Soviet Union And The Cold War - 1660 Words

Former President Jimmy Carter once stated, â€Å"When I was in the White House, I was confronted with the challenge of the Cold War. Both the Soviet Union and I had 30,000 nuclear weapons that could destroy the entire earth and I had to maintain the peace† (â€Å"Jimmy Carter†). This statement has seemingly remained truthful from the point when Soviet Russia and America worked together to stem, and eventually end, the tide of Nazi Germany’s imperialistic overthrow of Europe. Since the end of World War II to the present day, relations between Russia and America have declined due to the Cold War, improved due to Russia s transition to democracy, and are reverting back to Cold War standards in relation to political involvement and economic standards,†¦show more content†¦Twelve years later, another â€Å"proxy† military conflict occurred in Vietnam when a similar division to that of the Korean War was present. The Russians once again took action to a rm the Northern, and Communist, Vietnamese, whereas America armed the democratic South. After the war dragged on and it was apparent that the South was losing, America sent in troops, illegally, to fight against the Russian armed Northern Vietnamese (Garrett). In the scope of world history, this misdemeanor committed by the U.S. drifted off into nothingness, being that it was done to combat Communism, but, at the time, it truly highlighted America’s undying mission to ensure that Communism never reached America, or any of its allies, even if that meant â€Å"doing the wrong things for the right reasons.† A final military conflict, but by no means the least important, was the Cuban Missile Crisis. In October of 1962, tensions reached a breaking point in Cuba, so much so that nuclear armageddon was narrowly averted. Going back a few years, Nikita Khrushchev, Russia’s premier at the time, and Cuban dictator Fidel Castro were in an agreement that was awfully suspici ous to the U.S.. Both of these anti-American nations being so close in proximity to the U.S. and being in an agreement with, more than likely, hidden agendas threw a large red flag in American national security. With haste, recon missions were deployed in an attempt to discover the true purpose of