Effects of the Cold War

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Part of a series on
History of the Cold War
Origins World War II Hiroshima and Nagasaki Eastern Bloc Western Bloc Iron Curtain
Periods Cold War (1947–1953) Cold War (1953–1962) Cold War (1962–1979) Cold War (1979–1985) Cold War (1985–1991) Frozen conflicts
Related topics Timeline of events List of related conflicts Historiography Cold War in Asia Second Cold War
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Since the end of the war up until its subsequent century, the Cold War had many effects on nation-states and targeted them in many economical and social ways, for example in Russia, military spending was cut dramatically since 1991 creating a decline in the Soviet Union’s military-industrial sector. Such a dismantling left millions of employees (throughout the former Soviet Union) unemployed thus affecting Russia’s economy and military^[1]

After Russia embarked on several economic reformations in the 1990s, it underwent a financial crisis and a recession more oppressive than the United States and Germany experienced during the Great Depression. Although Russian living standards worsened overall in the post–Cold War years, the economy held an overwhelming growth after 1995 and in early 2005 it became known that it had returned to its 1989 levels of per-Capita GDP.

The Cold War has continued to influence global politics after its end, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the post–Cold War world is widely considered as uni polar—with the United States the sole remaining superpower. The Cold War defined the political role of the United States in the post–World War II world: by 1989 the United States held military alliances with 50 countries and had 1.5 million troops posted abroad in 117 countries which institutionalized a global commitment to huge, permanent peacetime military-industrial complexes and large-scale military funding of science. In addition, it led to the permanent creation of Peacetime Defense and the armaments industry which was referred to in the farewell address of President Eisenhower. ^[2]

Military expenditures by the US during the Cold War years were estimated to have been roughly 8-9 trillion dollars, while nearly 100,000 Americans lost their lives in the Korean War and Vietnam War.

In addition to the loss of life by uniformed soldiers, millions died in the superpowers' proxy wars around the globe, most notably in Southeast Asia. Most of the proxy wars and subsidies for local conflicts ended along with the Cold War; the incidence of interstate wars, ethnic wars, revolutionary wars, as well as refugee and Disagreements between the leaders of the nations that were affected by the warfare declined sharply in the post–Cold War years.

The legacy of the Cold War conflict is not easily erased as many of the economic and social tensions that were exploited to fuel Cold War competition in parts of the Third World remain acute. The breakdown of state control in a number of areas formerly ruled by Communist governments has produced new civil and ethnic conflicts, particularly in the former Yugoslavia. In Eastern Europe, the end of the Cold War has ushered in an era of economic growth and a large increase in the number of liberal democracies, while in other parts of the world, such as Afghanistan, independence was accompanied by state failure.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall,^[3] the annulment of the Warsaw Pact and the dissolution of the Soviet Union the Cold War had been officially terminated, particularly in the deployment of nuclear-armed ballistic missiles and defensive systems, because there was no formalized treaty ending the Cold War, the former superpowers have continued to various degrees to maintain and even improve or modify existing nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Moreover, other nations not previously acknowledged as nuclear-weapons states have developed and tested nuclear-explosive devices.

The risk of nuclear and radiological terrorism by possible sub-national organizations or individuals is now a concern.

Radiation legacies[]

US radiation warning symbol

Due to the military and non-military exploitation of nuclear fission, the Cold War brought forth some significant involuntary exposures to high-level radiation. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused large-scale destruction as well as acute and lingering radiation throughout the affected areas. Scientists, technicians, military personnel, civilians, and animals were exposed to radiation above normal background levels as a result of decades of nuclear-weapons production, experimentation, and testing. In addition, several significant radiation-related accidents occurred at military and civilian nuclear reactors and facilities. These incidents exposed the public to above normal radiation, and killed workers as well.

These exposures did not stop the US and the USSR from creating large numbers of missiles and nuclear weapons.

Many nuclear legacies can be identified from the Cold War, such as the availability of new technologies for nuclear power and energy, such legacies which created great tensions between superpowers back then, especially since the hegemony of the world was disputed between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Environmental remediation, industrial production, research science, and technology development have all benefited from the carefully managed application of radiation and other nuclear processes.

Security legacies[]

Due to the potential risk to national and international security, nuclear-weapons states have inherited substantial responsibilities in protecting and stabilizing their nuclear forces.

During the Cold War and post-Cold War periods, nuclear weapons and their delivery systems had been immensely secured and protected over the fear that such weapons of mass destruction were stolen, thus nuclear facilities and devices, such as reactors and propulsion systems, were safeguarded. An appropriate continuing level of security remained necessary through all life-cycle phases, from production to decommissioning as the entire military nuclear infrastructure requires protection, and that requires a commensurate allocation of funding.

Having once had widespread overseas nuclear bases and facilities, both the United States and the former Soviet Union inherited particular responsibilities and costs. Moreover, all nuclear-weapons states had developed not only production and service facilities but sometimes in extensive military staging and storage.

World inventories of weapons-grade fissile materials are substantial, much greater than now needed for military purposes. Until these materials can be demilitarized, they need to be securely safeguarded to evade risks of deliberate, accidental, or unauthorized nuclear devastation. Moreover, terrorists and hackers continue to interfere with nuclear stability and confidence.

Military legacies[]

Internal national-security military postures still dominate behavior among sovereign nations, and as the former superpowers did not formally consummate their stand-down from Cold War military equipment the strategic and tactical nuclear and conventional forces remain at levels comparatively high for a peacetime environment. Localized conflicts/tensions replaced the former bilateral nuclear confrontation and as a lingering result, large inventories of nuclear weapons and facilities remain stabilized. Some facilities are being recycled, dismantled, or recovered as valuable substances as well as some chemical and biological weapons that were developed during the Cold War are still in existence, although many are being demilitarized.

Military policies and strategies are slowly being modified to reflect the increasing interval without major confrontation and because of the large extent of inventories on weapons, fissile materials, and rapid-response delivery systems, a mutual danger coexists for accidental, misjudged, or miscalculated incidents or warfare.

Other Cold War weapons states are slowly reducing their arsenals because they have not abandoned their dependency on nuclear deterrence. While a few more nations have attempted or succeeded in carrying out nuclear-explosive tests and thus creating their own nuclear deterrence.

During the Cold War, an international fabric of arms-control constraint had evolved, much of it carried over as a beneficial heritage with institutional mechanisms for multilateral or international function and verification.

Institutional legacies[]

Aside from the tangible measures of national defense, such as standing military and security forces and hardware, there are various institutional structures of government and functionality that have less to do directly with military or security factors, but more to do with underlying public attitudes and risks. These institutional structures and perceptions have had their own challenges and adjustments after the Cold War.

Strong impressions were made and continue to affect the national psyche as a result of close brushes with all-out nuclear warfare. In some cases, this had resulted in an aversion to warfare, in other cases to callousness regarding nuclear threats. Peaceful applications of nuclear energy received a stigma which is still too difficult to exercise as it heightens the fear of nuclear risk which can result in resistance to military drawdown.

Public impressions and insecurities gained during the Cold War could carry over to the peacetime environment. This new peaceful era created a territorial expansion of democratic capitalism which had an open invitation to proclaim the obsolescence of the war itself. Several foreign states built specific institutions of democracy in post-communist areas with the wide belief that it would favor peaceful conflict resolution as wars did not occur in democracies. This exacerbated the idea of having a ‘democracy equaled having peace,’ surged across the nations affected by the Cold War and became a popular opinion across international relation experts because peace laid in the political strength(democracy) of the sovereignty of the people.

After the tensions of the Cold War diminished, the United Nations commenced an extensive journey marked by the sole objective to analyze, reflect and debate in detail around those issues related to aid the advocates for Human Rights and the creation of the construction of a perfect society that lives in a culture involving peace around foreign nations (a utopia-like fantasy).

With the end of communism (the Soviet Union collapsed due to its economic weaknesses), German unification, and even the expected separation of Czechoslovakia everything historical occurred with immense rapidness. Therefore, the end of the twentieth century will always be marked as the start of widespread peace, in Europe, Western countries, and beyond.

Economic legacies[]

After the end of World War II in 1945, Europe faced great difficulties in achieving an economic, political and social recovery. Although historians and scholars maintain different positions regarding what were the causes that led to the development of the Cold War and its effects they all concur the tensions between the superpowers that had already been accumulating during this period where the spark that ignited the flame. Such tensions were described by the immense separation between the capitalist and communist countries, the latter having an economy planned by the state, and the capitalists pursuing the idea of a free market economy.^[4]

The Potsdam Agreement made the Allies to divide Germany into two large blocks, each led by the most powerful nations of the moment—Russia, Great Britain and the United States. The United States, along with Great Britain, represented the western bloc and the capitalist system whilst the Soviet Union was given the eastern bloc and expanded their communist system. Thus creating a huge fiscal mortgage placed on many domestic economies, as financial obligations included those necessary to avoid further dislocations while the change took place from a wartime footing to a peacetime environment. The most important social causes are due to economic influence which caused national military establishments and alliances to be reconfigured. Highly dependent institutional frameworks were to be restructured, and new obligations were acquired by nations that were once bystanders to the East-West confrontation.

Psychological Legacies[]

Psychologically, the Cold War led to some less than desired psychological affects. The World, and to a greater extent the populous of The United States and Russia lived in fear of impending nuclear doom. The psyche of citizens in the United States during the Cold War was unstable, there was an overwhelming sense of Fear, Powerlessness, and Future-less-ness (uncertainty about the future).^[5] This is evident in adolescent children of the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade as polled in a study conducted by Daniel J. Christie and C. Patricia Hanley. This study measured the general anxiety surrounding the Cold War and the thought of impending doom by administering a test where the students would rate how they felt on certain issues from a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being never describing the individual, 5 being always describing the individual.^[5] This study found that 85% of the adolescents reported feeling Powerless, 90% reported feeling Future-less-ness, and 88% feeling Fearful.^[5] This study was very influential as to seeing inside the mind of the youth, which would go on to become adults during this Cold War period. It is astonishing how many of them were so uncertain about the future and even if they would have a future to grow up in. Additionally, another paper published by Dr. Sibylle K. Escalona analyzed the psychological development of children during the Cold War era. It is important to remember that children do see and do have "somewhat" of a grasp on reality as. One quote from the study from Dr. Escalona really sticks out, she goes on to say "During the sixties we conducted a study where we asked children about the future in ten years while giving no reference to the bomb..... we found that 70% of the 350 children polled in the study mentioned the bomb in some capacity^[6]." Additionally, Dr. Escalona makes another point that children are not just little brainless beings that run amok, she says in her paper "To children, as the rest of us, nuclear danger is apart of the total social atmosphere^[6]." The impending fear of a nuclear war with mutually assured destruction was ever-present in the mindset and the everyday social anxieties of American citizens during the Cold War era. Alternatively, a study conducted by researchers in Canada confirmed that the fear of nuclear threats was not just present in American society. The study was conducted by a slew of researchers including Dr. Susan Goldberg, Suzanne LaCombe, Dr. Davora Levinson, Dr. K. Ross Parker, Dr. Christopher Ross, and Dr. Frank Sommers. The researchers found that 58% of the kids interviewed reported being afraid of a nuclear war/event.^[7] These studies indicate that over half of the adolescent populous interviewed were cognizant of the current political climate. The study also revealed that individuals who reported a worry about nuclear war/events also felt a more overwhelming sense of helplessness and general anxiety about events than those that did not report feeling anxious about a nuclear war/event.^[7] The Cold War led to not only economic, societal, and militaristic changes, but also psychological changes that shaped a generation.

References[]

Sources[]

• Alexander DeVolpi (2009): Nuclear Insights: The Cold War Legacy, Volume 2: Nuclear Threats and Prospects (A Knowledgeable Assessment)
• Thad Dunning (2004): Conditioning the Effects of Aid: Cold War Politics, Donor Credibility, and Democracy in Africa.
• Petra Goedde (2019): The Politics of Peace: A Global Cold War History. Oxford University Press.
• Aldo Marchesi (2019): Latin America's Radical Left: Rebellion and Cold War in the Global 1960s
• Andrew Sumner (2016): Global Poverty: Deprivation, Distribution, and Development Since the Cold War.