Was the Cold War Chiefly a Clash of National Interests, with Ideology only Secondary?

Yes, I feel the Cold War was a clash of national interests. It was a clash between the capitalists and the communists, who were the Soviet Union, ran by Joseph Stalin and the United States ran by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Neither country was worried about the countries' ideology as much as they were worried about how to run the country. The United States wants to run its country the capitalist way and the Soviet Union wants to run its country the communist way. The United States wants the Soviet Union to run their country like us, and the Soviet Union wants us to run our country like them.

Since neither country wanted to change their ways of running their countries, they started to have problems with each other. The United States was pushing for capitalism while the Soviet Union was pushing for communism in other countries around the world. Each thought their way was the right way to run a country so they each were trying to convince other countries to follow them as well as stop the other one from spreading capitalism or communism to other countries.

The different ways of running countries ended up dividing the world into different parts, capitalism and communism. Some of the communist countries are Soviet Union, China, parts of Europe and Germany and North Korea. The capitalist countries are United States, South Korea, parts of Europe and Germany. Since the countries are divided and the two leaders, Stalin and Truman (came into power after Roosevelt died), keep pushing at each other and that is what started the Cold War which lasted for years.

Once the war started, neither Stalin nor Truman was worried about their countries' ideology instead they only cared about promoting capitalism or communism. As the war went on and more and more U.S. troops that had went over to help fight the war and died, we started to rethink what is more important to us. When Eisenhower took over as U.S. president, he wanted to help stop the war so that our troops can come home and is with their families and we could stop losing more of our troops. Eisenhower and Khrushchev worked together to stop the war. They each decided that the ideology of their country and their people was more important than convincing other countries to follow their ways of running the countries.

To conclude, I do believe that the Cold War was just a clash of national interests but it did turn into care about the ideology of the countries.

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