Define the Cold War, including its causes and the historical context in which it began. Describe how the Cold War impacted foreign policy, domestic politics, and American culture with strong examples. (Explain why the Cold War developed when and how it did. Give examples of how it influenced the way the United States dealt with other countries, including conflicts. Discuss how it affected politicians and elections within the US, and talk about how it affected culture.)

The cold war is a political rivalry and hostility between two or more countries or power groups which is caused by conflict over ideological differences. The Cold war was a geopolitical hostility and state rivalry between the western powers and Soviet bloc countries from 1947 to 1991. The cold war was caused by the disagreement between the Soviet Union and the western allies (the USA and Britain) after the world war since they could not agree what would happen next to Eastern Europe. The soviet union wanted control over some states in the central and Eastern Europe while the western power wanted the states to be free. Joseph Starlin the Soviet Union dictator wanted to spread communism while the western allies feared communism. They feared that Stalin’s goal was to colonize the world and convert it to communism. Starlin wanted to divide Germany and refused to give free elections to the Eastern Europe countries which were under the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union blockade West Berlin which led to Americans airlifting aid to Soviet-control Berlin which increased tension Capitalist and Communism. The Americans responded to Starlin through the Marshal Plan where the Americans would provide free financial Aid to war-torn states in Western Europe.
In 1947 the Soviet responded through the Zhdanov Doctrine which claimed that the Americans were seeking global dominance through imperialism and not a democracy. The Americans helped some states like Turkey and Greece who were struggling economically to enable them to fight communism through the Truman policy. This resulted in the formation of NATO by the Western Europe states in 1949 and the Americans while the Soviet Union and other satellite states formed the Warsaw Pact. This ignorance and the continued tension between the two superpowers led to the cold war.
Impact of the cold war in the USA was evident since it affected the country politically, economical and culture of the citizens. The national security agent encouraged Hollywood to produce anticommunist movies and the scripts should have references that praise the American history. The Anticommunist grew out of control and ended working against Hollywood.During the House Un-American Activities Committees (HUAC) hearings which were against the suspects of communism in Hollywood, most people lost their civil rights as the suspect's lives were destroyed based on unsubstantiated evidence. The culture was also influenced positively since President Truman began establishing fair employment and passed laws that banned discriminations. In 1954, the Supreme Court ordered the desegregation of all public and private schools. The paved ways to the rise of black voter registration. This led to the banning of discrimination in private and public accommodations.
Politically the United States was affected since they adopted a policy called containment whose main aim was to stop the expansions of the Soviet power. The Americans dedication to stop the spread of communism led to the Korean and Vietnam War which was fought to prevent the spread of Soviet power to Asia. The Americans lost so many soldiers and also made them abandon some of their policies by supporting brutal dictators such as the General Augusto of Chile as long as they were not communist. This also affected the domestic election in the United States since they elected anti-communist leaders such as Truman, Nixon, Kennedy, and Reagan. The leaders also waged economic warfare with the Communist.
The American was ready to ally with any state that was anti-communist and conflicted with countries that supported the Communism. They gave financial and economic support to the countries against the communism. The American through their economic strength reduced tax cuts and deregulations to help free counties from the Soviet powers.
The ignorance of the two superpowers towards each other led to increased tension in Europe. Their ignorance caused the West Berlin Blockade and the Truman doctrine to occur which led to the cold war. The two states could not agree or work together due to their ideologies which led to the separation and enmity between the superpowers. This affected them politically, economical and culturally where the American advised the Hollywood to produce anti-communism movies, voted for anti-communism leaders and supported countries who were against communism.

The Cold War followed hard upon World War II and in many respects deprived the world of a true peace. The Soviet Union had joined the Allies following the invasion of Nazi Germany in 1941, but as the war was drawing to a close, it was clear to all sides that the United States and the USSR would inevitably become the world's leading powers once the Axis was defeated. The geopolitical competition between the two states was reflected in the sense of struggle between the incompatible ideologies of capitalism and communism.
The atomic bomb and the threat of nuclear war was fundamental to the Cold War, especially once the Soviets acquired the knowhow to split the atom and started testing and stockpiling their own nuclear weapons in the late 1940s. The nuclear-armed superpowers hoped their arsenals would provide sufficient deterrence to make another global war unthinkable—to keep the Cold War from becoming a hot one. The new buzzword "national security" became a powerful force in government.
The rivalry with the Soviet Union became the overarching principle of US foreign policy. The wartime spy agencies were restructured into a permanent "intelligence community" with the newly formed Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as its anchor. In Europe, the CIA secretly mobilized to stop Communist parties from capturing government power in Greece and Turkey. The US committed itself to the defense of Western Europe from Soviet attack by forming the NATO alliance. The Soviet Union and its satellite states in Eastern Europe reacted by instituting their own alliance, the Warsaw Pact. The Korean War soon demonstrated the way the conflict was structuring local and regional conflicts. The war in Vietnam possessed a similar dynamic. In that case, the US initially came to the aid of the French to protect their colonial possessions in Southeast Asia, but US leaders gradually came to portray Vietnam as a vital front in the global struggle against communism.
Anti-communism also played a powerful role in US domestic politics in the decade after World War II. Both Democrats and Republicans sought to distance themselves from the Marxist-inspired politics of the left. Legislation such as the Taft-Hartley Act (1947) sought to rein in the expanding influence of labor unions representing the working class. Before long, a repressive era was underway, as Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee launched broad accusations of Communist influence in the federal government, the film and entertainment industry, and other sectors of society.
The Cold War lasted for decades and had a revival in the 1980s under President Ronald Reagan. It technically came to an end when the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union ceased to exist, but to this day, thousands of US and Russian nuclear warheads remain alert.