Cold War Effects on America

The Cold War certainly changed and shaped the American economy, society, and politics from 1945 to 1992. The contrasting beliefs between Communism (the Soviet Union) and Democracy (the United States) caused the rift between the worlds top two most prominent superpowers — Communism had established itself to be an immediate challenge to the importance of the United States of America. To stop these two world powers from becoming an even larger global conflict, a few military interventions were established in order to preserve the Americas and their views on independence and freedom.

In one of the many occurrences, the Vietnam War had occurred due to various advisers from America agreeing unanimously that in order to stabilize Vietnam, they were going to require a significantly larger American military position.

Basically, North Vietnam was head-to-head with South Vietnam, whose principal ally was the United States, thus involving us in their affairs. It, therefore, became a miniature manifestation of the Cold War and their conflicts with the United States. The entire point of the Vietnam War was to avoid North Vietnam from overtaking South Vietnam into one, whole communist nation. Sadly, the South fell to the North in the year of 1975 and later emerged as a potential threat, but eventually fell again due to multiple bombings and such. They have since come to diplomatic terms with the United States. Although these miniature wars did have a impact on the world, it was the Cold War as a whole that majorly impacted American society, economy, and their politics in the late 1900s. The war had a large impact on the everyday lives of Americans.

In the Vietnam War, most Americans extended their support to our nation’s position in the matter, aside from the more straightforward pacifists and radical liberals who protested the war for moral and rational actions. Even President Johnson’s advisers began to oppose the war as well. The extreme protests that continued against the war eventually became significant problems in the Presidential Election of 1968. Anti-communist movies, plays, and songs were created and written, using the media as a way to attempt to gain back support. The only negative to having the intense and almost forcefulness of the media shoving this idea down Americans throats was that it made Americans uneasy and they began to accuse others of being communists It basically became a modern-day witch hunt, except for communists. People were getting fired and evaded from their lives, solely because someone had a gut judgment. One of the rare positives that actually came from the Cold War, not directly but subtly, was the further fight against discrimination.

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