M&D

Now, about two decades on from the end of the Cold War, we look at the current state of world affairs and ask ourselves, is there a possibility of another Cold War? In this post, we will be looking at Mistrust and Distrust (M&D) in the Cold War era and look for comparable symptoms of M&D in present times.

Firstly, there had already been mistrust and distrust between the USSR and the Western World, including countries such as USA, Britain and France, before World War 2 that arose during the Russian Civil War. This was due to them going against the Bolsheviks during the Civil War. The Bolsheviks then went on to winning the war, causing their bad blood with the Western World to be carried into politics.

Secondly, during World War 2, the USSR collaborated with the Western Powers to launch a joint attack on Germany. However, this proved to be a mistrust on USSR's side, as the Western Powers took their time to fight on the Western Front of World War 2, presumably to use Germany to weaken the foothold of the USSR. Thus, USSR suffered great losses during World War 2 and this further weakened the trust between USSR and USA.

Thirdly, the USSR had been invaded time and again over the course of 27 years. This had the effect of building up their sense of wariness toward various parties. Thus, naturally, they saw any other country as a potential enemy and this hampered relationship building between USSR and many other countries. This coupled with the 2 reasons above, caused the relationship between USSR and USA to fall into very bad shape.

However, the fault did not only lie on the part of the Western Powers. The defensive actions of USSR trying to build up a wall around itself caused USA to be suspicious of USSR's plans to influence surrounding nations into Communism. This cause USA to be hostile toward USSR, further damaging US-USSR ties. However, this will be discussed in Jun Kiat's post on the Ideological Differences between the two superpowers and therefore, I shall no go in depth into this topic.

These few situations that happened during and after World War 2 had set the stage for the Cold War to erupt, thus these are the few 'symptoms' that we can look out for between any two countries. In the continuation of this post, we will be looking at which of these symptoms can be found between any two countries in present time.

In the meantime, I shall leave you with a few questions to ponder on that would help in understanding the next post:

1) What are some of the symptoms we can look out for in international relationships?

2) To what extent can we see mistrust and distrust in present times?

Do post short answers or any other comments by clicking on the comment button below this post. Thanks for reading and have a nice Cold Day!