The Rise of NATO, UN, and the Warsaw Pact

"We live in a world in which politics has replaced philosophy."

~ Martin L. Gross

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The United Nations was created over a period of time from August 1944 to October 24, 1945. It was created in order to provide peace keeping to the world, settles conflicts amongst member nations, prevents warfare amongst member nations and non-member nations, and it provides many other benefits and protections to human society. The UN has governing assemblies made of several permanent countries including the United States and the former Soviet Union, as well as many other nations that can be elected for a number of years. For more information, look here "United Nation's History" and "United Nations."

United Nations Flag

As the Cold War progressed political relations between the United States and the USSR, both permanent members of the UN Security Council, deteriorated rapidly for several reasons. One reason being the full feeling of World War II never fully dissipated from post World War II world, especially Europe and Asia. Another of the reasons for that, combined with the first cause greater tension, as well as it simultaneously being a separate reason of its own for relations disintegration, were the cultural differences and the government style differences. The United States wanted to place democratic governments in newly liberated nations while the Soviet Union wanted communist governments. Also, the Soviet Union felt some what isolated in terms of government. They felt that their government was surrounded by an ocean of Democratic Governments that were hostile towards them. Furthermore, the Soviets, at the conclusion of World War II,  witnessed the United States demonstrate its potential oppressive power before the world, with the use of the most powerful incendiary weapon ever conceived, the nuclear bomb. This combined with America's long range bombers, which were better than any other nation’s bombers including the Soviet Union’s, whose long range capabilities could drop these new nuclear weapons in nearly every major or minor city in the world. This made the Soviet Union very fearful and caused them to start a space and weapons race.  

NATO's Flag 

The formation of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), a military alliance of the United States and West Europe, in 1949 caused the Soviet Union to fear an American invasion of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union so in 1955, they formed a military agreement with Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Albania, with the exception being Yugoslavia who did not join, called the Warsaw pact. The NATO Alliance was formed due to the Allies fears of a soviet invasion of Western Europe and a spread of communism to their nations as a result. The snowball effect is seen here where nation acts a certain way to supposedly prevent possible future actions by the other nation causes that other nations to take actions that cause even more tension on both. 

Badge of the Warsaw Pact

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