persuaded the Saudis that they needed U.S. security and should provide a platform area for U.S. forces to oppose Hussein’s troops from Kuwait unless he pulled out by the deadline of Jan. 15 ( A.Greenblatt, 2011).

COMPARISON When World War II reached the end in 1945, the Allied powers held union conferences at Yalta and Potsdam to determine how they would split up Germany’s territories. The agreements split the broken nation into four Allied occupation zones: They gave the eastern part of the country to the Soviet Union and the Western region to the U.S. and Great Britain. In turn, those countries agreed to provide a small piece of their territories to France.

Trying to keep Berlin united in the heart of the Soviet zone and exposing what they named the Anglo-American policy of acting without consideration, the USSR reacted to this initiative in 1948 by asking a total siege of the Western sectors of Berlin. The city remained in the Soviet zone, but the Americans, the British, and the French-built in their title zones. Access to Berlin by road, rail, and water was difficult. Food supplies and electricity got cut. The introduction of the DM in the Western sectors of Berlin was the official cause. (R.Rotberg, 2004).

CONCLUSION

At the end of the Second World War, the U.S., British, and Soviet military forces divided and occupied Germany. Also separated into occupation zones, Berlin located far inside Soviet-controlled eastern Germany. The United States, United Kingdom, and France established western divisions of the city, while Soviet troops commanded the east sector.

Though the Gulf War recognized as a crucial victory for the alliance, Kuwait and Iraq underwent tremendous damage, and Saddam Hussein not forced from power. Designed by coalition leaders to be a limited war fought at minimum cost, it would have lingering consequences for years to come, both in the Persian Gulf region and around the world. In the direct aftermath of the war, Hussein’s forces ruthlessly defeated rebellions by Kurds in the north of Iraq and Shi’ites in the south, which did not end for long.

Containment is a geopolitical important foreign policy sought by the United States, which was later used to explain the geopolitical containment of the Soviet Union in the 1940s. The strategy of containment is best comprehended as a Cold War foreign policy of the United States and its allies to stop the range of communism following the end of World War II.

Sources

5. Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Practice, and Science

• https://www.britannica.com/event/Berlin-blockade
• https://www.history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/berlin-airlift
• https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/short-history/firstgulf
• https://www.hudson.org/research/11787-the-first-gulf-war-and-its-aftermath