The Korean War essay

The second half of the 20th century began anxiously. The Cold War raged in the world. Former allies on Anti Hitler coalition stood for the different sides of barricades, confrontation grew between them from day to day. Race of armaments had a place between the block of NATO at the head with the USA, from one side, and the USSR with his allies ”“ from the other; it became powerful. Flashed and went out conflicts of different degree of tension, there were hot points, where interests of sides clashed. The Korean peninsula became at the beginning of 50th one of such points. I think that it is necessary to observe this question from nowadays position and dwell on the most interesting moments of those times. This paper will have research character and I want to show the reasons why this Korean War began, what repercussions it had throughout the period of the Cold War.

According to historical sources the Korean War has been also called “The Forgotten War” or “The Unknown War”, because it was culturally forgotten through the ages. This war was really historically overshadowed by the two most famous wars in our world’s history; I mean World War II and Vietnam. The Korean War became a central part of the events of those times and it figures in all forced conflicts and military actions. Different opinions vary on this point but all researches agree that the Korean War was one of the first episodes of the Cold War. Analyzing those times situation we can emphasize that many of great personalities were involved in it, that’s why among them we can find: Truman, MacArthur, Mao, and Stalin. In this war situation we should remember one thing that if we can answer the first question of our research connected with the main reasons of war beginning, the rest of the research should be plain sailing. First of all I want to mention that when the North Korean troops crossed the 38th parallel and invaded South Korea the Korean War began and became full-scale civil war or military conflict (I think that these two titles can’t change its contents).

Let’s get away from generalities and descend on particulars of the Korean War beginning. The Korean War like every another war in our history has own character and reasons for its beginning. There are almost as many definitions of this war as there commentators, because different people have different opinion in relate to this topic. Summarizing all information about the Korean War we can mark out that the Korean War was a military conflict or it even will be better to called it a civil war between North Korea and South Korea with main hostilities beginning on June 25, 1950. The conflict had its roots in power division and arose from it when the two Korean powers tried to reunify Korea under their government. For example, let’s remember that the Republic of Korea was supported by the United States and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was supported by the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union. As it was above mentioned, this cruel civil war began on 25 June 1950 and it took more than 2 million civilians and soldiers from the both sides. We see from this awful statistic data that the Korean War had already proven to Americans that Russia and China were successfully spreading the Communist view throughout Southeast Asia.

In continuation of this topic it is necessary to say that an international climate in this period became worse substantially – it was the height of the Cold War, time of proclamation of doctrine of «inhibition of communism», hard implementation of political course of American government. As we can conclude from received information two big countries needed in these conflict continuation because both of them, I mean the USA and the USSR wanted to become more powerful and didn’t want to leave their positions.

This war had its own consequences because it was a war between two parts of one country with straight opposite course of development and for a great regret it is distinctly evidently, that these two states were just marionettes at the USSR and the USA hands. In fact, the Korean War was one of the first and greatest conflicts after completion of the WWII. On this basis, it is possible to judge that Korea became a starting point for the Cold War beginning. It is impossible not to take into account circumstance that General Assembly of UNO at that time was under noticeable influence of America, which, in same queue, also quite a bit influenced on motion of the history of the Korean War. The USA became an aggressor on attitude not only toward the North Korea but also to the South Korea, because it strongly pressed on rulings circles at the head with the main governor of the country. In acknowledgement of these words I want to add that the Korean War was the first local forced conflict of Western and socialistic blocks in a nuclear epoch, in which participation of super countries carried the limited character (spread on the limited territory and not accompanied the use of the weapon of the mass destruction).

Finally we will talk about the end of the Korean War, because there was no victory in this war. The Korean War had important political consequences both for Korea and for other whole world. Thus, the Korean War resulted in distribution of the Cold War not only on Far East but also on other regions. The USA saved a considerable military contingent in South Korea, sent troops for defense of Taiwan, gave up the former policy of neutrality in Indo-Chinese and extended the military being in Europe and on the Near East. The military budget of the USA attained 50 milliards of dollars, the quantity of American military powers was twice increased; the special accent was done on development of aviation. The military industrial complex of the USA, experiencing a deep slump after completion of the WWII, recovered the economic positions.

Thus, taking into account all above mentioned we can conclude that the Korean War greatly changed situation in the world and two big powerful countries used it as an instrument for those changes. There were killed a lot of people during this cruel war and it led to the beginning of the Cold War that was the long and hard for the whole period of its existence. I think that this research helped me better understand the Korean War nature and show that every war is a big pain for ordinary people.



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