Right after the Second World War, the Cold War was one of the greatest subjects in the study of International Relations. It lines up about fifty years of human history, a period which people have to live in fear, and a period that the world had to face its danger by nuclear disaster. To give a greater understanding about the Cold War, this essay will gives a contrast of the Cold War and the post Cold War Worlds. It will provide some of the causes of the Cold War, the events in the early period and post Cold War, and lastly a contrast of the Cold War and the Post Cold War Worlds. .
"The Cold War was a struggle between conflicting universal values" (Healy 1). It started right after the Second World War. USSR, with the lead of Josef Stalin felt that it had the right to the Eastern European nations it had occupied in World War II. Besides, after being invaded by Germany in two consecutive wars, the USSR felt that buffer states should be created in order to protect the borders of the fatherland. "With Communist regimes in place, the nations of Eastern Europe could be controlled by Russia and, by their location, protect it" (Healy 1). Roosevelt was afraid of losing ally while he was still facing a war with Japan, so he agree to sign the treaty on February 11th, 1945 with USSR and Britain in Yalta. In return, the Soviet agreed to enter the war against Japan after the war in Europe ended. The Yalta Conference agreed to divide Germany into zones controlled by each of the three nations present. This treaty was the beginning of the cold war and a tension between Eastern and Western Europe. A famous speech by Winston Churchill in 1946 describes the situation as an "Iron Curtain", which separates the Soviet bloc of Eastern Europe from the West. The West and United States had always been a great distrust and fear of communism since the establishment of the Soviet Union (Kiellogg 265).
