Cold War

Essay by EssaySwap ContributorHigh School, 11th grade February 2008

download word file, 10 pages 0.0

The cold war having started at around 1945 continued until 1989 or 1991 as both dates have strong reasons to be called the ending dates of the cold war. The cold war didn't carry on for almost 46 years in the same format. It kept changing, taking different forms and the areas where the USSR and the US confronted each other kept changing constantly. Through the 1950's and 1960's the war was fought in a physical form mainly in Korea, while Britain had started to divert itself from the colonies as they were no more profitable for the Britain. China had started to change its strategic plans, one of the major events in the Chinese diplomacy were that China started to distrust the USSR and wanted to be powerful enough to be self-reliant, also Mao was ready to start a Nuclear War over Taiwan. Through 50's to 60's the war changed, and these years were heavily shaped by the form the cold war was fought.

One good economical achievement was made during the studied time period was that the European Common Market was formed. That allowed free trade and encouraged the trade between the European countries which were a part of this plan which later would turn to the European Union.

While the war was between the USSR and US mainly Europe went through drastic changes. Firstly Britain having a history full of colonies realized that during the recent periods the colonies were not contributing to their economies positively anymore, in fact quiet the opposite the colonies were taking too much money away from their treasure. Britain took a decision to divest itself of some of the colonies, not like the usual decision which was to expand the boundaries even further. This event leads to powerful shocks in the balances...