9.1 sources of tension

• What was the aim of the USA's involvement in Vietnam?

  Halt the spread of communism in Asia
• How did the soviets interpret the USA's aim to halt communism in Asia?

  An attempt by the Americans to force their ideology on a region that was embracing communism
• How many US soldiers died in Vietnam by the 1960s?

  58,000
• On what side was the US on in the Vietnam war?

  Were involved in support of the South Vietnamese government against the communist Vietcong and the North Vietnamese
• What were the attitudes of the US president by the end of 1960, when the Vietnam war seemed unwinnable?

  
  

  President Johnson and his successor Richard Nixon both made ending the war a priority but neither could accept defeat
• Ultimately, why did the Vietnam war end?

  • The death toll of American soldiers in Vietnam continued to increase
  • Americans would find it hard to accept a positive relationship with the USSR whilst American servicemen were going to their deaths as part of the fight against communism
• Examples of lack of human rights in the USSR

  • The soviet government denied its people civil rights and free speech
  • publication of some books were illegal
  • opponents of the government faced exile in the prison camps of Siberia: the Gulags
  • Events in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968
• Level of restrictions faced by the people of USSR under the presidents

  In the years after Stalin's death, Khrushchev eased the restrictions people faced but Brezhnev limited individual freedoms
• How did the absence of freedom under communism have a significant impact on how the West saw the USSR and prognosis of the Cold War

  • Many saw situation as American freedom vs Soviet Oppression
  • Calls from the West for greater freedoms for people in the communist bloc but Western leaders were reluctant to push te issue and risk damaging an improving relationship