HIS 359
Yaolee Chen
Midterm (about the Cold War)
Robert McCoy

Cold War is the term given to the competition, conducted through means short of direct military conflict, between the United States and the Soviet Union since World War II. Its root back to the early 20th century when the Russians were unable to catch up the American Open Shop System. In 1917, because the Bolsheviks triumph in Russia, the government feared that the U.S. capitalism replaced the ideology of their communist system; unfortunately, the stories went as what the Soviet Union had been afraid of; that is, the capitalism is replacing the communists. The earth had caught a cold right after the Second War. A prescription of the U.S. policy had turned the earth into a normal and healthy condition by the end of the 20th century. The self-determination was the essential elements of this prescription.

The medication of the General Automobile Company of the 1920s by the Americans was a good prescription. The rival of the GMAC was the Ford Company. In order to produce more, Henry Ford disallowed the employees to talk, to have conversation, or to listen to the music during the work. A child whose father worked in the company witnessed that his father was extremely tired after work that his father was not able to talk, to eat or even to drink a glass of water right back from the work at home. By which means, a human being was used like a machine. The market of the Ford Company sold only one style and one color of car, which was Ford Model-T black car. This was a symbol of the Russian political; in Russian, people drove only one style and one color of car because the communist government believed that the people did not have the right of their own properties; and eventually, the people of Russians did not have the rights to chose the various cars for themselves, of different colors and different styles. The GMAC on the other hand produced different colors and styles of cars. The prices for the cars of GMAC were a little higher; but it met the demands of the markets. The company allowed customs to loan for a car. People in general prefer to have different colors and styles of the cars they want, so they borrowed the money from the other people and got the cars they really wanted. The self-determination allowed people to have the rights to choose the cars they wanted because they had the rights of the properties on how to spend their money. After World War II, to meet the demands of the markets, Ford Company had to produce different colors and different styles of cars to face the competition. By which history of the U.S. of the early 20th century, we have seen the Russian communism was too idealized, and we have seen the self-determination approached to the human natural and applied to the realities. Therefore, the medication of GMAC was a healthy shot to the earth as Truman's Doctrine and Marshall Plan had said that the U.S should support the free and independent countries; in a term of what Walter Lippmann had talked about the containing statement was that the U.S. allied with all countries that disagreed with the Soviet Union.

The continuing wars in Europe were a symptom of the illness. Disagreements over post war plan first centered on Central and Eastern Europe. Having lost 29 million dead in the war and twice suffered German invasion through Poland in thirty years, Stalin's Soviet Union was determined to use its Red Army to control Poland, dominate the Balkans, and destroy Germany's capacity to start another war. The United States, led after April 1945 by President Harry S. Truman, was equally determined to shape the postwar world according to principles laid down by Roosevelt after 1941: self-determination (in such nations as Poland), equal economic access (as in the Balkans), and a rebuilt capitalist Europe that could again serve as a hub in world affairs. The post-1945 cold war began in Europe, but it quickly spread. In 1946, the Red Army units refused to leave Iran (which the three Allies had occupied since 1942). In Greece, communist-led insurgents threatened to over throw the corrupt, British-led, monarchical government. The British told Truman that they lacked the resources to provide more help in February 1947. To run the story short, in 1947, the military and economic supports of the capitalists were on the trials. But the post-war diplomats had turned the trials into the victories.

George Kennan in his telegram of 8,000 words argued that the Soviets had to be contained using unalterable counterforce at every point, until either the breakup or the gradual mellowing of Soviet power occurred. This was like the U.S. political of business in the 1920s. The containing statement, first, were given the countries the equal opportunities to purchase the capitalism that the countries, Poland, Greek, Turkey, Taiwan, Korea, Vietnam for example, had the equal economic opportunities to prosper; and second, the statement was using a psychology to stimulate the appetizer of the buyers that the post-war U.S. sending free food to the countries to say that we were good and they were evil that they slay the wealthy person and we fed the poor. Third, the containing statement created the propaganda, persuading the countries to buy the capitalism. Finally, the Soviet Union was like the Ford Company, unable to face the competition and the Ford Company after 1945 was having no choice but produce the different colors and different styles of cars. The reformation by the president of Soviet Union Gorbachev in the late 20th century had weakened the ideological communists. By 1990, Europe, long divided between Warsaw Pact and NATO alliances, became fragmented and unpredictable. As a result of the economic failures, the communist regimes were overthrow in these countries: Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and East Germany in the East. Policymakers were reconsidering the future of both the European Economic Community and NATO in light of Germany's reunification in the West. Fractured by rising nationalist and ethnic demands, Europe began to spin out of the superpower orbits. The U.S. is growing its power in the world today.

Right after the Second War, the earth had caught on a cold war by the ideology of communists; where the second world was healed by what Truman had said in his doctrine that like the fruits of a same basin, if one caught the cold the rest of them would follow, it was necessary for the U.S. military support to the free and independent countries. George Marshall moderated the Truman's Doctrine and said that a war was to stop hunger famine and despotism: it is necessary for the U.S. to have the militarily and economically supports to the free and independent countries. Not just the European countries, Chinese countries, the U.S. economic support to the African independent countries as well, all had addressed that the American political was the realistic that the capitalism applied to the human rights that we were good and they were evil throughout the competition between the Soviet Union and the United States. Now, the cold war is ended. The earth back to its normal and healthy condition that as for a human's concern, all people shall have different colors and different styles of the cars.