So i've only been given 2 LEQs this year, including this recent one and I really just had no clue how to answer the question because it didnt quite seem clear enough.
Could someone please read this and let me know if I hit all the rubric points or not?
Develop an argument that evaluates the extent to which the United States and the Soviet Union sought to maintain influence over the course of the Cold War.
Before the Cold War, World War II ended with several of the nations in the war having used so much money and military that they were left extremely weakened. However, the US did not suffer from the war as much due to its geographical location and lack of risk of military attack. Because of this, the only other nation who could challenge the US after WWII was the Soviet Union, which had become communist in the Bolshevik Revolution in the early 1900s. Capitalism, which was the ideology of the US, and communism were unable to coexist as the nations of each felt the need to spread their ideology to all other nations. During the ending years of WWII, several conferences were had between the Big Three; Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union. In these conferences, plans were made for defeating the Axis Powers and for a post-war world. While the US wanted free, democratic elections in Eastern Europe, Stalin of the Soviet Union wanted a buffer zone there where he could expand communist influence. From these tensions, the Cold War began, fought between the US's ideology capitalism and democracy, and the Soviet Union's ideology communism and authoritarianism.
While the United States and the Soviet Union sought to maintain influence over the course of the Cold War using technological advances, they did so to a much larger extent through alliances and military interactions.
The United States and the Soviet Union sought to maintain influence over the course of the Cold War during the space race and arms race, in which the two superpowers used their level of technological advancements to demonstrate their ideology's superiority. In the Space Race, which was the race between the Soviet Union and the United States to land a man on the moon, each state had several accomplishments. The Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first satellite in space, and the US launched Apollo I, making Neil Armstrong the first man on the moon. These and other advancements in the Space Race was a way for each of the powers to show their nation's—and their ideology's— economic and technological superiority, thereby being a way to expand their influence. The Arms Race was a race between the two in developing powerful weapons, most notably the atomic and hydrogen bombs. The United States developed the atomic bomb and dropped the first two on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in WWII. Later, both the US and USSR developed the hydrogen bomb which was even more powerful. The nations used this as a way to maintain their influence in conflicts such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, even though the bombs were not launched. Eventually, they reached a point of mutually assured destruction. The arms race kept the two sides in competition and fear, enabling them to continue to seek to maintain their influence. However, the technological competitions of the arms race and the space race did not maintain the influence of the US and the USSR as much as other tactics did. There were several movements, acts, and treaties that restricted the creation and use of nuclear weapons.
The United States and Soviet Union also sought to maintain influence over the course of the Cold War using various alliances and military interactions. The United States maintained democratic and capitalistic influence over the countries of Western Europe through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in which the member nations agreed to defend each other in conflicts and stop the spread of communism. The Soviet Union responded by creating the Warsaw Pact with the communist bloc of Europe to continue communist influence. The United States also used the Marshall Plan, a plan to offer $13 billion to reconstruct Europe, to aid its ally, Britain and stop communism's spread in Europe. The USSR also responded to this with COMECON, but its economic impact was modest. The two nations used, to a significant extent, proxy wars to maintain their influence. A proxy war was a war in which a small regional conflict is turned into a large one because superpowers are involved in the conflict and use “proxies” without directly engaging with their opponent. The proxy wars were often either fought between communist and non-communist regimes of a nation or were fought between two sides, each backed by either the US or the USSR pushing for their ideals and regimes. The Korean War, for example, was fought between South Korea backed by the US, and North Korea backed by the USSR and China because it's government was communist. The war ended in a stalemate with North Korea remaining communist, thereby demonstrating a significant way in which the Soviet Union maintained its communist influence. The Vietnam War is another example of a proxy war in which both the US and the USSR engaged. South Vietnam was supported by the US, and North Vietnam was communist and supported by the USSR. However, the US eventually withdrew due to the large cost and unpopularity of the war, so it was not as able to maintain its influence there as it was in other conflicts. The war ended with Vietnam reuniting under the North and the nation later reestablished friendly ties with the US.
While the various ways in which the US and the USSR sought to maintain influence differed in impact, they are each similar in that they all contributed to the continuous length of the war by increasing the tensions and resentment between the two powers enormously.
While the various ways in which the US and the USSR sought to maintain influence differed in impact, they are each similar in that they all contributed to the continuous length of the war by increasing the tensions and resentment between the two powers enormously.