The world war two began in the year 1939 and ended in the year 1945 after Japan was bombed by USA. The war mainly involved the world super powers from both the west and the east and it started once Germany wanted to invade Poland (part of USSR) and make it its colony. Other European countries like France and England were against the move (www.pfuller.com). On seeing this, the West superpowers started to think of how to stop this and the USA backed by England and France started to help Poland to fight against Germany leading to formation of a temporary alliance between the west super powers and the east super power (USSR). Japan secretly started backing Germany and on learning that Japan was backing Germany, the Americans started a rather official attack on Japan and by the year 1945, USA used two atomic bombs on the two main islands of Japan (www.pfuller.com).
World war two came to an end but the east-west alliance between USSR and USA began to fall apart. The USSR and USA seemed to have a common goal but after falling apart, a cold war between the two super powers began.
The cold war started in the year 1945 and ended around 1991 though up to date the involved countries still do not augur well. The involved parties are the west superpowers (the USA) and its NATO allies including all the commonwealth countries and the East super powers led by USSR current day Russia and other communist countries. The main struggle between the two parties seems to be rooted in the different modes of governance (Lewis, 16) The West allies believe in Capitalism and democratic governments while the east allies want to remain communists only. The term cold war was used to describe the geopolitical differences that faced the temporary alliance of the USA and USSR.
The cold war started after Nazi Germany was defeated in the war and some of other feared super powers of the time like Japan in great economic crisis. The only two left standing superpowers were USSR and USA. Though they were the only superpowers of the time, they had profound economic and political differences which led to the cold war. The two temporary allies after winning the Second World War set out in different paths making the tension between the two super powers much greater. They had enough military powers to go into war but they appeared to fear the consequences of war since they knew what power they possessed (Lewis, 18). They had lethal weapons thus feared that if any military war broke out, they would definitely suffer great destruction. The cold war went through a cycle of tension full moments which made the two anticipate a war but luckily, throughout the whole period, the two appeared to fear one another thus none was ready to start the war.
Some historians believe that the cold war began immediately after Second World War while others believe that it started back after World War 1. Those supporting the origin of the tension to be after First World War uses the argument that USSR and its empire was left isolated after the war. This was due to the political differences that had accumulated (Wikipedia.org/ cold war). The USSR believed in making the capitalists communists a thing that the capitalists opposed fully. This resulted in a struggle between the communists and capitalists and each group wanted to fetch the maximum followers. As a result, there developed great distrust between the west superpowers and east superpowers. Therefore, there existed great distrust between the two sides even before the Second World War.
After Second World War, the temporary alliance was faced by great internal division. The western bloc was also internally divided in terms of their vision thus started to part ways slowly. In the end, the USSR which occupied most of the Eastern Europe broke apart with the western group which comprised of USA, Britain and France. The two blocs feared engaging in a war since the aftermath of the war would completely ground their economies (Wikipedia.org/ cold war).
In February 1946, the USSR sent a telegram to USA that made USA to start planning on how to engage in a cold war with USSR. The USSR claimed that USA was increasingly getting involved in capitalistic preparation for winning a new war. This increased the tension between the two blocs.
In September the same year, a German leader officially presented a proposal to divide Germany into portions and re-organize and re-industrialize it and warned the Soviets that the US wanted to retain the European power indefinitely. This added to the current tension in these post war countries since the threats would have made the two super powers confront one another in military action. In a bid to tighten the political influence all over the Eastern bloc, the USSR set a rule to align all its satellite states to a certain code that made some communist USSR states to shun the alignment leading to its expulsion from the USSR. The USA and its western allies reacted to this step by putting into action a strategy to stop further spread of communism. This strategy was put into operation and any communist country involved in war was gradually converted into capitalist. A good example of this transition is the secret involvement of USA in Vietnam War that made the communists in Vietnam convert into capitalists. It also put into practice measures on USSR that led to its gradual fall leaving USA as the only dominant superpower in the world (UK archive, cold war files).
The fall of USSR
The fall of USSR began after the enactment of a law to enforce regional alignment of the member states. This led to an internal division within the union eventually causing its fall. The capitalists led by US started influencing capitalism on the divided union members making some of the union member states to shun the union. The US and its western allies used the divide and rule principle since dividing the USSR states made the nuclear power held by USSR to become divide too. The US and its allies started to have secret missions aiming to destroy communism. In the process, many strict measures were put on USSR which was actually facing economic crisis as well as internal governance crisis. At this time, the US was having good times in terms of economic development and military power. By the year 1986, USSR collapsed leaving behind United States as the only dominant super power in both economic and military spheres (wikipwdia.org/ cold war).
In conclusion, cold war that led to collapsing of the USSR had some positive results and negative results. On the positive side, the US had the power to rule the world as the only super power stopping the tension of emergence of another world war. This meant that continued tension in the political atmosphere would have led to a much bigger and lethal war since it would involve use of weapons of mass destruction. Another advantage is the reduction of the communism which would have transformed democracy into a monarch or dictatorship deterring development projects. Some of the disadvantages that accrued from this cold war is the widespread development of nuclear weapons like in Iran and North Korea not to mention Japan and Germany. These projects came into existence as self defense projects in case a super power decided to invade any other country. The second major disadvantage is the tension that exists whenever a disagreement occurs between any two G8 countries. This is because they posses weapons of mass destruction thus really dangerous if they opt to resolve their disagreement by war. In turn, this has led to religious rivalry between the Muslims who appear to follow communism and the Christians who are largely capitalists (Lewis, 128).
References summary
http://www.rpfuller.com/gcse/history/8.html.
This website contains scholarly articles which are more detailed on the cold war which led to collapsing of USSR. It outlines side by side all the necessary data and the durations for each stage of the cold war. Therefore this online resource database contains the necessary article to help in grasping the necessary details of the cold war events.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War.
The unique thing about this online resource is its detailed explanation in a logical order. The article provides a chronological account of the cold war from its emergence to its end as well as its effects on the world in general.
Lewis, G. 1990. Russia, the Soviet Union and the United States. An Interpretative History. McGraw-Hill.
This book gives a detailed account on the emergence, development, reasons and the end of cold war. It is less focused on the military power and more elaborative on the cold war itself. It also gives the advantages and disadvantages accrued from the cold war.
The Cold War Files
These are online articles found in the Archive of UK on defense materials. These files can be accessed online and contains secret information about the cold war that might be absent in other materials released to the media. Therefore, the information in these files is very important to consider and compare to other materials released for public use.
Works cited
http://www.rpfuller.com/gcse/history/8.html.
UK archive for defense materials. The Cold War Files
Lewis, G. 1990. Russia, the Soviet Union and the United States. An Interpretative History. McGraw-Hill.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War.
