how was the cold war fought
...with spies reaching important strategic posts in both camps. The problem with basing ones policy entirely on intelligence is that intelligence has to be interpreted, and with such mistrust between the two sides, the intelligence was of course interpreted in the most mistrusting way possible. But the intelligence services were not just used to gather information of the opposing side’s movements. They were also very effective in stealing technological information. If the KGB had not been so effective in stealing this information from the West, there is proof that the communist rule would rapidly have fallen behind technologically. The West was benefiting more and more from the many years of stability and this contributed to a speed up of productivity not seen before. The fact that the USSR would not have been able to produce the nuclear bomb many years ahead without the espionage also shows how far up in the system the Russian spies were placed. When we look back it can therefore be concluded that intelligence atleast prolonged The Cold War greatly if not enabled it to exist because it created much more equal terms for the USSR. Without this equality in science it might have been difficult for the USSR to secure its maybe most important task of The Cold War, annexations or at least it would have been difficult for the USSR to keep its satellite states under Soviet rule. If the USSR had not developed nuclear capability and ballistic missiles, it might have been possible for the West to interfere in the Hungarian uprising in 1956 or in other Eastern Europe conflicts. The weapons of mass destruction effectively forced the USA to recognize the spheres of influence, which was very important for the survival of the USSR. Communist goods could never compete with goods produced in a competitive environment. Annexation therefore became an important mean in The Cold War; because the USSR had to secure markets where Soviet goods could be sold. This could only be done if western products were prohibited from entering the market. Prohibiting Western goods was something that greatly alarmed the USA, which with her capitalist economy was forced to find trade partners and the USA therefore moved towards the policy of containment. This forced both sides to find new radical methods of fighting The Cold War. Alliance systems started to be taken more seriously and new alliances across religion and systems were created. NATO (1949) and the Warsaw Pact (1955) were the most dominant., but also pacts as SETO (1949) and the Baghdad pact (1959) were created in this period to protect against interference and destabilization caused by the opposing side. To secure the willingness of the nations inflicted in the different alliances economic aid was evident. After WW2 Europe was shattered and the European industry had suffered greatly: this made the public easier to influence. USA quickly sought to secure the European people’s allegiance by contributing with economic aid, especially with the Marshall plan. This was something the USSR copied within the Warsaw pact and when the Cold War became global economic aid became a tool to secure influence in the decision making in other countries across the globe (after the revolution Cuba sought to draw closer to the USA, but when this was rejected by Eisenhower and Khrushchev offered aid, Cuba became communistic). Economic aid was also a way of supporting the opposing side of the rival in a conflict, for example in Afghanistan where the USA paid the Chinese to smuggle Russian weapons, giving the weapons to the rebels. The theory of ones enemy’s enemy is ones own friend was something that became more and more accepted throughout the cold war, where especially Kissinger tried to fight the Soviet Union by supporting regimes that would normally have been USA’s enemy if not for their shared resentment of Moscow. The Sino-American alliance seems to be the best illustration of this. This alliance was only possible because of their mutual competition with Moscow. After The Cold War ended the Clinton-administration followed a policy of isolating China. Ferocious propaganda against the opposing sides was also used heavily to secure public support. Within the USSR television and radio portrayed the West as still being as it was in the 19th century and films like Oliver Twist were altered so as to show that people in the West were living under worse condition than the people in the communist states . This is something that can be expected in a dictatorship, but also US television was in similar ways displaying state propaganda to portray communism as being a dangerous power only seeking world domination. This biased and oversimplified projection lead way for chara...