The Intense Cold War

Obama and the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, signed a major nuclear arms control treaty that wil reduce the amount of nuclear weapons in both countries. This teaty is known by START, Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, that builds from a previous treaty that recently expired. The agreement between, only, the Americans and the Russians decreases the amount of nuclear weapons by about one third. This treaty is similar to the agreement made in the Cold War. When the U.S. Was holding nuclear weapons in Turkey and the U.S.S.R. Was keeping their weapons in Cuba we made an agreement stating the United States would remove their weapons from Turkey if Russia would remove theirs from Cuba.

Joseph McCarthy, the man behind McCarthyism, was a senator from Wisconsin. He was a republican who hated communism with great passion. He charged many inoscent people of being communist, but the other republicans did not stop him because they believed he was thruthfully ridding the country of communism. It wasn't until McCarthy tried to accuse the American army that his downfall began. When he charged the U.S. Army they started investigating him and discovered all his lies. They finally knew that all the black lists McCarthy brought into court were nothing but lies and false charges, he lost all his credibility.

The Arms Race was mostly the race to create and complete the Hydrogen bomb. The H-bomb was an explosive weapon of enormous destructive power caused by the fusion of nuclei of various hydrogen isotopes in the formation of helium nuclei. J. Robert Openheimer was the scientist invovled in creating the A-bomb and H-bomb. On January 31, 1950, Truman authorized the creation of this bomb because of political pressures. After the H-bomb was created, the first of the bombs exploded on November 1, 1952. It had taken the Americans two years to create and perfect their H-bomb. However the Soviet's caught up and their first hydrogen bomb exploded in August of the year 1953, one year after us.

The word brinkmanship was put into use by John Foster Dulles, the secretary of state and a big anti-communist. Brinkmanship is the practice of threatening an enemy with massive military retaliation for any aggression. Dulles uped the airforce and went for fallout shelters and air-raid drills. The cold war spread around the world, with the CIA involved, there was a conference held in Geneva where Eisenhower proposed 'open skies', meaning we could fly over Russia without being shot down. This proposal was turned down. Also during this meeting Switzerland made the decision to stay nuetral during the harsh war, but the Middle East and Latin America stayed involved. The U.S. and Britain agreed to help aid Egypt and build the Aswam Dam on the Nile River if Egypt continued to stay loyal to the Nationalists instead of the Communists. But Egypt began to stray off to the communist side, so the Americans and Britains withdraw their offer. This angered Egypt causing the Soviet agression in Hungary to increase. Later the Eisenhower Doctrine was created (January 1957) saying the U.S. would defend the Middle East against attack. The amount of tension from the cold war increased drastically during all these events.

The 38th parallel sperated North and South Korea, but wasnt intended as a permanent boundary. This divided Korea's resources with industry in the North and agriculture in the South. Creating two new nations, one was communist and the other was nationalist. The South, headed by Syngman Rhee, surrendered to the United States while the communists formed the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, led by Kim Il Sung. North Korea attacked first, on June 25, 1950. Being on the South's side, President Truman takes military action. He orders naval and air support. On June 27, 1950 the Americans call on other nations to help the republic of South Korea, the UN Security adopts this idea. The only problem was that the Soviet Union was boycotting the UN because of their refusal to recognize communist China. In the end, the 16 nations sent 520,000 troops to assist the South; 90% were US and were put under the command of General Douglas MacArthur.