Central planning in agriculture and in industry stifled production and made the economy vulnerable to stagnations such as that of the s after a serious decline in harvests in the late 70s and a slowdown in production in various key industries. The problems in the economic system also meant that the USSR was far behind the US in weapons technology, particularly in the area in which the war was likely to progress: These areas would require heavy investment in order to catch up with America and Japan if the USSR was to continue as a world power, but due to the economic problems of the Soviet Union, millions were without food, shelter or basic commodities [5].
Very similar to the liberal attitude, the neo-conservative approach became the orthodox policy and took a much more foreign policy oriented perspective. The neo-conservatives tend to view the world as containing states, individuals and philosophies that can be identified as good and evil, with the communism being the latter due to its perceived relentless expansionistic aims and its denial of human rights [6].
Domino Theory identified communism as a very serious threat to the west as it was able to spread from one nation to the next. Believers in domino theory argued that communism was capable of rising in nations that were facing economic and political difficulty and communist supporters, inspired and aided by the Soviet Union, would instigate revolution against the state.
The orthodox theorists and politicians saw the Soviet Union as an essentially expansionist state that saw global domination as an objective, thus utilising the domino effect as well as its own military power to spread across the globe [7]. This philosophy inspired the faith in the Truman Doctrine that pledged the US to support anti-communist regimes to protect them from falling to the communists. From this perspective, the interventionist foreign policy of the US in preventing the spread of communism was crucial to US victory in the Cold War.
The Truman Doctrine and the domino theory were used throughout the Cold War by each president at some point in their time in office and was the ideology that guided much of US foreign policy. The Realist explanation of how the Cold War came to an end can be seen as taking the middle ground in the debate as to whether economic forces were more influential than foreign policy in bringing about the end of the war.
Unlike the orthodox theorists, Realists viewed the Soviet Union as a dangerous but cautious adversary, with values that run counter to Western society, as well as an economic system that was grossly inefficiency. They viewed the USSR not as an essentially expansionist state, but an opportunistically expansionist state, that only seeks expansion when the opportunity arises. This edge gave the US the power to force the USSR into changing its stance toward arms-control and may have forced Gorbachev into adopting his more western-friendly approach and breaking down the iron curtain as it gave Reagan the power to negotiate from an advantageous position.
Realists therefore see the victory of the Cold War as being due to a combination of capitalisation of US strengths such as its economic and technological superiority as well as considered foreign policy that brought the war to a close.
Lead Up to the Revolutionary War
While there is ample evidence to support the case that the economic forces were the major factor in the resolution of the war, it can be seen to ignore the impact that crucial foreign policy developments negotiations had on the relationship between the two states as well as the US superiority in military capability and its bargaining success against the USSR. The view that victory was due to foreign policy equally has many holes.
The almost unrestricted and careless missions the US undertook based on the Truman Doctrine and the domino theory were frequently damaging to the US position and arguably extended the longevity of the war as liberals would point to the fact that it was only once the US stopped its interventionist and aggressive campaign against Russia and allowed it to fall apart on its own that the war drew to a close.
- Raw Food Recipes: Mouthwatering Dressing And Sauce Recipes.
- Pain-Relieving Procedures: The Illustrated Guide.
- LEVITICUS - All The Bible Teaches About?
- Return to Santa Flores: A Loveswept Classic Romance?
- Revolutionary War - HISTORY.
One has only to look at possibly the most disastrously ill-fought war of the Cold War, Vietnam, to see the shortcomings of the neo-conservative approach. The Vietnam War damaged US power and reputation in the international arena, the conflict fragmented US society; sparking anti-war and anti-nuclear protests and, in the case of the Cold War as a whole, McCarthyite witch-hunting.
The extreme cost of the war damaged the US economy, plunging it into recession and it demonstrated the limitations to American power. The foreign policy dominated view overlooks the impact that the disparity in quality of living between the Eastern bloc and the West which the communist regime was unable to hide from its people, especially at the end of the Cold War when Gorbachev felt the need to undertake political reform in the struggling state including economic reform perestroika which brought market oriented forces into the system in order to breathe life back into the economy, and the social and political change brought about by Glasnost.
American Revolution | Causes, Battles, Aftermath, & Facts | theranchhands.com
The growing freedom of the press enabled the citizens of the Soviet Union to compare and contrast their quality of life to that of the west of the world and the government was no longer able to hide how badly it was failing its people. This fracturing of Soviet politics encouraged the many millions of unwilling members of the Soviet empire to demand independence from Moscow.
There does not appear to be a clear-cut answer to the question of whether the US economic strength played a greater part than its foreign policy in bringing the war to an end although the view that the foreign policy was to thank for the US victory is marred by the numerous counterproductive interventions that the US pursued. It seems to be that it was only the more cautious and considered aspects of foreign policy that bypassed the Truman dogma that plagued the earlier years of the war that relations improved between east and west. However both the foreign policy oriented view and the economic argument suffer problems as at other times during the war, the factors which are argued to have brought the war to a close were present.
For more than a decade before the outbreak of the American Revolution in , tensions had been building between colonists and the British authorities. Attempts by the British government to raise revenue by taxing the colonies notably the Stamp Act of , the Townshend Tariffs of and the Tea Act of met with heated protest among many colonists, who resented their lack of representation in Parliament and demanded the same rights as other British subjects. Colonial resistance led to violence in , when British soldiers opened fire on a mob of colonists, killing five men in what was known as the Boston Massacre.
After December , when a band of Bostonians dressed as Mohawk Indians boarded British ships and dumped chests of tea into Boston Harbor, an outraged Parliament passed a series of measures known as the Intolerable, or Coercive Acts designed to reassert imperial authority in Massachusetts. This First Continental Congress did not go so far as to demand independence from Britain, but it denounced taxation without representation, as well as the maintenance of the British army in the colonies without their consent, and issued a declaration of the rights due every citizen, including life, liberty, property, assembly and trial by jury.
The Continental Congress voted to meet again in May to consider further action, but by that time violence had already broken out. On April 19, local militiamen clashed with British soldiers in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, marking the first shots fired in the Revolutionary War. When the Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia, delegates—including new additions Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson—voted to form a Continental Army, with Washington as its commander in chief.
The engagement known as the Battle of Bunker Hill ended in British victory, but lent encouragement to the revolutionary cause. The British evacuated the city in March , with Howe and his men retreating to Canada to prepare a major invasion of New York.
Battle of Saratoga
By June , with the Revolutionary War in full swing, a growing majority of the colonists had come to favor independence from Britain. On July 4 , the Continental Congress voted to adopt the Declaration of Independence , drafted by a five-man committee including Franklin and John Adams but written mainly by Jefferson.
- African-Americans fighting fascism and racism, from WWII to Charlottesville!
- Battle of Saratoga - HISTORY;
- The US Victory in the Cold War: Economic Strength, Foreign Policy Triumph or Both?.
- Revolutionary War.
- Nazis and Jim Crow.
- American Revolution;
- .
That same month, determined to crush the rebellion, the British government sent a large fleet, along with more than 34, troops to New York. British strategy in involved two main prongs of attack, aimed at separating New England where the rebellion enjoyed the most popular support from the other colonies.
Washington rebounded to strike Germantown in early October before withdrawing to winter quarters near Valley Forge. The American victory Saratoga would prove to be a turning point of the American Revolution, as it prompted France which had been secretly aiding the rebels since to enter the war openly on the American side, though it would not formally declare war on Great Britain until June The American Revolution, which had begun as a civil conflict between Britain and its colonies, had become a world war.
The battle effectively ended in a draw, as the Americans held their ground, but Clinton was able to get his army and supplies safely to New York. A joint attack on the British at Newport, Rhode Island , in late July failed, and for the most part the war settled into a stalemate phase in the North. The Americans suffered a number of setbacks from to , including the defection of General Benedict Arnold to the British and the first serious mutinies within the Continental Army. Supported by a French army commanded by General Jean Baptiste de Rochambeau, Washington moved against Yorktown with a total of around 14, soldiers, while a fleet of 36 French warships offshore prevented British reinforcement or evacuation.
Trapped and overpowered, Cornwallis was forced to surrender his entire army on October Though the movement for American independence effectively triumphed at Yorktown, contemporary observers did not see that as the decisive victory yet. British forces remained stationed around Charleston, and the powerful main army still resided in New York.