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The Arm's Race In The Cold War

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The Arm's Race In The Cold War
The downfall of Soviet Union can be connected to the Arms race between the two superpowers of the U.S and the USSR. The results from the arms race left too much unused waste material, such as the stockpile of nuclear warheads and costed both superpowers a hefty sum. The Soviets continued to invest too much currency into their government to keep up with the U.S. The Soviets had to increase effort to reach where they were before the escalation and the results to this upsurge were not pleasant. The Soviet economy was becoming stagnant, while their military spending passed the threshold of acceptable. President Reagan's Defense Initiative was a threat that needed to be countered, and the Soviets threw increased amounts of money at the military . The US had spent about 18% of its Gross Domestic Product at their military, while the Soviets were spending up to 35%. This resulted in Russia bankrupting itself. There was far too much …show more content…
The Arm's race in the Cold War, had negative results on the opposing superpowers. Due to the cold war being a continuous state of political and military tension between the United States with NATO and other allies; against powers like the Soviet Union with the Warsaw Pact and other allies.These effects created a deteriorating relationship between the USA and the USSR, the Cuban Missile Crisis and contributed to the financial downfall of the Soviet Union in it's final days. The United States and Russia have a much more acceptable relationship in the current day, but in the Cold War era, the hostilities rose to a near breaking point level. The events that occured, created a time in history that can be referenced for many generations of how competing ideologies and too much ``power competition`` between superpower countries can result in dire situations like the of October 25 of 1962 if not handled

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