Write 5 page essay on the topic In his final inaugural address, President Roosevelt said: We can gain no lasting peace if we approach [the USSR] with suspicion.There was a lot of distrust and suspicio

Write 5 page essay on the topic In his final inaugural address, President Roosevelt said: We can gain no lasting peace if we approach [the USSR] with suspicion.

There was a lot of distrust and suspicion between America, the Soviet Union, its puppet allies, and America’s allies in the Cold War period. This distrust and suspicion persisted mainly because of the long enmity between different forms of government and Communism. The two sides had incompatible goals. The important defining feature of the Cold War was the race of nuclear arms between the two super powers and high levels of espionage. The great cause of concern for the different quarters was the nuclear weapons’ unchecked proliferation. In spite of the fact that there was no direct conflict between the two superpowers, both countries had ongoing proxy wars specifically in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Korea. The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 was the toughest moment that ended without being escalated into an intense warfare (Goldman and Stein). As a result of the Cold War, countries around the world were divided into First World countries, Second World countries, and Third World countries. The First World countries comprised America and its allies. The Second World countries included Soviet Union along with its allies whereas the Third World countries had no nuclear programs and were not allied with any of the two superpowers. This was essentially a psychological, political, and economic conflict between the superpowers. From 1947 to 1989, many regional hot wars happened between NATO, the USSR, America, China, and other allies. After the year 1960, China parted ways with the Soviet Union in order to establish its own alliances and to overpower the USSR in its capacity of the communist movement’s leader. During the Cold War, the tension fluctuated as the super powers went through different episodes of heightened conflict as well as of improved relations. The collapse of the overseas empire of the Soviet and the Berlin Wall’s fall marked the end of this tension on 11 November 1989. The Berlin airlift happened in the year 1948 as a result of the joint effort of the British and American air forces in response to the attempt made by Soviet to occupy Berlin entirely into the USSR. Although the airlift of Berlin surfaced as a peaceful solution to the immediate threat posed by Soviet, yet this was not supposedly the outcome. America had about 100 nuclear warheads at the time of Berlin airlift and was capable to deploy all of them. On the other hand, there was just one warhead with the USSR and it also lacked the mechanism of delivery. In addition to that, the USSR was staggered physically as well as economically whereas America was coming off its largest historic boom. “There are those who argued, then and now, that the United States should have used its immense tactical and economic superiority to batter the larger USSR into submission and, thus, avoid the Cold War in its entirety” (Taylor). The western democracies won the Cold War under President Ronald Reagan’s leadership who had the policy of rejecting the detente and relying upon the Rollback instead. Reagan’s decision of increasing the expenditure in military was a very important element and cause of this victory.