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"Soviet man-be proud, you opened the road to stars from Earth!" "Glory to the conquerors of the universe!"

From 1958 to 1963 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics created an incredible collection of posters with over-the-top propaganda lines like that to inspire Russians in the space race.

The bold colors painted in the socialist-realism style captured the intensity of an era molded by the paranoid and dramatic competition.

The posters, estimated to be worth $400 and $1,500, were recently auctioned off by Mercer & Middlesex Auctions.

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These Soviet Space-Race Propaganda Posters Retain Their Delusional Intensity 50 Years Later

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"Soviet man-be proud, you opened the road to stars from Earth!" "Glory to the conquerors of the universe!" From 1958 to 1963 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics created an incredible collection of posters with over-the-top propaganda lines like that to inspire Russians in the space race.

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Excerpt: 'Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs'

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Speech by President John F. Kennedy, delivered in person before a joint session of Congress May 25, 1961.

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The years after the end of World War II was a very tumultuous time in modern history, and was also a time

that shaped the world as we know it today. During World War 2 the USA and Russia had been allies against a common enemy, Nazi Germany. But after the end of the war it became clear that the vast differences in political viewpoints on the two sides were not reconcilable. The Communist and Marxist views of the Russians did not sit well with the Western allies lead by the USA. The ensuing conflict lasting from 1947 to 1991 have lead to amazing technological advances which had an impact on our every day lives.

10. Advancement of the Nuclear Program on both sides

The end of World War II was signaled by the only wartime use of nuclear weapons in history, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After the war the USA and the western allies continued with various research programs into nuclear warfare and other uses of Nuclear reactions. The Russians had also been working on both Uranium and Plutonium bomb development during world war two, and this continued well into the cold war era, leading to several standoffs between the two super powers, including the Cuban missile crisis. The research on nuclear technology done on both sides of the iron curtain during the cold war period has been instrumental in the development of Nuclear Power Generation technology used today.

9. The Space Race and the introduction of satellites

Satellites can be used for many different purposes. The first satellites were developed during the cold war period by both America and Russia. These orbiting observation stations were first designed to spy on each other. Later uses focused on more sinister motives such as weapon guidance and other forms of concealed attack.

Telstar was the first commercial satellite to be launched as a commercial communication satellite in 1962, and changed the way we communicate forever. Today satellites form an integral part of everyday life. Without them we would not have live Television broadcasts and no Global Positioning System (GPS).

8. Long Range Bombers

Military conflict is very often the crucible where amazing technologies are refined. These technologies very often find much more docile applications in modern society. The Long range Bombers such as the B52 and B48 bombers developed during the cold war years created the platform for the development of the modern day long range jet airliner used for passenger and freight transport. Another major advance in aeronautical science was the development of the first Supersonic aircraft during the cold war years. This was one of the last physical barriers breached by mankind.

7. Lasers

The first LASERS "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation" were produced in the USA during the 1960, following a lot of theoretical work. Even though lasers are not weapons on their own, they find a wide range of application in both military and civilian applications. Some uses include targeting systems for weapons, surgical application and analytical techniques used in chemistry laboratories.

6. Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles

Because of the distance between the USA and Russia both sides of the conflict found a need for weapons that could reach major cities across borders. This need was the driving force behind the development behind these rockets that could deliver a nuclear warhead across vast distances.

The technology development for these missiles were also instrumental in the development of rockets used to launch rockets into space to deploy satellites.

5. Agent Orange

One of the most widely criticized programs of the US government during the cold war was the biological warfare research program. The program was operated in extreme secrecy and was charged with developing biological agents to be used in warfare.

The controversial program was halted after the negative publicity for the use of agents like Agent Orange in the Vietnam war. The revelation of the use of biological warfare in the Vietnam also led to revelations of other shocking research methods and tests being conducted. And ultimately led to the complete shutdown of the program.

4. Advances in Computers

As with most electronic and Hi-Tech developments, war and conflict is the best incubator. The cold war was not any different. In efforts to transport and hide information more effectively scientists on both sides of the iron curtain worked endlessly during the cold war to improve artificial intelligence technology. Some of the inventions of the time include DRAM and the memory chip. Thus opening doors to smaller and more portable computing devices.

3. Programming Languages such as Basic

What use would our computers be without a programming language and software. It would just end up being a very expensive doorstop. The cold war era was one of the most innovative of the 20th Century. The invention of the computer opened a world of new possibilities to researchers and governments alike. The secret to success was to develop programming languages for the calculations required to advance other technologies. BASIC was one of the first programming languages developed for public use, and was based on programming languages used by the military.

2. Long Distance Calling

The era of cellphones have made it very easy to have a crystal clear conversation with somebody. This was not the case 50 years ago. The technology used to connect people over long distances have greatly advanced the transfer of knowledge. Another advantage of the long distance phone line is also that conflicts and misunderstandings can be sorted out much quicker. Maybe not such a bad idea during the cold war.

1. The Predecessor to the Internet

What is the one invention that has changed the way in which we see the world today. No single invention has changed our interaction with each other as much as the internet.

During the 1960's the US government funded a project by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) to develop a protocol to share information between military computers very quickly. The resulting ARPAnet was the first system capable of sharing information between computers in different locations. The first connection of the system was made in 1969, and was for all practical purposes the first use of the internet as we know it today.

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Top 10 Technologies We Have Because Of The Cold War - Exploredia

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The years after the end of World War II was a very tumultuous time in modern history, and was also a time that shaped the world as we know it today. During World War 2 the USA and Russia had been allies against a common enemy, Nazi Germany.

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An arms race occurs when two or more countries increase the size and quality of military resources to gain military and political superiority over one another. The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union is perhaps the largest and most expensive arms race in history; however, others have occurred, often with dire consequences. Whether an arms race increases or decreases the risk of war remains debatable: some analysts agree with Sir Edward Grey, Britain's foreign secretary at the start of World War I, who stated "The moral is obvious; it is that great armaments lead inevitably to war."

Dreadnought Arms Race

With the Industrial Revolution came new weaponry, including vastly improved warships. In the late nineteenth century, France and Russia built powerful armies and challenged the spread of British colonialism. In response, Britain shored up its Royal Navy to control the seas.

Britain managed to work out its arms race with France and Russia with two separate treaties. But Germany had also drastically increased its military budget and might and built a large navy to contest Britain's naval dominance in hopes of becoming a world power.

In turn, Britain further expanded the Royal Navy and built more advanced and powerful battlecruisers, including the 1906 HMS Dreadnought, a technically advanced type of warship that set the standard for naval architecture.

Not to be outdone, Germany produced its own fleet of dreadnought class warships, and the standoff continued with both sides fearing a naval attack from the other and building bigger and better ships.

Germany couldn't keep up, however, and Britain won the so-called Anglo-German Arms Race. The conflict didn't cause World War I, but it did help to increase distrust and tensions between Germany, Britain and other European powers.

Arms Control Efforts Fail

After World War I, many countries showed an interest in arms control. President Woodrow Wilson led the way by making it a key point in his famous 1918 Fourteen Points speech, wherein he laid out his vision for postwar peace.

At the Washington Naval Conference (1921-1922), the United States, Britain and Japan signed a treaty to restrict arms, but in the mid-1930s Japan chose not to renew the agreement. Moreover, Germany violated the Treaty of Versailles and began to rearm.

This started a new arms race in Europe between Germany, France and Britain - and in the Pacific between Japan and the United States - which continued into World War II.

Nuclear Arms Race

Though the United States and the Soviet Union were tentative allies during World War II, their alliance soured after Nazi Germany surrendered in May 1945.

The United States cast a wary eye over the Soviet Union's quest for world dominance as they expanded their power and influence over Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union resented the United States' geopolitical interference and America's own arms buildup.

Further fueling the flame of distrust, the United States didn't tell the Soviet Union they planned to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, although they had told them they had created the bomb.

To help discourage Soviet communist expansion, the United States built more atomic weaponry. But in 1949, the Soviets tested their own atomic bomb, and the Cold War nuclear arms race was on.

The United States responded in 1952 by testing the highly destructive hydrogen "superbomb," and the Soviet Union followed suit in 1953. Four years later, both countries tested their first intercontinental ballistic missiles and the arms race rose to a terrifying new level.

Cold War Arms Race Heads to Space

The Soviet's launch of the first Sputnik satellite on October 4, 1957, stunned and concerned the United States and the rest of the world, as it took the Cold War arms race soon became the Space Race.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower tried to tone down the rhetoric over the success of the launch, while he streamed federal funds into the United States' space program to prevent being left behind.

After a series of mishaps and failures, the United States successfully launched its first satellite into space on January 31, 1958, and the Space Race continued as both countries researched new technology to create more powerful weapons.

Missile Gap

Throughout the 1950s, the United States became convinced that the Soviet Union had better missile capability that, if launched, could not be defended against. This theory, known as the Missile Gap, was eventually disproved by the CIA but not before causing grave concern to U.S. officials.

Many politicians used the Missile Gap as a talking point in the 1960 presidential election. Yet, in fact, U.S. missile power was superior to that of the Soviet Union at the time. Over the next three decades, however, both countries grew their arsenals to well over 10,000 warheads.

Cuban Missile Crisis

The Cold War arms race came to a tipping point in 1962 after the John F. Kennedy administration's failed attempt to overthrow Cuba's premier Fidel Castro, and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev implemented a secret agreement to place Soviet warheads in Cuba to deter future coup attempts.

After U.S. intelligence observed missile bases under construction in Cuba, they enforced a blockade on the country and demanded the Soviet Union demolish the bases and remove any nuclear weapons. The tense Cuban Missile Crisis standoff ensued and came to a head as Kennedy and Khrushchev exchanged letters and made demands.

The crisis ended peacefully; however, both sides and the American public had fearfully braced for nuclear war and began to question the need for weapons that guaranteed "mutually assured destruction."

Arms Races Continue

The Cold War ended in 1991; however, in 1987, the United States and the Soviet Union had signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) to limit the scope and reach of all types of missiles.

Other treaties such as the START 1 treaty in 1991 and the New START treaty in 2011 aimed to further reduce both nations' ballistic weapons capabilities.

The United States withdrew from the INF treaty in 2019, however, believing that Russia was noncompliant. Though the Cold War between the United States and Russia is over, many argue the arms race is not.

Other countries have beefed up their military might and are in a modern-day arms race or poised to enter one, including India and Pakistan, North Korea and South Korea, Iran and China.

Sources

Herman, Steve. US Leaves INF Treaty, Says Russia 'Solely Responsible.' VOA.
Hundley, Tom. Pakistan and India: The Real Nuclear Challenge. Pulitzer Center.
Sputnik, 1957. Office of the Historian.
The Reader's Companion to American History. Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, Editors. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
What Was the Missile Gap? Central Intelligence Agency.

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An arms race occurs when two or more countries increase the size and quality of military resources to gain military and political superiority over one another. The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union is perhaps the largest and most expensive arms race in history; however, others have occurred, often with dire consequences.

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After World War II drew to a close in the mid-20th century, a new conflict began. Known as the Cold War, this battle pitted the world's two great powers-the democratic, capitalist United States and the communist Soviet Union-against each other. Beginning in the late 1950s, space would become another dramatic arena for this competition, as each side sought to prove the superiority of its technology, its military firepower and-by extension-its political-economic system.

Causes of the Space Race

By the mid-1950s, the U.S.-Soviet Cold War had worked its way into the fabric of everyday life in both countries, fueled by the arms race and the growing threat of nuclear weapons, wide-ranging espionage and counter-espionage between the two countries, war in Korea and a clash of words and ideas carried out in the media. These tensions would continue throughout the space race, exacerbated by such events as the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and the outbreak of war in Southeast Asia.

Did you know? After Apollo 11 landed on the moon's surface in July 1969, six more Apollo missions followed by the end of 1972. Arguably the most famous was Apollo 13, whose crew managed to survive an explosion of the oxygen tank in their spacecraft's service module on the way to the moon.

Space exploration served as another dramatic arena for Cold War competition. On October 4, 1957, a Soviet R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile launched Sputnik (Russian for "traveler"), the world's first artificial satellite and the first man-made object to be placed into the Earth's orbit. Sputnik's launch came as a surprise, and not a pleasant one, to most Americans. In the United States, space was seen as the next frontier, a logical extension of the grand American tradition of exploration, and it was crucial not to lose too much ground to the Soviets. In addition, this demonstration of the overwhelming power of the R-7 missile-seemingly capable of delivering a nuclear warhead into U.S. air space-made gathering intelligence about Soviet military activities particularly urgent.

NASA Is Created

In 1958, the U.S. launched its own satellite, Explorer I, designed by the U.S. Army under the direction of rocket scientist Wernher von Braun. That same year, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a public order creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration ( NASA), a federal agency dedicated to space exploration.

Eisenhower also created two national security-oriented space programs that would operate simultaneously with NASA's program. The first, spearheaded by the U.S. Air Force, dedicated itself to exploiting the military potential of space. The second, led by the Central Intelligence Agency ( CIA), the Air Force and a new organization called the National Reconnaissance Office (the existence of which was kept classified until the early 1990s) was code-named Corona; it would use orbiting satellites to gather intelligence on the Soviet Union and its allies.

Space Race Heats Up: Men (And Chimps) Orbit Earth

In 1959, the Soviet space program took another step forward with the launch of Luna 2, the first space probe to hit the moon. In April 1961, the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit Earth, traveling in the capsule-like spacecraft Vostok 1. For the U.S. effort to send a man into space, dubbed Project Mercury, NASA engineers designed a smaller, cone-shaped capsule far lighter than Vostok; they tested the craft with chimpanzees, and held a final test flight in March 1961 before the Soviets were able to pull ahead with Gagarin's launch. On May 5, astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American in space (though not in orbit).

Later that May, President John F. Kennedy made the bold, public claim that the U.S. would land a man on the moon before the end of the decade. In February 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth, and by the end of that year, the foundations of NASA's lunar landing program-dubbed Project Apollo -were in place.

Achievements of Apollo

From 1961 to 1964, NASA's budget was increased almost 500 percent, and the lunar landing program eventually involved some 34,000 NASA employees and 375,000 employees of industrial and university contractors. Apollo suffered a setback in January 1967, when three astronauts were killed after their spacecraft caught fire during a launch simulation. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union's lunar landing program proceeded tentatively, partly due to internal debate over its necessity and to the untimely death (in January 1966) of Sergey Korolyov, chief engineer of the Soviet space program.

December 1968 saw the launch of Apollo 8, the first manned space mission to orbit the moon, from NASA's massive launch facility on Merritt Island, near Cape Canaveral, Florida. On July 16, 1969, U.S. astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin and Michael Collins set off on the Apollo 11 space mission, the first lunar landing attempt. After landing successfully on July 20, Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon's surface; he famously called the moment "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

Who Won the Space Race?

By landing on the moon, the United States effectively "won" the space race that had begun with Sputnik's launch in 1957. For their part, the Soviets made four failed attempts to launch a lunar landing craft between 1969 and 1972, including a spectacular launch-pad explosion in July 1969. From beginning to end, the American public's attention was captivated by the space race, and the various developments by the Soviet and U.S. space programs were heavily covered in the national media. This frenzy of interest was further encouraged by the new medium of television. Astronauts came to be seen as the ultimate American heroes, and earth-bound men and women seemed to enjoy living vicariously through them. Soviets, in turn, were pictured as the ultimate villains, with their massive, relentless efforts to surpass America and prove the power of the communist system.

With the conclusion of the space race, U.S. government interest in lunar missions waned after the early 1970s. In 1975, the joint Apollo-Soyuz mission sent three U.S. astronauts into space aboard an Apollo spacecraft that docked in orbit with a Soviet-made Soyuz vehicle. When the commanders of the two crafts officially greeted each other, their " handshake in space " served to symbolize the gradual improvement of U.S.-Soviet relations in the late Cold War-era.

PHOTO GALLERIES

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After World War II drew to a close in the mid-20th century, a new conflict began. Known as the Cold War, this battle pitted the world's two great powers-the democratic, capitalist United States and the communist Soviet Union-against each other.

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Throughout the Cold War the United States of America saw economic prosperity and a dramatic improvement in its standards of living. This gave the US a huge degree of power in the international arena, but to what degree did this power help it to claim victory in the Cold War? This essay will weigh up the ways in which the economic supremacy of the US led to their victory in the Cold War against the ways in which its foreign policy may have helped. These views will then be criticised and evaluated to conclude that each was important in different ways due to it being the economic power that enabled the US to pursue financially intensive foreign policies such as the arms race and enabled it to negotiate from a position of strength with the USSR in the 1980s.

Based on the initial positions of the two superpowers in 1948 and using only information that was known at the time, John Gaddis predicted that that the US had a 78% probability of winning the Cold War against Russia peacefully. This information suggests that it was due to the advantageous economic position that the US held in the beginning of the war and continued to have throughout that the US was destined to victory from the outset[1]. However the primary theories of international relations, realism and liberalism have contrasting views about how the war was won and how the different approaches to foreign policy the US pursued impacted on the progress toward peace.

An argument for the economic position can be identified in the liberal school of thought. The liberals at the end of the war such as Francis Fukuyama believed that it was due to the superiority of the liberal democratic system that the US was able to claim victory. They argued that the system appeared very attractive to the impoverished and oppressed peoples of the Soviet ruled states of Eastern Europe and around the world and that this undermined the authority and legitimacy of the authoritarian communist governments that could not guarantee the same liberties as those that are enshrined in the liberal democratic system. The liberals point to the considerably more efficient capitalist system which was able to generate the vast amounts of wealth necessary to sustain the investment in weaponry, technology and international operations that the USSR was unable to match, and in its attempts to keep up with the US and finance a war against them the USSR was unable to combat the extreme poverty that many of its people faced. Many liberals argue that when left to their own devices peoples from around the world will form interconnections based mainly on trade and this will lead to peace. They argue that the main barrier to this are the actions of the nation state, and based on the evidence of the failures of the Cold War foreign policies it is not difficult to see how this may be the case[2]. In a great many cases the actions of the US arguably delayed the resolution of the conflict, interventions in Vietnam for example arguably hindered the US position and the US' hostile actions in the 1940s can be seen to have even begun the war, which may not have been as unavoidable as was thought at the time by those in office.[3]

There is a great deal of evidence to support this view that the economic inferiority of the USSR was a major factor in its collapse. In the 1980s the Soviet economy was in a critical condition. The structural weaknesses that were inherent in the inflexible command economy that rewarded gross output of goods rather than productivity as well as producing disincentives to innovation in management and production led to a failure to modernise at the same rate as the west. Central planning in agriculture and in industry stifled production and made the economy vulnerable to stagnations such as that of the 1980s after a serious decline in harvests in the late 70s and a slowdown in production in various key industries.[4] The Soviet economic inferiority had a great impact on its ability to sustain its defence spending and military investment. The problems in the economic system also meant that the USSR was far behind the US in weapons technology, particularly in the area in which the war was likely to progress: The Russians were behind the US in the technological areas of target acquisition, tracking, sensors, and computer hardware and software which were the fundamental technologies behind the US' concept of the SDI (Strategic Defence Initiative) which threatened to render all of the USSR's previous military technology and weaponry obsolete. These areas would require heavy investment in order to catch up with America and Japan if the USSR was to continue as a world power, but due to the economic problems of the Soviet Union, millions were without food, shelter or basic commodities[5].

Very similar to the liberal attitude, the neo-conservative approach became the orthodox policy and took a much more foreign policy oriented perspective. The neo-conservatives tend to view the world as containing states, individuals and philosophies that can be identified as good and evil, with the communism being the latter due to its perceived relentless expansionistic aims and its denial of human rights[6]. Domino Theory identified communism as a very serious threat to the west as it was able to spread from one nation to the next. Believers in domino theory argued that communism was capable of rising in nations that were facing economic and political difficulty and communist supporters, inspired and aided by the Soviet Union, would instigate revolution against the state. The orthodox theorists and politicians saw the Soviet Union as an essentially expansionist state that saw global domination as an objective, thus utilising the domino effect as well as its own military power to spread across the globe[7]. This philosophy inspired the faith in the Truman Doctrine that pledged the US to support anti-communist regimes to protect them from falling to the communists. From this perspective, the interventionist foreign policy of the US in preventing the spread of communism was crucial to US victory in the Cold War. The Truman Doctrine and the domino theory were used throughout the Cold War by each president (at some point in their time in office) and was the ideology that guided much of US foreign policy. The Truman Doctrine was established in March 1947 with President Harry S. Truman's pledge that 'it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures', clearly identifying communism as the enemy, which he labelled as 'a way of life... based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority...(that) relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.'[8] The doctrine was used to legitimise countless interventions in the political affairs of other states in numerous ways, from the peaceful economic incentives used to both bribe nations into adopting capitalism or used to support the struggling European states in the aftermath of the Second World War, to the interventions in Greece in 1947, Korea in 1950, Vietnam in 1959 and the various interventions in South America to name a few.

The Realist explanation of how the Cold War came to an end can be seen as taking the middle ground in the debate as to whether economic forces were more influential than foreign policy in bringing about the end of the war. Unlike the orthodox theorists, Realists viewed the Soviet Union as a dangerous but cautious adversary, with values that run counter to Western society, as well as an economic system that was grossly inefficiency. They viewed the USSR not as an essentially expansionist state, but an opportunistically expansionist state, that only seeks expansion when the opportunity arises. The realists therefore see the victory of the Cold War as being partly due to the careful use of power at the end of Reagan's time in office which involved interventions and negotiations and détentes only in cases in which a discernable benefit to the US was to be had and the use of the US' economic strength to back up and reinforce the US' actions. [9]

The Reagan period can be described as one of 'crisis-avoidance precluding crisis-management'; one of cautiousness in the use of foreign policy[10]. Fundamental to the victory of the Cold War in the eyes of realists was the US' victory of the arms race, particularly with the advent of the concept of the Strategic Defence Initiative that emerged in 1983 and continued to grow in importance, the very idea of which gave the US a great advantage over the USSR. The missile shield threatened to render all of the Soviet arsenal useless and due to the weakness in the Soviet economy and its lack of research and development in the field of computer and satellite technology, it gave the US a huge advantage over the USSR in negotiations as it was unlikely given the state of the USSR's economy that it would ever be able to finance anything like it for itself without its citizens suffering even greater deprivations. This edge gave the US the power to force the USSR into changing its stance toward arms-control and may have forced Gorbachev into adopting his more western-friendly approach and breaking down the iron curtain as it gave Reagan the power to negotiate from an advantageous position. Realists therefore see the victory of the Cold War as being due to a combination of capitalisation of US strengths such as its economic and technological superiority as well as considered foreign policy that brought the war to a close. [11]

While there is ample evidence to support the case that the economic forces were the major factor in the resolution of the war, it can be seen to ignore the impact that crucial foreign policy developments negotiations had on the relationship between the two states as well as the US superiority in military capability and its bargaining success against the USSR.

The view that victory was due to foreign policy equally has many holes. The almost unrestricted and careless missions the US undertook based on the Truman Doctrine and the domino theory were frequently damaging to the US position and arguably extended the longevity of the war as liberals would point to the fact that it was only once the US stopped its interventionist and aggressive campaign against Russia and allowed it to fall apart on its own that the war drew to a close. One has only to look at possibly the most disastrously ill-fought war of the Cold War, Vietnam, to see the shortcomings of the neo-conservative approach. The Vietnam War damaged US power and reputation in the international arena, the conflict fragmented US society; sparking anti-war and anti-nuclear protests and, in the case of the Cold War as a whole, McCarthyite witch-hunting. The extreme cost of the war damaged the US economy, plunging it into recession and it demonstrated the limitations to American power. [12] Realists would also argue that the neo-conservative approach was similar to that of a state that has fallen into the trap of 'hubris', leading it to pursue a resource consuming and self-harming 'moral crusade'. [13]

The foreign policy dominated view overlooks the impact that the disparity in quality of living between the Eastern bloc and the West which the communist regime was unable to hide from its people, especially at the end of the Cold War when Gorbachev felt the need to undertake political reform in the struggling state including economic reform (perestroika) which brought market oriented forces into the system in order to breathe life back into the economy, and the social and political change brought about by Glasnost. Glasnost, or 'openness' permitted the spread of knowledge regarding life in the Soviet Union, removing the restrictions on the press, radio, television and film industries allowing them to critically discuss the health of the system. The growing freedom of the press enabled the citizens of the Soviet Union to compare and contrast their quality of life to that of the west of the world and the government was no longer able to hide how badly it was failing its people. This fracturing of Soviet politics encouraged the many millions of unwilling members of the Soviet empire to demand independence from Moscow. There were mass demonstrations in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Ukraine[14].

There does not appear to be a clear-cut answer to the question of whether the US economic strength played a greater part than its foreign policy in bringing the war to an end although the view that the foreign policy was to thank for the US victory is marred by the numerous counterproductive interventions that the US pursued. Also, Reagan's initial hard-line approach toward the USSR had little effect; it was only when he 'softened up' that things began to change. It seems to be that it was only the more cautious and considered aspects of foreign policy that bypassed the Truman dogma that plagued the earlier years of the war that relations improved between east and west. However both the foreign policy oriented view and the economic argument suffer problems as at other times during the war, the factors which are argued to have brought the war to a close were present. In early years of the Carter administration for example, there were attempts at negotiating arms reductions and to create a detente with the USSR and though he made some small gains initially such as the Russian agreement to the Helsinki Accords of 1975 and the progress toward the SALT II Treaty, the Soviet Union actually became more aggressive and more adventuresome, perhaps seeing Carter's withdrawal of nuclear weapons from South Korea and his attempts as conciliation and diplomacy as a sign of weakness and the USSR and US pressed on with the arms-race and the USSR invaded Afghanistan (much to Carter's annoyance)[15]

However, the two perspectives are not necessarily diametrically opposed. The economic strength of the US alone was not enough to secure victory, and the US foreign policy was frequently counter-productive. But when the disparity in economic strength was utilised by the US foreign policy it enabled the US to have a clear advantage over its enemy; and this is what happened during the Reagan administration, when the US was able to negotiate from a position of strength in order to force an increasingly desperate Russia into agreeing to US demands. The arms race that was fuelled by the superior US economy that gave the US an enormous power over the USSR and made them eager to resume discussion on arms reductions, as well as the successful détentes and negotiations that led to glasnost and perestroika and the breakup of the eastern-bloc, can all be seen to have been successful acts of foreign policy because they took advantage of the economic power of the United States of America.
Bibliography
de Mesquita, Bruce Bueno 'The End of the Cold War; Predicting an Emergent Property', 'Journal of Conflict Resolution', Vol. 42, No. 2, April 1998, Sage Publications

Bell, Coral 'The Reagan Paradox: American Foreign Policy in the 1980s', Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. Aldershot, 1989

Dunne, Tim, Kurki, Milja & Smith, Steve 'International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity', Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007

Crockatt, Richard 'The End of the Cold War' in Baylis, John & Smith, Steve 'The Globalisation of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations' Third Edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006

Ambrose, Stephen E. & Brinkley, Douglas G. 'Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938' Eighth edition, Penguin Books, London, 1997

Hans J Morgenthau ' A New Foreign Policy for the United States' part 5 ' To Intervene, or not to intervene' Frederick A. Praeger Publishers, London, 1969

[1] Quoted in de Mesquita, Bruce Bueno 'The End of the Cold War; Predicting an Emergent Property', 'Journal of Conflict Resolution', Vol. 42, No. 2, April 1998, Sage Publications, p131-155

[2] Bell, Coral 'The Reagan Paradox: American Foreign Policy in the 1980s', Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. Aldershot, 1989, p30

[3] Dunne, Tim, Kurki, Milja & Smith, Steve 'International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity', Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007, p89-108

[4] Crockatt, Richard 'The End of the Cold War' in Baylis, John & Smith, Steve 'The Globalisation of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations' Third Edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006, p113-115

[5] Bell, Coral 'The Reagan Paradox: American Foreign Policy in the 1980s', Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. Aldershot, 1989, p33-35

[6] Bell, Coral 'The Reagan Paradox: American Foreign Policy in the 1980s', Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. Aldershot, 1989, p12

[7] Bell, Coral 'The Reagan Paradox: American Foreign Policy in the 1980s', Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. Aldershot, 1989, p13

[8] Ambrose, Stephen E. & Brinkley, Douglas G. 'Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938' Eighth edition, Penguin Books, London, 1997, p75

[9] Bell, Coral 'The Reagan Paradox: American Foreign Policy in the 1980s', Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. Aldershot, 1989, p13

[10] Bell, Coral 'The Reagan Paradox: American Foreign Policy in the 1980s', Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. Aldershot, 1989, p22

[11] Bell, Coral 'The Reagan Paradox: American Foreign Policy in the 1980s', Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. Aldershot, 1989, p30-35

[12] Hans J Morgenthau ' A New Foreign Policy for the United States' part 5 ' To Intervene, or not to intervene' Frederick A. Praeger Publishers, London, 1969, p135-140

[13] Lebow, Richard Ned ' Classical realism' in Dunne, Kurki & Smith ' International Relations; Discipline and Diversity ', Oxford University Press, 2007, p68-69

[14] Ambrose, Stephen E. & Brinkley, Douglas G. 'Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938' Eighth edition, Penguin Books, London, 1997, p348-349

[15] Ambrose, Stephen E. & Brinkley, Douglas G. 'Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938' Eighth edition, Penguin Books, London, 1997, p 281-289

-
Written by: David Sykes
Written forDr Mark Garnett
Written at:Lancaster University
Date: December 2009
Further Reading on E-International Relations

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The US Victory in the Cold War: Economic Strength, Foreign Policy Triumph or Both?

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The economic strength of the US alone was not enough to secure victory, and the US foreign policy was frequently counter-productive.

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Technological advancements (space race)
Economical benefits
Military improvements (arms race)

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Information on the origins of EPA, historical environmental topics, origins of environmental statutes, environmental disasters like Love Canal and Times Beach, and EPA administrators.

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https://fas.org/

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https://civildefensearchivesdotorg.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/life-fallout.pdf

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Planting ICBMs in Farm Fields during the 50s

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The first ICBMs to be deployed were Atlas rockets based on old German V-2 designs. The second were named Titan. Both Atlas and Titan rockets were liquid fuel designs that had to have fuel loaded on the rocket just before it could be launched -- a two-hour process.

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How Clean Is Clean?

No accepted standard exists for clearing unexploded ordnance from closed military bases, so each site must be separately negotiated.

Depending on the cleanup protocol (depth of clearance, number of metal detector scans), costs can vary widely.

The budget implications of protocol choice are significant, with costs ranging into billions of dollars.

Baseline standards need to be established and cost estimation tools need to be improved.

Since the end of the Cold War, the Department of Defense has closed almost 100 major military bases and many smaller ones. Closed bases are either turned to other governmental purposes at the national, state, or local level, or, in some cases, sold to individuals or companies in the private sector. Regardless of the purpose the land may be put to, these installations must all go through a process of environmental restoration to ensure the safety of the eventual users. This restoration pertains not only to the contamination caused by toxic substances, but also to a hazard unique to military bases: unexploded ordnance (UXO), which occurs when the munitions used in military training or weapons testing do not explode as designed. UXO includes such items as artillery shells, bombs, rockets, hand grenades, and so forth. Clearing the land of UXO is an expensive, time-consuming, and often contentious process. One of the problems contributing to the complexity of UXO remediation is that it is difficult to estimate the costs of clearing the land. Researchers from RAND Arroyo Center explored the issues related to the cost of cleaning up UXO, focusing specifically on how changes in the cleanup protocols affect costs. The results of their research appear in Unexploded Ordnance Cleanup Costs: Implications of Alternative Protocols.

UXO Cleanup Is Controversial

Several organizations play important roles in the UXO cleanup of any installation. The Department of Defense (DoD) and the military services bear the primary responsibility for the cleanup, but the Environmental Protection Agency also has a key role. Equally important are the eventual users of the land and concerned citizens' groups. The process can be quite contentious because of differing opinions on cleanup standards. Unlike air and water pollution, no accepted standard exists for cleaning up UXO. Thus, DoD and the Army take a site-specific approach, which entails negotiating at each site the depth to which the UXO will be cleared and how that will be done. The organizations that have a stake in the process have been unable to agree on a standard depth or cleanup protocol. Some organizations want to clear only the UXO lying on the surface, while others want the land cleared of all UXO down to a depth of several feet.

The technology available for locating UXO aggravates the disagreements. Metal detectors are the only tools available for finding UXO. As their name implies, they detect metal under the ground - any metal. They signal the presence of dud artillery rounds, but they also detect inert pieces of metal, e.g., shrapnel, hubcaps, belt buckles, and rocks with high iron content. Although analysis of the signals can increase the probability of identifying UXO, the only way to know for sure is to dig up the piece of metal. Furthermore, the detectors will miss some metal, including UXO, due to the way it sits in the ground or the skill of the individual operator. Typically, contractors initially scan a site to map the locations of buried metal, analyze the data to identify the metal most likely to be UXO, rescan the site, and dig up suspicious items. But because there is some risk that this process will leave UXO behind, not all accept it as sufficient.

Estimating the Cost of Cleaning Up UXO

Arroyo researchers wanted to explore how changes in UXO cleanup (clearance depth, number of surveys with metal detectors, and amount of excavation) could affect costs. To do so, they used a cost-estimation tool called Remedial Action Cost Engineering Requirements (RACER), a software program widely used across DoD to estimate the cost of environmental remediation activities. Although the model had some shortcomings, the researchers were able to adapt it to do a cost analysis.

The analysis looked at the effects of three protocols on the total cost of cleaning up a 7,000-acre site that used to be a multipurpose training range. Protocol 1, favored by the Army, involves surveying the area with metal detectors and then digging up every metal anomaly to depths of one, two, or four feet.

Protocol 2, suggested by officials of the state for areas that will be developed for residential purposes, involves excavating all the soil in affected areas and sifting it to remove any UXO. Under this proposal, the excavation would proceed at one-foot intervals, with a metal detector survey before each excavation. Arroyo cost analysis assumed excavation to a depth of four feet.

Protocol 3 represents a compromise between 1 and 2. It calls for carrying out protocol 1 and then surveying the entire area again with a metal detector to find any UXO missed on the first sweep. More than two surveys might be needed. Some UXO might still be missed because of its size, depth, or orientation, but this process would increase the probability of detection. The cost analysis assumed excavation to a depth of four feet, meaning that search crews would dig down to four feet where UXO was detected.

Cost Differences Among Alternative UXO Cleanup Protocols at Case Study Site

The figure shows the results of the cost analysis for the various protocols. As can be seen, the cost differences among the alternatives are large. The most expensive alternative (protocol 2, with excavation to four feet) would cost DoD $1.1 billion if implemented across all of the site. This option is more than 30 times as expensive as the least costly alternative (protocol 1 with surface clearance only), which would cost $35 million. The compromise approach of conducting multiple searches with metal detectors without completely excavating the soil would cost $84 million if the entire site were scanned twice and $120 million if it were scanned five times. The total cost of surveying the entire site five times is about one-tenth that required for the excavation-and-sifting approach. Unfortunately, at present, no quantitative technique exists to determine how much additional risk is reduced by one protocol compared with another, and thus it is not possible to evaluate the relative effectiveness of the three protocols.

The budgetary implications of these findings are significant. For example, the entire budget available in fiscal year 2004 for cleaning up all types of environmental contamination at all Army installations closed since the end of the Cold War is $57 million. The cost of cleaning up the site studied in this analysis to any depth below the surface - even using the least costly protocol - exceeds this entire annual budget, which is intended to cover many other installations and kinds of environmental contaminants.

Recommendations

The cost estimation process needs to improve if DoD is to develop effective plans for cleaning up UXO. Arroyo researchers recommend that DoD take the following steps:

1. Continue efforts to develop a uniform strategy for UXO cleanup cost estimation. A feasible way to reach this goal is to modify RACER's OE [ordnance and explosives] Removal Action Module and to establish a standard way of implementing RACER.

2. Work with contractors to improve RACER's ability to estimate UXO cleanup costs. This improvement would include giving the model additional capabilities such as estimating the cost of searching to different depths, considering how different soil types affect costs, and options for the methods of clearing vegetation (e.g., controlled burn) and excavating (e.g., backhoe).

3. Conduct an exercise to calibrate and validate the modified RACER OE Removal Module. Once initial modifications are completed, the OE Removal Module should be validated by checking it against actual cost data for a variety of different types of UXO sites, applying additional modifications as necessary.

Arroyo researchers also made some recommendations about managing UXO sites. Because no existing technology can guarantee that all UXO has been located, regulators and the military have had difficulty agreeing on what UXO clearance process is sufficient to protect the public. The federal government should prepare a plan for developing baseline UXO clearance standards to end the stalemates that have arisen at many installations among regulators, community members, and the military. In particular, they recommend that the federal government take the following actions:

1. Designate an executive agency (the Army Corps of Engineers, EPA, or both) to develop baseline standards for UXO clearance. The standards should be tied to future land use and should be flexible enough to accommodate unique situations but broad enough to recognize the many similarities across sites.

2. Establish a publicly accessible database of UXO accidents in the United States. As the database matures, the information it contains could be used to update UXO clearance standards. The database should include all domestic UXO incidents, both those that involve explosive ordnance disposal contractors and military personnel and those that involve civilians.

3. Consider the funding implications of different choices about "how clean is clean enough" for UXO remediation. Given the many uncertainties in calculating UXO cleanup costs, new studies would be required to assess how different UXO clearance standards affect costs.

Available for download only.
View the print-friendly version: PDF (0.2 MB)
This product is part of the RAND Corporation research brief series. RAND research briefs present policy-oriented summaries of individual published, peer-reviewed documents or of a body of published work.

This research brief describes work overseen by RAND Arroyo Center and documented in Unexploded Ordnance Cleanup Costs: Implications of Alternative Protocols, by Jacqueline MacDonald and Carmen Mendez, MG-244-RC, 2005, 108 pp., ISBN: 0-8330-3774-9 ( Full Document). MG-244-RC is also available from RAND Distribution Services (phone: 310.451.7002; toll free: 877.584.8642; or email: order@rand.org).

Copyright © 2005 RAND Corporation

The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit research organization providing objective analysis and effective solutions that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors around the world. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.

RB-9124-RC (2005)

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The Cost of Cleaning Up Unexploded Ordnance: How Clean Is Clean?

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How Clean Is Clean? No accepted standard exists for clearing unexploded ordnance from closed military bases, so each site must be separately negotiated. Depending on the cleanup protocol (depth of clearance, number of metal detector scans), costs can vary widely. The budget implications of protocol choice are significant, with costs ranging into billions of dollars.

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http://www.washington.edu/alumni/columns/sept96/defense5.html

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United States biological weapons program - Wikipedia

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The United States biological weapons program officially began in spring 1943 on orders from U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt. Research continued following World War II as the U.S. built up a large stockpile of biological agents and weapons.

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Chemical weapon: Chemical weapon, any of several chemical compounds, usually toxic agents, that are intended to kill, injure, or incapacitate enemy personnel. In modern warfare, chemical weapons were first used in World War I (1914-18), during which gas warfare inflicted more than one million of the casualties

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Figure 1.--

Chemical and Biolgical Warfare (CBW) we now know was a huge danger during the Cold War. Frigtingly deadly agents and strains were developed. Biological warfare (BW), commonly called germ warfare is the use of biological toxins or infectious agents (bacteria, viruses, and fungi) to ill or incapacitate people directky or the animals and plants on which people depend. Chemical Warfare (CW) uses chemicals, commonly called poison gas, to kill. CW was developed by the Germans and first used in World War I. The World War I chemical agents, however, rather primitive. The Germans in the inter-War period begn developing much more deasly nerve agents. The Japanese also had an active program and actually used both biological and chemical agents in china, primarily in China. BW was not used. Thus CBW terrified the public before Wotld War II, but were not given much attention in the public mind during the Cold War. CBW was not new to warfare These weapons had been used such ancient times. Rotten or diseased carcases were catapulted into besieged coties. Some times it was inadvertent, such as the spread of disease by Europeans in the Americas. The public in the Soviet Union and America were focused on the new nuclear weapns. And unlike World War I, chemical weapons had not been widely used. Largely unknown to the public was the huge advances thathe Germans and made in CW during the War creating deadly nerve agents and the massive BW progrm launched by the Soviet Union after the War. The Soviet Union after devloping nuclear weapons (1949) developed a two strike Cold War military plan. The first was to devestate Anerican cities with nuclear weapons and then complete the destruction of American society with BW. The later was a program not known to the public and not appreciated as to importance by the CIA and military establishment. Bioweapons were banned by treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union (1972). The Soviets never, however, fully accounted for their stocks of CBW weapons. Russian President Boris Yeltsin admitted that the weapons still existed (early-1990s). [Warrick] Details on the Soviet CBS program only became public year after the end of the Cold War.

Biological and Chemical Warfare

Chemical and Biolgical Warfare (CBW) we now know was a huge danger during the Cold War. Frigtingly deadly agents and strains were developed. Biological warfare (BW), commonly called germ warfare is the use of biological toxins or infectious agents (bacteria, viruses, and fungi) to ill or incapacitate people directky or the animals and plants on which people depend. Chemical Warfare (CW) uses chemicals, commonly called poison gas, to kill.

Biolgicl weapons

Chemical warfare

Historical Background

CBW is not new to warfare. CW was developed by the Germans and first used in World War I. The World War I chemical agents, however, rather primitive. The Germans in the inter-War period begn developing much more deasly nerve agents. Biological and chemical weapons, often refrred to as Weaons of Mass Destruction (WMD). became a huge issue during World War II, although usage was limited. The Japanese also had an active program and actually used both biological and chemical agents in china, primarily in China. BW was not used. Thus CBW terrified the public before Wotld War II, but were not given much attention in the public mind during the Cold War. CBW was not new to warfare These weapons had been used such ancient times. Rotten or diseased carcases were catapulted into besieged coties. Some times it was inadvertent, such as the spread of disease by Europeans in the Americas.

Cold War Developments

The public in the Soviet Union and America were focused on the new nuclear weapns. And unlike World War I, chemical weapons had not been widely used in World War II. And akthough chemicl warfare was very limited suring the War, WMD were largely unknown to the public was the huge advances that he Germans and made in CW during the War creating deadly nerve agents and the massive BW progrm launched by the Soviet Union after the War. The Soviet Union after devloping nuclear weapons (1949) developed a two strike Cold War military plan. The first was to devestate American cities with nuclear weapons and then complete the destruction of American society with BW. The later was a program not known to the public and not appreciated as to importance by the CIA and military establishment. Bio-weapons were banned by treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union (1972). The Soviets never, however, fully accounted for their stocks of CBW weapons. Russian President Boris Yeltsin admitted that the weapons still existed (early-1990s). [Warrick] Details on the Soviet CBS program only became public year after the end of the Cold War.

Country Trends

Discussions of the dangers of a military conflict between the Unitd States and the Soviet Union focused on nuclear weapons. Much less was written about chemical and bacteriological warfare (CBW). Both sides worked in CBW, but the Soviet effort was massive and virtually nothing was known about it. Only after the end of the Cold War did details begin to leak out about the extent and nature of the Soviet CBW program. The Soviets deceloped both chenical and biological weapons, but the greatest effort was on biolgical weapons. American strategy in the Cold War ws massive retaliation, only to use nuclear wrapons if the Soviets launched a first strike. And tht was the end of the American stratgy. The Soviet strategy included a second phase. After Soviet nuclear weapons had destroyed American cities, the Soviets planned a follow-up strike to inplant horrifying plagues. This would destroy the countryside and what was left of American society. Here biological weapons were much more potent than chemical weapons because of their self-propagating capability. The Soviets developed the most leathal biological weapons in human history. The American effort pauled in comparison to what the Soviets developed and was officially terminated (1969). The Soviets developed multiple-drug resistant antrax as well as 'stealth' pathogens that would be virtually undectable. [Leitenberg and Zilinskas] The work with genetics is interesting given how Stalin set back Soviet gnetics decades when he support Lychenko and his socialist genetics. The Soviet work involved genetically engineered bacterial and viral pathogens. It is difficult to assess the Soviet motivationn for creating these weapons. Soviet officials and military leders were apparently convinced that the Uited states was developing similar wepons. It is unclear how they reached this cinclusion other than America had the capability to do so. The Soviet biological weapons program was mssive, including ten of thousands of people, There was a serious accident at a bio-weaopons plant in Sverdlovsk (1979). While the destruction of nuclear weapons in the United States and Soviet Union were carefully monitored, nothing like that occurred with the Soviet CBW stockpiles. The United States and the Soviet Union signed a treaty banning the production of biological weaoons (1972). ThecSoviet Union continued, however, researching and producing biological weaoins in secret, a flagrant violation of the Treaty. Russian President Borris Yeltsin after the disolution of the Sovie Union admitted tonU.S. officials admitted te existence of the secret program. Since then journalists and former Soviet scibtists (inclusing defectors), and U.S. officials have publiched accounts of the Siviet program. It is very likely that all these deadly strains are still kept in the freezers of Russian military research laboratories today. It is interesting to note that while American geneticists were mapping th humn genome and using genetics to develop new drugs and improved seeds to increase crop yields, virtually the only creation of Soviet geneticists were these terrible pathogens. Not only is there a moral dimensions to this, but also an economic dimebsion. Large number of Soviet scientist and technicians worked on this project which bdespite mssive spending returned more benefit to the Soviet economy and people.

United States

The American focus during the Cold war was on nuclear weapons. The American CBW program was reltively limited. Some reports suggest, however, that the CIA attemoted to convince the Soviets that a major CBW program was underway.

Sources

Leitenberg, Milton and Raymond Zilinskas. The Soviet Biological Weapons Program (2012), 890p.

Warrick, Joby. "Book details Soviet plans to wage post-nuclear germ warfare," Washington Post (August 9, 2012), p. A8.

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war and social upheaval: The Cold War -- weapons biological and chemical warfare

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Chemical and Biolgical Warfare (CBW) we now know was a huge danger during the Cold War. Frigtingly deadly agents and strains were developed. Biological warfare (BW), commonly called germ warfare is the use of biological toxins or infectious agents (bacteria, viruses, and fungi) to ill or incapacitate people directky or the animals and plants on which people depend.

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During the early years of the Cold War, the Pentagon heavily prepared to use - and defend against - new and improved poison and germ weapons.

Now we have detailed look at those plans from a newly declassified 1952 U.S. Navy training film. Earlier in October 2015, the independent website GovernmentAttic.org posted an electronic copy of the footage. A private individual had requested the footage 15 years ago via the Freedom of Information Act.

"Biological and chemical warfare have two principle objectives," the film's narrator says, "to reduce food by destroying his crops and his food-producing farm animals and to incapacitate the enemy's armed forces and that portion of his human population that directly supports them."

This clinical and disturbing description of wreaking chemical and biological death on an opponent is accompanied by images of fields, pigs and marching Soviet troops.

The U.S. Naval Photographic Center produced the film to explain how the military planned to deliver deadly chemicals and diseases, and protect its own sailors from similar attacks. The narrator describes the results of experiments that - if they had involved real chemical weapons - would have resulted in the deaths of thousands of people. The film also details equipment designed to spray toxic particles from airplanes, ships, submarines and more.

The Pentagon put the U.S. Army in charge of cooking up the specific agents and producing them in sufficient quantities, the narrator notes. Originally formed as the Chemical Warfare Service in 1918 during World War I, the Army's Chemical Corps researched dozens of possible payloads.

The ground combat branch already had decades of experience with gases like mustard and phosgene that burn the skin and attack the lungs. The United States and the Soviet Union - as well as other allied powers on both sides - appropriated work Nazi Germany had done on organophosphates that strike the central nervous system and prevent a person's brain from communicating properly with their vital organs.

The same year the Navy produced the film, scientists in the United Kingdom invented a new nerve agent codenamed Purple Possum. After learning of the weapon, the U.S. Army started producing the substance with its own moniker, VX. On top of that, the Chemical Corps explored the possibility of weaponizing various bacteria, viruses and toxins. Pentagon experiments included work on anthrax, bubonic plague, smallpox and ricin, among others.

Lastly, as alluded to in the Navy film's introduction, the Army considered various chemical and biological agents that could specifically kill crops and livestock. As a result, the Pentagon had an advanced defoliation program well before it sprayed gallons of Agent Orange over Vietnamese jungles.

With the Army in charge of these terrifying chemicals, the Navy focused its efforts on the delivery systems. The film describes weapons dispersed from ships, dropped or sprayed from airplanes or released by submarines.

According to the narrator, the Navy conducted its first ship-borne tests two years earlier in 1950. "A rather crude spraying system was installed on a mine layer, which ... secretly cruised off California and sprayed some 50 gallons of biological stimulant along a track two-to-five miles off shore," the narrator says.

The Pentagon regularly used non-threatening bacteria or spores to secretly test how far a real germ weapon would spread. In this experiment, as in the case with chemical and biological weapons in general, weather patterns and the terrain largely dictated where the particles went.

During the California test, technicians used special collectors to determine that the spray covered some 48 square miles of total area. "Had an infectious agent been used in the spray, there might have been 210,000 casualties," the narrator says.

In April 1952, the minesweeper USS Tercel sprayed more simulated toxins along the coasts of North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. "The rather flat terrain would be favorable to wide dispersion of wind-borne particles," the narrator says in the film.

Tercel sprayed 250 pounds of zinc cadmium sulfide during an eight-hour voyage along some 100 miles of coastline. Evaluators later found evidence of the fluorescent material across 20,000 square miles spread over all three states.

But surface ships such as the Tercel would be vulnerable to attack during an actual war. Recognizing this vulnerability, the Navy planned to mount sprayers on submarines for actual operations.

After reaching periscope depth, the submarines would - as the concept went - vent their deadly payloads into the atmosphere. If everything went according to plan, the vessels would then submerge and escape without anyone on land knowing the attack had even happened ... until it was too late.

The Navy also worked on underwater chemical and biological mines. A sub would lay these devices along the ocean floor and then leave the area. After a predetermined time had passed, the mine would float to the surface. A tube would then pop out of the top and release its gas or germs. Aircraft could carry the same weapons and drop them into lakes and rivers further inland.

Alternatively, an airplane with a giant spray tank could do the job. At the time, bombs loaded with noxious chemicals were hardly new, but spray tanks would be more effective and accurate for seeding large amounts of toxic agents.

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U.S. Navy Film Reveals Crazy Cold War Chemical Weapons Plans

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During the early years of the Cold War, the Pentagon heavily prepared to use - and defend against - new and improved poison and germ weapons. Now we have detailed look at those plans from a newly declassified 1952 U.S. Navy training film. Earlier in October 2015, the independent website GovernmentAttic.org posted an electronic copy of the footage.

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Thesis: Answer to a question, position, a statement that contains the essay's topic and points, what the essay is about, 1 sentence, end of intro, makes claim and proves it with specific evidence
Writer can never address reader.
You're entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.

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The Cold War is what boosted the US into the technological and military superpower that it is today.

The Cold War jump started the advancement of all technology in this country.

The Cold War was more beneficial towards the US than it was disadvantageous.

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What did the cold war do for the advancement of technology and chemical/biological weapons?
How did the cold war advance the technology of chemical and biological weapons?
How did the Cold War impact the advancement of science and technology?
How was the Cold War beneficial to the US?