In order to understand the reasons behind the intransigent attitudes and provocation each side directed toward one another it is prudent to understand the reasons why there was so much mistrust between the two opposing superpowers. Each side had adopted separate ideologies that greatly contrasted with each other. The USA with the backing of the western world was capitalist, who essentially belied that the freedom of control for the individual was far more important than being equal and alike. Contrary to this, the USSR was a Communist one party dictatorship that believed that the rights of the individual were far less important than the whole of society. Not only did this lead to a rivalry but it lead to each side to despise the rival ideology and the way the other side administered its nation. Controversial U.S president Richard Nikon stated “The cold war isn’t thawing, it is burning with a deadly heat, communism isn’t sleeping; it is, as always plotting, scheming, working, fighting”. In contrast Nikita Khrushchev himself claimed that ‘support given by United States rulers is rather in the nature of the support that the rope gives to a hanged man”. Furthermore, each side wanted to rebuild Europe in its own accord, for the USA this mean adopting capitalistic policies such as free trade and increased dependence on the United States. However for the USSR this would mean economic development that would be centrally planned with the concept of satellite communist states. Another major factor contributing to the mistrust was the suspicion between the two sides, after all only WWII was what held the USA’s allegiance with the USSR in tact. The USSR in a sense war rightfully suspicious of the United States seeing as how the USA along with Great Britain and France had sent troops to Russia in 1918 in the Russian Civil War to support the White Movement, who were the fierce rivals of the Soviets. In 1941 Stalin had been attacked by the Nazi’s, he had sought help from the…
