The Cold War was a unique phenomenon that represented a fundamental political conflict on a global level. Researchers define the cold war as the state of extreme hostility between two states, with the extent of the confrontation bordering the state of war yet not reaching it fully (Bouwman 2). However, the situation observed in the 1970s-1990s in the highly conflicted relationships between the U.S. and the USSR can be considered the event that produced the concept of a cold war (Hansson 494). Though the Cold War is considered to be officially over due to the collapse of the USSR, the legacy of the strenuous relationships between the two states have defined the current relationships between the U.S. and Russia.
In the Cold War of the 1970s-1990, only two major countries were involved in the confrontation. Specifically, the U.S. and the USSR repeatedly failed to compromise and reconcile their differences in relation to their political stance and approach to economy (Hansson 494). The participation of both the U.S. and the USSR in the continuous competition that involved gaining military strength, technological and economic potential, and even the space race (Bouwman 4). Thus, while none of the parties sought to introduce military weapons into the equation and commence an unambiguous military conflict, the presence of profound antipathy in each participant toward the other was evident and quite easy to identify.
While pinpointing the exact event at which the tension between the U.S. and the USSR began to grow is quite complicated, there are ways to identify tan approximate date of the start of the Cold War. Gromyko posits that the Cold War started in the early 1940s and continued until the USSR collapsed (Bouwman 3). The specified timeline makes sense since the Cold War was predicated upon the presence of both political opponents, namely, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, which represented the Capitalist and the Communist perspectives on social, economic, and political life correspondingly. One could argue that the Cold war continues to this day, with the USSR having been replaced by Russia (Hansson 494). Indeed, historically, the specified entities share a substantial range of characteristics and ideas (Perrotta and Bohan 601). However, technically, the Cold War is believed to have ended after the collapse of the USSR, which allows putting the Cold War within a defined timeframe.
Though the Cold War can be considered over as one of the main participants has ceased to exist, the unresolved conflict has percolated into the present-day relationships of the U.S. and Russia, defining the development of new tensions. In order to understand the persistent nature of the conflict, one should examine the causes of the phenomenon closer. The reason for the Cold War to last for decades and finally define the current tensions between the U.S. and Russia seems to concern the incompatibility of the cultural perspectives of the two states and the resulting inconsistency between the political stances. Namely, the all-encompassing fear that the U.S. had for Communists determined the country’s unwavering stance toward the USSR and its ideology (Perrotta and Bohan 604). Similarly, the USSR was incapable of reconciling its idea of a perfect society with that one of the capitalist U.S. (Perrotta and Bohan 607). Consequently, the conflict was doomed to last until one of the participants finally ceased to exist.
Works Cited
Bouwman, Bastiaan. “Between Dialogue and Denunciation: The World Council of Churches, Religious Freedom, and Human Rights during the Cold War.” Contemporary European History, vol. 1, 2021, pp. 1-16.
Hansson, Eva, Kevin Hewison, and Jim Glassman. “Legacies of the Cold War in East and Southeast Asia: An Introduction.” Journal of Contemporary Asia, vol. 50, no. 4, 2020, pp. 493-510.
Perrotta, Katherine, and Chara Haeussler Bohan. “Can’t Stop this Feeling: Tracing the Origins of Historical Empathy During the Cold War Era, 1950–1980.” Educational Studies, vol. 56, no. 6, 2020, pp. 599-618.