cold war

Question 1

inevitable

Answer 1

when two states equally matched and more powerful than the rest, they are bound to be rivals at some point

Question 2

how it came about

Answer 2

• slow process of interaction between rivals, from 1944 until 1947, or even 1950 (the war in Korea).
• soviet refusal to assist the Polish uprising against the Germans in Warsaw in August 1944 was a political marker of importance in Soviet–American relations

Question 3

who was responsible

Answer 3

• stalin rejected compromise by the West but after recognising western acts as being solely to limit soviet advancement
• he was wrong about their intentions

Question 4

what it was about

Answer 4

ideology + geopolitics

Question 5

• Cuban missile crisis

Answer 5

scared both states and taught them that they had to have more self-discipline in their behaviour and military

Question 6

warfare

Answer 6

• proxy wars
• The Soviet Union was fatally outclassed in economic strength by the United States
• propoganda

Question 7

nuclear weapons

Answer 7

• Nuclear weapons developed in an Anglo-American crash programme from 1942 to 1945, out of anxiety lest the Germans should be the first to acquire ‘the bomb’
• Nuclear weapons raised the political threshold for the resort to force in relations between nuclear-armed states
• Stalin didn’t believe in stable mutual deterrence brought on by MAD

Question 8

war and peace post-cold war

Answer 8

• many believe interstate wars have passed
• New paradigm of war – ‘amongst the people’
• Interwar thesis – another great power conflict waiting to occur + focus on America as a nation at war within itself
• In the absence of an obvious dominant threat to national security, US policy and strategy lacked focus and urgency

Question 9

end of Cold War

Answer 9

• ended unusually
• soviets still held a government + a functioning state with military