How the United States Won the Cold War

How the United States Won the Cold War

The Cold War is the name given to the struggle between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR or the Soviet Union) which lasted from the end of World War II until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. This essay will examine why the United States is considered to have won the Cold War and how it was able to do so. First, this essay will explain how the collapse of both the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union’s ideology can be considered a victory for the United States. Next this essay will look at how the United States accomplished this through a conscious effort by containing the Soviet Union. Finally, this essay will examine the final blow to the Soviet Union causing them to collapse them from within.
The struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union was not simply a battle between two countries. It was not even a battle between multiple countries. The conflict was, in many ways, a struggle between two competing systems. The liberal, capitalist system espoused by the West and the United States; and the authoritarian, communist system established by the Soviet Union. In many ways, both systems were fundamentally in conflict with each other. Communist ideology, as espoused in The Communist Manifesto calls for the abolition of private property and for the fruits of labor to be spread across society after the proletariat (the workers) unite and lead a revolution (Marx, Engels, Moore, McLel…