US and the Soviet Union during the Cold War (Essay Sample)

The use of a Game Theoretic Approach to Analyze the Nuclear Arms Race between the US and the Soviet Union during the Cold War
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Abstract
The Cold war is until present one of the highly regrettable events in the entire human history. This was a time when an outbreak of war between the United States of America and the Soviet Union nearly brought the human race into looming extinction. Moreover, this era was full of paranoia and fear since each of these nations was heavily armed with sophisticated nuclear weapons. Strangely enough; a huge number of men, women, and children died out of this cowardice act. Similarly, thousands of cities, towns, and villages were destroyed not to mention the economic infrastructure of the two nations which nearly got stuck. After the war, many theories and approaches have been established explaining the reasons as to why these two nations had to take a negative turn in their relations. Subsequently, there have been plenty of perceptions explaining reasons of the aftermath events of the war.
Owing to the above alluded facts about the absurd nature of the war, this writing will seek to establish a conceptual phenomenon surrounding the entire cold war between the US and the Soviet Union. For purposes of simplicity, this paper has been subdivided into three crucial parts namely; introduction, body, and conclusion. The introduction part exposes a brief summary of the war, noting several key players and events. Thereafter, the body being the main part of this paper ascertains various aspects of the war in three sections. First, it establishes the history of nuclear arms race. Secondly, various types of games in game theory and their application to the race are highly exposed at this stage. Third, this section ends with a hypothetical Nash equilibrium for various scenarios that occurred during the nuclear race. Finally, this paper ends with a conclusion highlighting the main points of study as established in prior sections. A wide range of resources have been used in the study to increase its ultimate precision.
Introduction
The coalition between the US and the Soviet Union throughout World War II actually developed out of dire necessity, alongside a mutual realization that each nation needed the other in order to defeat one of the most destructive and dangerous forces of the 20th century. In essence, these two nations had a common enemy. For that reason, the ideological differences between them were subordinated, though just for a little while for the sake of accomplishing a mutual agenda of defeating fascism. As an aftermath of this reciprocated cooperation, the foundation of the new international system was founded, out of which emerged the United Nations Organization.
However, this shared coexistence between the US and the Soviet Union did not last for long as war broke between them slightly after the end of World War II. This war was later called the Cold War, and has since been used to describe the impervious relationship between the US and the Soviet Union between the year 1945 and 1980 (Roberts 2006). The rationale behind this war being referred to as Cold War is attributed to the fact that neither of the two sides ever battled the other. If this was so, then the consequences would have been too appalling. Nevertheless, they fought by the use of client states who fiercely fought for their ideologies on their behalf. For instance, South Vietnam was supported by the Americans to fight the North since it was anticommunist. Consequently, North Vietnam got is armaments from communist Russia to fight the south. As alluded above, it is evident that the two countries never had a direct battle as they avoided one another each time they were about to come into contact.
Apart from USA, other key players in the war were members of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics which is also known by the acronym USSR. USSR was originally a socialist state which existed between 1922 and 1991 and was found in Eurasian continent. It was governed by only the “Communist Party” which made it a single-party state. Moreover, it had its capital city at Moscow Russia. It had a total of 15 Soviet Republics which included countries that are presently known as Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, and the rest.
The Cold War dominated the international relations for decades and for that reason, several major crises took place. Some of the aspects of the aftermath of the war included the Cuban Missile Crisis, Hungary, Berlin, and the Vietnam Wall among many more outcomes. The worrying aspect of the entire predicament was the alarming rate at which “weapons of mass destruction” were being manufactured.
It is important to note that, before the Cold war, the Americans often depicted members of the Soviet Union as being the devil-incarnate. Likewise, the Soviet Union referred to the US using the same term. It is there’re evident that this relationship between the two nations could not last for long. Subsequently, the distrust that took center stage during the cold war was actually present even before the end of World War II.
Relations between the two sides got fierce when Joseph Stalin, who was then a Soviet leader, was told by Truman about an impending attack to the Japanese by USA. Truman stressed that US was going to use the most terrifying weapon against the Japanese. This rumor came to pass when reports about Hiroshima struck Moscow making it practically hard for the two nations to ever reach an agreement.
In review, both sides had a highly equipped army. The Soviet Union had a vast army by the name Red Army which was led by Zhukov while the US had the most powerful and sophisticated weapon in the world. These weapons would lead the entire world into an extremely dangerous path. This is because it resulted to the development of armaments of awesome destructive nature as well as the creation of a number of fascinating policies such as the Mutually Assured Destruction commonly known by the acronym MAD as shall be discussed in the subsequent sections.
Body
History of nuclear arms race
The US became the first nation in the World to manufacture and use nuclear weapons when they ruthlessly bombed Hiroshima as well as Nagasaki in the year 1945. These sophisticated bombs were dropped by the use of aero planes though it was soon after established that the bombs could have been far much effective if rockets were used instead of planes. This is because rockets were much cheaper, more difficult to destroy, and much faster while in air. As a result, US embarked on yet another mission of developing nuclear missiles by the help of a Germany scientist who had created the V2 Rocket during World War II (Blohm 2003).
Nonetheless, the main hitch was establishing a missile that was very much precise and accurate. The main fault of the V-2 rockets utilized in the war against Britain at the final stages of World War II was inaccuracy. They failed to hit the intended target thus bringing unfavorable results. For instance, when the rockets were projected to hit London, they frequently landed several miles away. In fact, longer the distance covered by V-2 rockets, the less precise they became.
As the US perceived their major rival to be the Soviet Union, they actually required missiles that could cover long distances without losing precision. Based upon that reality, once the Second World War was over, the US focused on creating “Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles” commonly known by the acronym ICBMs. After developing quite a number of missiles, in 1952 the US exploded their first ever hydrogen bomb. Even though H-bombs had smaller and lighter warheads, they provided huge explosions. In essence, weight had been a very detrimental issue in the accuracy of most bombs, and therefore with the development of these lighter missiles accuracy was enhanced to a larger extent. Various transformations took place with regard to armaments from USA and by 1957; the US had established the Atlas missile, which could cover up to 6,000 miles and hit within just a mile of its projected space. Strangely enough, the Atlas missile took more than one hour before being fired and for that case it was not suitable for a nuclear war. This setback did not last for long as towards the end of 1950s the US developed another missile by the name Minuteman missile which overcame the aforementioned hitch. This missile was unique as it stored its operating fuel within its engines. Fortunately enough, the missile could be fired within 30 seconds after an alarm. Additionally, these missiles were quite small and for that reason they could be kept in silos beneath the ground for purposes of fortification from an impending attack.
Similarly, the US made Polaris submarines which were intended to ferry nuclear missiles. Since the submarines were under the protection of the sea, they could travel up to the Soviet Union without their consent thus increasing the accuracy of the missile attack. In deed this was a hilarious achievement by the US since one Polaris submarine had the capacity to carry highly destructive power than any of the bombs dropped throughout the entire World War II period.
As a result, the Soviet Union was very much concerned by these transformative armament developments by the United States. Even though they had actually exploded their first ever atomic bomb in the year 1949, their nuclear technology was very much behind that of United States. Funny enough, most of their missiles were relatively large and though they could cover long distances they fall very much outside the intended area.
These troubles facing the Soviet Union’s armament developments were increased when the US launched the U-2 planes. These planes made the Soviet Union missile location to be very much vulner...