Question

Write two newspaper opinion pieces to describe a specific event from the Cold War, such as the Korean War or the Vietnam War, as reported by two world leaders who are on different sides of the conflict. Each letter should explain the different perspectives of each person. Be sure to use specific historical evidence to support your claims.

Answer 1

An example can be the Vietnam war. One side, the united nations/united states side, would say that the north Korean regime is oppressive and wants to spread communism onto people form the south who don't want it and that it needs to be stopped. That it could also strengthen the soviet union which was the enemy. The other side, the communist oriented side, would take a Marxist approach and claim that Capitalism was exploiting people of Vietnam and that rich were getting richer while the poor were getting poorer, and that communism is necessary to liberate people and help them achieve equality.

Answer 2

Answer:

There are many things we missed about the Cold War. We usually focus on the generals and the tactics, but instead, I’d like to write about  why the war was fought and what it all meant in Asia. We’ll focus on a part of the world that was at times overlooked, Asia and more specifically, Korea and Vietnam. Many Americans have forgotten about the Korean War, which lasted three years from 1950 to 1953 and is sometimes called the Forgotten War. The Korean War was the first real live shooting war that Americans were involved in after World War II and it was the only time that American troops directly engaged with a Communist power, China. China, which became communist in 1949 and qualifies as a major world power because it has a large landmass.  

The end of WWII left Korea split between a Communist north led by Kim Il Sung and an anti-communist South led by Syngman Rhee.  The two were supposed to reunite, but that was impossible because they were constantly fighting, fighting that cost around 100,000 lives. The civil war between the two Koreas turned into a full-fledged international conflict, in June of 1950 Kim Il Sung invaded the South, and the US responded.  

Truman thought that Kim’s invasion was being pushed by the Soviets and that it was a challenge to the “Free Democratic World.” Truman went to the United Nations and he got authorization, but he didn’t go to Congress and never called the Korean War a “war.” Insisting instead that American troops were leading a UN “police action” but that was kind of a misleading statement. General Douglas MacArthur was in command of this tiny little police force at the start of the war because he was the highest ranking general in the region. He was also really popular, at least with the press, although not so much with other generals, or with the president.  

Under MacArthur, UN forces, which technically meant American and South Korean forces, pushed the North Koreans back past the 38th parallel where the two countries had been divided, and then Truman made a fateful decision: The United States would try to re-unify Korea as a non-communist state. America’s allies and the UN all agreed to this idea, so up north they went, all the way to the northern border with China at the Yalu river. At that point, Chinese forces, feeling that American forces were a smidge too close to China, counter-attacked on November 1, 1950 and by Christmas the two sides were in a stalemate.  

The Korean War as reported by Truman, U.S. was simply a policing action, however the devastation and effect of this conflict last up to modern times.