Monday, November 30, 2009

Post World War

Explain the ideological differences between Democracy, Capitalism, Communism and Socialism.



Democracy-There are two principles that any definition of democracy includes, equality and freedom. These principles are reflected by all citizens being equal before the law, and having equal access to power. A third common principle, though less measurable, is that all citizens are promised certain legitimized freedoms and liberties, which are generally protected by a constitution.



Capitalism is an economic and social system in which capital, the non-labor factors of production (also known as the means of production), is privately controlled; labor, goods and capital are traded in markets; and profits distributed to owners or invested in technologies and industries.

Communism is a social structure and political ideology in which property is commonly controlled. Communism is a modern political movement that aims to overthrow capitalism via revolution to create a classless society where all goods are publicly owned.


Socialism refers to various theories of economic organization advocating public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources, and a society characterized by equal access to resources for all individuals with a method of compensation based on the amount of labor expended.

Communism and Socialism lets the people of the country have equal access to the wealth of the country while Democracy and Capitalism allows individuals to be more wealthy than the others according to how they work

Info from wikipedia.org


Explain the origins of Cold War.

The Cold War began as a result of suspicious that the democratic west had about the USSR and vice versa.
After 1945 the USSR feared a Western invasion of her new satellites and the west feared the spread of Marxism.

Relations between the major powers got worse at the end of the Second World War .
This occurred especially at Yalta (February 1945), Potsdam (July 1945) and Paris (1946). At Paris, Molotov refused to accept the west’s ideas about not taking reparations and about wanting free elections in Eastern Europe.

Economic Origins
Official America anti-Soviet policy began with the Truman Doctrine (March 1947) where American aid was offered to European countries which bordered onto Communist countries. This was extended by the Marshall Plan (June 1947) which offered aid outside Europe. This was designed to stop the spread of Communism – called CONTAINMENT.
The USSR set up Comminform (Cominform) in September 1947, which Stalin said was a news agency, but really it was a means of Russifying the economic policies of the eastern blob countries.
In June 1948, the three western powers united their zones with a new deutschmark. This financial union was the forerunner of a political union (3 zones = West Germany).


The Arms Race
The USSR was annoyed not to know about America’s atom bomb (1945). The USSR gained the atom bomb in 1949 and both sides began to stockpile arms.

Info from http://www.rpfuller.com/gcse/history/8.html


Was Cold War a war?

The Cold War is not an actual war. Countries involved(mostly USSR and USA) expressed the conflict through military coalitions, strategic conventional force deployments, a nuclear arms race, espionage, proxy war, propaganda, and technological competition, such as the space race.


Info from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_war

Describe the impacts of the Cold War.



It led to many bloody civil wars across countries as countries(like USA) tried to prevent communism from spreading.


What was the peak of the Cold War (Germany divided)?

The peak of the Cold War was the erection of the inner German border. The Berlin Wall was use to separate the the West and East Berlin and to prevent the clash of idealogy. For example, the communist party would want to prevent their people to have any ideas of democracy. This occurs because of the big idealogy differences between communism and democracy.(i.e. USA and USSR rivalry)

How and why did the the Cold War ended?

During the 1970's and early 1980's, the Soviet economy was deteriorating under the cumulative effects of a centralized bureaucratic system, the burdens of an increasingly costly arms race, and a failed war in Afghanistan. A new generation of leadership came to power in 1985 in the person of Gorbachev. He was determined to end the Cold War and to bring economic and political reform to the Soviet Union. He initiated dramatic new agreements with the United States, involving unilateral concessions in the armaments race. He also brought an end to Soviet support of client governments in Eastern Europe and in Cuba. He relaxed the police state repression in the Soviet empire and took steps to introduce a democratic political process.

These initiatives rapidly improved relations with the United States and brought an end to the Cold War. What Gorbachev had not anticipated, however, was that, without the domination of the police and a monopoly of power in the hands of the Communist Party, the Soviet empire would collapse into 16 different national parts. Nationalism, always a potent force in the modern world, brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union by 1991.



Info from http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/westn/coldwar.html

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