Cold War Case Essay Example for Free

Cold War Case Essay The Cold War was a contest between the USA and the Soviet Union. It led to the existence of thousands of nuclear weapons, two universal ideologies in conflict, and two different self-images, the United States championing a world made safe for democracy. Its opponent, the Soviet Union advocated world Communism. The United States prides itself on its heritage of freedom, a refuge for persecuted religious groups, a land of liberty that successfully rebelled against the imperial power of Britain in 1776. Its guiding principles were the protection of the individual’s life, liberty and pursuit of happiness and the establishment of a constitution that embodied the best political idea of modern times, a system of checks and balances so that the president, Congress or parliament and judiciary or Supreme Court shared power, checking each other’s work to guard against dictatorship. While the United States did not always live up to its ideals, nonetheless, on paper at least, it looked good compared to its Cold War rival, the Soviet Union. Led by a murderous dictator, Joseph Stalin (1928 to 1953), the Soviet government was brutal, outlawing all opposition, banned political parties opposed to the Communist Party, murdered millions and set up a vast prison camp system known as the Gulag. In the years 1937-38 alone, Stalin ordered the execution of one million citizens of the Soviet Union. In the fifty years of the Cold War, the United States only executed two of its own citizens, the husband and wife Rosenberg spy team. Even though the Rosenbergs should not have been executed because their crimes were tiny in the context of the Civil War, the difference between the United States and the Soviet Union in terms of political mass murder of its own citizens is obvious. Despite this fact, one third of the world went the Communist way and other countries were tempted by the promises of Communism. How could this be? In theory, Communism promised a more equal world and at its greatest extent in the 1970s, Communist governments ruled one third of the world’s people. These were mostly poor countries looking for a quick way to industrialise. These countries looked upon the United States as a champion of the rich and powerful, an exploitative superpower that exported its economic system of capitalism only because it suited its interests to do so. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States strides the world as the sole superpower. The United States maintains its grip on this unipolar world without having to make too much effort. The United States spends only about 5-6% of its economy (its gross national product) on defense. The Soviet Union spent somewhere between 20% and 33% of its economy to try to keep up with the United States during the Cold War. It couldn’t keep up the pace. The position of the United States has declined only slightly in the twentieth century. In 1928, its economy was four times the size of its nearest rival (France) and in 1950 its economy was three times the size of its nearest rival (the Soviet Union). It is not just a question of economic or military power. American films and popular music dominated the mass culture of the world from World War One to the present day. In 1994, the biggest-selling film in Austria, France, Germany, Argentina and Mexico was the The Lion King, an American cartoon. The Flinstones was the best-selling film in Poland and Turkey. Forrest Gump won Finland and Norway. It is important to remember that power is projected and wars can be won not just by military and economic means but also by winning what is now an international culture war. A reluctant empire? The United States expanded its frontier in North America throughout the eighteenth century and after victory over Spain in 1898 became a maritime power whose empire stretched as far west as the Philippines. Ever since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, the United States has pledged itself to prevent the European powers from intervening in the western hemisphere, specifically Latin America. Following its victory over Spain in 1898, the Untied States arrived as a world power. For many Native Americans and African-American slaves, some of the rhetoric of freedom did not ring true. But America’s promise of freedom and opportunity attracted migrants from all over the world. They arrived in New York at the rate of a million a year in the early 1900s. As a result of Europe’s self-destruction in World War One (1914-18), the United States became the dominant economic and political power in the world. It would later describe itself as a reluctant empire, a democratic state whose aim was to spread its ideals over the world but not to control in the way that European empires had done in the past. But what would it do with this power? Britain and France, weakened by the loss of Russia through revolution, were able to overcome Germany only with America’s help. Wilson believed that the values of the United States were in fact universal values of peace and democracy. In 1918 Woodrow Wilson, the American president published his Fourteen Points which called for a democratic peace based on the rights of self determination of all nations and the setting up of an international body, the League of Nations, to solve conflicts. But the world was changing. In Russia in 1917 Lenin and his Communist Party had come to power. Even worse for Wilson, his ideas were rejected in his own country, the United States. Wilson was pleased that the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War One established a League of Nations, but then found that the United States would not join. The League of Nations was rejected by the Senate, the upper house of the US Congress. Instead the Untied States tried to secure its future through the Washington Conference of 1921-22 which agreed that the US Navy should be of equal strength to the largest navy in the world, the British. In the 1920s and 30s, American foreign policy was dominated by isolationism, a refusal to intervene in Europe even when fasicsts, nazis and communists were on the march against American-style democracy in Europe. Those who support American power in the world today still worry that if the rest of the world criticises the United States too much it will retreat into its shell again and leave Europe and Australia at the mercy of a new (presumably Asian) religious fascim. Despite or because of its spectacular economic growth, American capitalism hit a major snag in the Great Depression that began in 1929 and economic problems increased the mood of isolationism in the US public, that is a mood of cutting the United States off from the world’s troubles. The president to take the US out of the Depression was Franklin D. Roosevelt, who introduced his New Deal. It was Roosevelt who would take the USA into the Second World War but only after Japan attacked Pearl Harbour in 1941, putting an end to the argument for isolation. The USA suffered more than three hundred thousand deaths in World War Two, mostly soldiers. But as in World War One this was a relatively small price to pay for what was a huge victory. The Soviet Union now under Joseph Stalin lost 27-30 million people, the majority of which were civilians. At the end of world War Two, the United States had a new and powerful weapon, the atomic bomb that it had to used to force japan to surrender in 1945. Under president Truman from 1945-52, the United States staked out a new role as the world’s policeman whose task it was to protect the democratic and free ‘West’ from the tyranny of Stalin’s Communism in the Soviet Union. The United States would win the Cold War, in large part because of its continuing economic success. On the eve of its collapse in 1990, the GNP of the Soviet Union was approximately one third of that of the USA, even though the United States and the Soviet Union had almost identical population sizes. The secret to America’s success? Unlike the Soviet Union, which experimented with a new and untried economic model of a state-rune economy, the Untied States had a proven economic model of capitalism. It had its faults such as inequality and crises of unemployment but encouraged innovation and efficiency in a way that the Soviet system did not.

Strindbergs Miss Julie and Becketts Waiting for Godot Essay -- Engli

Strindberg's Miss Julie and Beckett's Waiting for Godot The motivations and behavior of key characters in Strindberg's Miss Julie and Beckett's Waiting for Godot will be analyzed according to Eric Berne's method of transactional analysis. Eric Berne deals with the psychology behind our transactions. Transactional analysis determines which ego state is implemented by the people interacting. There are three possibilities which are either parent, adult, or child. The key characters in Waiting for Godot are Vladimir and Estragon. Vladimir is the more intellectual of the two and Estragon is more emotional. Their ego states are always shifting from minute to minute. In Miss Julie the key characters are Jean and Miss Julie. Jean shifts his ego state according to his situation either to compliment the ego state of the person he is talking to or to exploit the situation. In the relationship between Miss Julie and Jean their ego states interchange as Miss Julie begins as the parent, then she falls so they are equal on the adult level and eventually she is on the bottom so Jean is on the top as parent ego state. People are made with three basic ego states which are the parent, adult, and child. Some people have a dominant ego state and others are constantly changing. All parts are necessary for a well rounded personality. The child is linked with intuition, creativity, spontaneity, drive and enjoyment. The adult is the rational, objective and logical side which allows work to get done. This is the part of us that should be involved in difficult decision making because it weighs the pros and cons of the decision without bias. The parent is useful for actually raising children and for routine decisions that do not require the deductive rea... ...llowed to flow. He also manipulates Miss Julie's emotions by appealing to the romantic child in her. It is Miss Julie's fall from her high social status and her consequent fall to a childish ego state that makes Jean adapt his ego. She starts out thinking she is better than Jean because he is her servant. As they get closer she feels he is her equal so she talks to him as an adult from an adult standpoint. By the end when she has fallen from grace she feels so low that she is talking up to Jean and wants him to tell her what to do. All the while Jean is on the opposite side of the wheel that Miss Julie is on. Bibliography 1. Berne, Eric. Games People Play. Grove Press INC, New York Thirtieth printing 1966. 2. Strindberg, August. Plays: One , Miss Julie . Secer & Warberg Limited, Great Britain 1964. 3. Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. Grove Press INC 1956.

Marketing is more than selling and promotion Essay

The primary concern or objective of marketing is to identify and satisfy, or exceed the changing needs of customers. In view of this broad concern of marketing, it can be seen that the concept of marketing summarizes many activities in a business. Marketing, in fact, refers to any activity undertaken by a firm that has been designed to plan, price, promote and distribute ideas, goods and services to target markets. These marketing activities were executed in order to create an exchange and sales that will result in the achievement of the proprietors’ individual goals and the firm’s goals, both in the short-term and the long-term. It is then obvious that marketing forms an integral component of any business’s operations. In particular marketing activities attempt to increase a firms’ revenue base, by showing the importance of attracting potential customers in target markets to purchase the firms’ products in order to satisfy their wants, rather than those of firm’s competitors. Consequently, the marketing directly contributes to the attainment of the financial goals of the firm. Hence, the success of a firm is reliant upon the extent to which it is able to identify, and satisfy the customer’s needs more effectively. Marketing as an activity that involves several features, all of which are presented during the course of the marketing process. Such features include, firstly and most importantly, that marketing is a long process that begins with the creation of an idea and ends up as product that will be sold to satisfy a customer’s needs. Secondly, marketing is seen as a managerial process as it involves making managerial decisions about the particular mix of product, price, place and promotion in a firm. Furthermore, marketing involves managers planning and ensuring that particular arranged activities are carried out, in order for the marketing plan to be successful. Finally, marketing is perceived as a way in which firms are able to satisfy the needs of customers, and in turn achieve their own business goals. Marketing provides the business with the ability to satisfy the changing wants of customers. In light of this, and the fact that businesses have  become increasingly aware of the role that marketing plays in achieving success in the business, several approaches or philosophies to marketing have developed. There are different approaches to marketing, to help to define marketing and to show, how a specific marketing approach/s depends upon particular business’s marketing strategy and the type of product being marketed. Starting with a Marketing Concept, which believes that a customer’s need for satisfaction, is the economic and social reason for an organisation’s existence. This approach requires, that all of the business’s activities should be targeted towards meeting consumer wants, while at the same time meeting the organisation’s goals. In effect, this approach needs the firm to find out what the customer wants, and subsequently develops a product to meet these requirements and then sell it at a profit. Then the Production Concept should be considered. This approach states that the business will sell its product if it is both well made and affordable. Businesses utilising this method require management to focus on improving production techniques and cost structures of the business The Product Concept focuses on the quality, features, and performance of the product. Believing that if the product has more features or is of a better quality and performance compared to competitors, it will then gain greater sales it is defiantly less customer orientated. The Selling Concept concentrates on developing sales techniques and promotional activities in order to entice customers into buying an organisation’s product, whether they want it or not. Therefore this approach places direct emphasis on customers, but possibly not on their want-satisfaction. After all the Societal Marketing Concept which is the latest marketing approach, combines the main ideas of the marketing approach, that is, determining customer needs and satisfying the business’s goals, but also integrates social responsibility into the business. This social responsibility includes increasing environmental awareness, which may include tackling the problems of pollution and the exploitation of  non-renewable resources. Modern day businesses are under pressure to adopt this marketing approach, in order to become more socially responsible. This approach not only focuses on fulfilling the customer’s want-satisfaction, but also satisfying society. These four approaches in particular show, that marketing is more than promoting and selling a product. They could be compared with the four P?s (product, place, promotion and price), which are normally used to describe the process of marketing. But the concepts of marketing, production, product, selling and society marketing give another view into the difficult and never ending process of marketing.

Essay about The Constitution - 500 Words

The Constitution The Constitution of the United States was written as a set of rules for this country. Many of the quot;rulesquot; have helped the country stay in order, but a great many have been abused and taken out of context. Three provisions in the Constitution that are important to my individual rights and liberties are freedom of speech, freedom to vote, and that all people should be treated equally. These rights represent what is important to me and what I believe in. Freedom of speech is an important right to me. It is found under Amendment one of the Constitution. I am a very outspoken person and I like to speak my mind on issues of all kind. The country I was born in did not guarantee freedom of speech. People could be†¦show more content†¦The writer s of the Constitution wanted people to feel safe that they could express their thoughts, but they did not mean that a pornography store should be allowed to do business a few blocks from public schools. I myself like speaking and telling other people what I think is right and what I think is wrong, but the well being of the public has to be taken into consideration. The freedom of speech insures me that right to speak out. nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;When I turn eighteen, I am permitted to vote for people representing my state. I actively watch the news and think about politics. With all the corruption and quot;bad politicsquot;, the wrong people have forced some of the quot;goodquot; people out of the government. I feel the right to vote is an important right to me because it lets me to put better people in the government. It also lets me decide who I want to run in office what people should be in office. Many countries do not elect their government officials. In the United States when you turn eighteen, you pick whats best for the country. nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;In the preamble to the Constitution it states quot;We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice†¦quot; The phrase quot;establish justicequot; means ensure equality for all Americans. The founders of the Constitution wanted a country where all peopleShow MoreRelatedThe Constitution Of The Texas Constitution948 Words   |  4 Pagesbetter, in the case of the Texas Constitution having the second longest state Constitution and the fourth most amended Constitution in the United States, makes it a difficult and complicated document. The Texas Constitution has been rewritten a total of six times since becoming independent from Mexico. The most recent being the Constitution of 1876, which is excessively detailed and exact due to the framers fear of a strong state government. 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