The Cold War is over. Time to do a victory lap and celebrate the primacy of American power. But the celebration seemed short-lived, as there were plenty of other concerns. Nothing is as it should be. Our adversaries are now our allies, and our allies are now competitors. The end of the Cold War knocked down the Iron Curtain, but it also destroyed conventional economic patterns. Is the end of the Cold War proving to be good for world peace, but not so good for world business? Solution: Afte...

It would be easy to dismiss the Cold War simply as proof that Capitalism was a better theory than Communism. Easy, but not the whole story. In order for Communism to be relegated to the dustbin of history, it first had to be proven that its struggle against Capitalism was unnecessary and thus irrelevant. How did the US and the USSR close the gap in the last quarter of the 20th Century to allow Communism to go out with a whimper and not a bang? Solution: As argued by Brower and Sanders (201...

What impact did Mikhail Gorbachev's ideas of glasnost (openness), perestroika (restructuring) and demokratizatsiia (democratization) have on Communist society? Were these principles compatible with collectivization and a command economy? Did Communist leaders favor these principles, or did they feel that their hands were tied once they were introduced into Communist society? Solution: In the early 1980s, the Soviet Union was facing a wide range of problems.  According to Brower and Sanders...

Introduction The nation of Israel was officially created on November 29, 1947 as a result of UN Resolution 181 to provide a homeland for the Jewish people in a region with strong historical significance to people of Jewish faith (as well as Muslim and Christian faiths). This was accomplished by partitioning Palestine, an Arab nation, into two nations, creating animosity among the Arab peoples in the region, particularly the Palestinians, and resulting in decades of conflict between them and the...

What accounts for the rather late emergence of African countries as independent nation-states? Is there something peculiar about Africa that delayed its drive for independence? Why has the Arab-Israeli conflict been so persistent? What religious and cultural factors have contributed to the persistent state of unrest in the Middle East and, in particular, in what some people refer to as the Holy Land? Solution: According to Cooper (2015, the Europeans power had not colonized African until t...

The United States accused the Soviet Union of breaking all its wartime pledges and holding Eastern Europe hostage while trying to subvert governments in the West. The Soviet Union accused the US and its allies of trying to surround, and ultimately destroy it. War of words? Or was somebody telling the truth? And where do our 'isms' fit in? In particular nationalism? Solution: Interpreting the history of the Cold War has one of the most notoriously controversial pursuits.  According to Browe...

Introduction Adolph Hitler was a charismatic figure with remarkable oratory skills that he was able to use to unify the German people under his leadership by appealing to their sense of grievance over the outcome of WWI and the resulting conditions in Germany in the intervening period as well as to their pride in their nation and its history. Instructions Read Hitler’s speech at the following link: Link (website): Berlin: Proclamation to the German Nation (Links to an external site.) ...

Analyze Adolph Hitler's rise to power and the policies he used to rule Germany. The following statement was taken from a contemporary account of Germany in 1939: "Though the Fuhrer's anti-Semitic program furnished the National Socialist party in the first instances with a nucleus and a rallying-cry, it was swept into office by two things with which the 'Jewish Problem' did not have the slightest connection. On the one side was economic distress and the revulsion against Versailles: on the oth...

What were reasons that led to the ultimate failure of the Treaty of Versailles? What were the challenges facing the newly-formed League of Nations, and why was it so difficult to form a lasting agreement that would prevent another war? Elaborate. Solution: After the First World War, the Treaty of Versailles was established and signed by the allied powers. These included the United States represented by Woodrow Wilson, Great Britain by David Lloyd, France by Clemenceau, Japan, and Italy and...

Compare and contrast the two types of authoritarian governments that arose after 1917, that is, communism and fascism. What were the origins of these governments, their accomplishments, and their failures? What accounts for the fact that the masses mobilized to support these movements? Elaborate. Solution: Despite the fact that many interpretivism schools of thoughts have termed communism and fascism as the two sides of the same coin, they are substantially different in regards to their id...