The Marshall Plan

The Marshall Plan

The Cold war was a period of tension between the United States of America and the Soviet Union. The tension between the two countries developed after the Second World War, whereby the two countries emerged as the world’s superpower. The Cold War was influenced by the ideological, economic, and political differences between the two countries. The United States wanted to stop the political and ideological influences of the Soviet Union across Europe and the rest of the world.  The U.S. advocated for capitalism, free markets, and representative democracies around the world while the USSR wanted to spread communist ideologies and bureaucratic systems of governing. The U.S. came up with the Truman Doctrine in 1947 as a countermeasure for the spread of communism in the world. This meant the U.S. would offer economic, political, and military aid to countries that were facing the threat of USSR influence. After the Second World War, Europeans were devastated and suffered significant economic loss. Thus the U.S. adopted the Marshall Plan of 1948. The Marshall Plan was to assist Western European powers with financial aid and contain the spread of communism in Europe.       

Containment was a strategy to counter the moves of the USSR’s influence in Korea, Vietnam, China, and Eastern Europe. To counter the growth of the ideologies of communism, the U.S. provided aid to rebels and lobby groups in these countries to pressure their governments to adopt capitalism. The strategy led to the culmination of hot wars during the Cold War era. The hot wars were wars fought by opposing sides that supported the U.S. and the USSR ideologies. These wars were fought in various countries around the globe such as the Vietnam War, the Korean War, Nicuargua war, and the Angolan civil war. The hot wars escalated from the funding and aid in training troops by the U.S. and the USSR. When one side funded the other, the other side would offer military assistance to the other. Thus, these wars became severe, and the two countries had to reach a détente understanding that eased the tensions between the two countries. Détente was an approach used to ease the growing conflicts between the supporters of the two nations. The period of truce lasted from 1970-1990 and led to the signing of the SALT treaty, where the two countries agreed on a nuclear arm cease-fire. Also, it led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon as the president of the United States. At the culmination of the truce in 1990, the Berlin Wall fell, and thus, the Cold War was considered over.

Prompt 2.

In the eighteenth century, European powers wanted to establish colonies to provide raw materials for their industries and also to spread their ideas of modernization and industrialization. The decolonization process was the process through which countries that were the influence of European powers gained their independence and self-rule. India had a more peaceful approach to gaining independence than China. India, under the influence of Mahatma Gandhi, opted for a more peaceful approach to gain independence from their colonial masters. Gandhi called for peaceful sit-ins and demonstrations to end colonial rule in India. The Congress party under Gandhi and Nehru used neutralism as an approach to antic-colonialism in India. However, the party was facing inter-religious opposition from the Muslim league that advocated for the formation of an independent Muslim state. In 1947, the British evacuated the country, and the country was divided into two; the Hindu and the Muslim (Pakistan) states. Hindu state became India in 1950 when the country was declared independent.

Meanwhile, China adopted to violence means of anti-colonialism in the 1940s. A civil war erupted between the Chinese Communist Party and the Nationalist party. The National Party was facing the threat of Japan’s invasion and suppressing the communist activities of the Communist Party in the rural areas of China. After the Second world war and the fall of Japan, the Nationalist Party faced opposition from the Communist Party, who advocated for economic reforms and the modernization of the country. As a result, the country was engulfed in a civil war that lasted for two decades from the 1920s to 1949. The Nationalist Party ruled the mainland, while the Communist Party was ruling the rural areas. After the Communist Party won the civil war in 1949, the People’s Republic of China was formed, and the country underwent an economic revolution that made the country industrialize and also become one of the most powerful nations in the current world.