The Blame Game

Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar......

If one cookie goes missing then can there only be one culprit? Its never really just one who...unless its cookie monster. HE definately stole the cookies. But maybe he had friends, maybe, Some others want the cookie to be stolen. Who made cookie monster, a MONSTER in the first place? So are the monster makers the one that stole the cookies?

Blaming someone for something is never easy and trust me on this words can make all the difference. For example: Who was to blame for the Cuban Missile Crisis

Best answer: almost everyone involved had a part to play.

The trick is to be able to classify and make clear if the blame could fall more heavily on one or two parties. adjectives can make all the difference in an explanation words like:

Aggressive action, Provoke, Instigate, inaction, irk, irritate, anger

Explaining the blame is a tricky business. It is very easy to fall into the trap of describing what happened instead. Be clear and take about the nature of the blame and only about one party at a time. Here's an example of how it can go.

At the end of the day, both America and and USSR were responsible for the crisis where it seemed as if both might go to war. This is because both took deliberate and provacative action that made the other worry and fear for his country's safety. America is to blame for setting the stage that could allow the crisis to take place in the first place. By planning the bay of pigs incident where they tried to invade Cuba and by putting missiles that can reach moscow in turkey in 1959, it made both Cuba and Russia fearful and wary of them and more likely to take counter measures to off set their threat. Russia was at perphaps less at fault as their provocative action of putting missiles on Cuba was in defense of a communist state, Cuba. However, their Krushchev's defiant and attitude towards Kennedy's demands for their removal and the very act of putting the missiles there would provoke the USA to feel threatened and react to put in place aggressive measure like a naval blockade to protect themselves. At the end, it is the tensions, paranoid fear of the arms threat caused by both countries in this cold war that resulted in the crisis. If they had to try to diffuse tensions earlier and found a way to communicate, this entire affair could have been prevented.

Hope this helped

Potsdam conference

I was actually wrong about the Potsdam Conference and the view of Stalin during it. It is an opinion that he didn't trust the USA already because of the atomic bomb that they only told him on the spot but had been developing for years. He knew about it from his spies but he didn't betray anything... Got this from the Manhattan project website:

"Truman approached Stalin without an interpreter and, as casually as he could, told him that the United States had a "new weapon of unusual destructive force." Stalin showed little interest, replying only that he hoped the United States would make "good use of it against the Japanese." The reason for Stalin's composure became clear later: Soviet intelligence had been receiving information about the atomic bomb program since fall 1941. "

The Manhattan Project is the name they gave to the research and development of the atomic bomb. This website is worth to check out: http://www.cfo.doe.gov/me70/manhattan/potsdam_decision.htm

It has detailed stuff about what was happening just before the dropping of the bombs. Cool sources too!

Many people have pointed to Potsdam as the start of the Cold War. Yalta in 1945 was where they set the tone for the future of Europe and Russia agreed to war against Japan but it was at Potsdam when these discussions continued that fissures emerged. Truman was more suspicious then Roosevelt and things they clashed with Russia was the future of Poland and the eastern European states as well as how to treat Germany. Russia wen on to instill communist leaders in Russia hence gaining distrust over their true intentions.

I think that Russia did want to spread their influence but also did so to ensure a buffer and allies in the face of America aggressively recruiting allies through the Marshall Plan, Nato and other schemes. The way America acted, it seemed they openly distrusted Russia and was building might against them. Russia acted like wise. Hence : The Cold War.

Oh and there's an interesting and great comic out there called The WatchMen. Must read if you can get your hands on it.

The Cold War

There are many issues regarding the Cold War. If you think really hard about it, it seems almost like a little boy's school yard brawl taken to a global scale. Which of course got a bit scary with the Cuban Missile Crisis. But thinking about it, if i could sum up all the reasons for the war, it should the lack of communications, and communal hysteria fueled by politicians with their own agendas for making people believe what they wanted them to believe.

Its a bit sad, but many of the veterans who fought in the Cold War on the American side were seldom welcomed back as heroes. Some were even villified as they returned. This was a huge change from the scenes of jubilation that greeted the vets returning from WWII. What changed? Was it that people realised that the war was just not worth it? Did some people think that they were fighting the war the wrong way? Of course. Esp during the 1960s and 1970s. But thats a whole different topic althogether.

If you look at the speeches of Kennedy and Krushev, we have to be thankful that these men were not as insane as they seemed to be and Kennedy especially, the global implications of both countries hitting out at each other. Its almost like an old western with two gunmen facing off but luckily, these gunmen are quite smart to know about the kind of gun they both had. Krushev came off worse and was replaced because of the way he handled the situation. Kennedy unfortunately was assasinated in 1963 by what was believed to be a lone gunman (which is another point of historical contention).

Looking back, whose fault is it? Why not ask Cuba? They should know. Castro is still alive. but they often get ignored in discussions. Too small an island. (sound familar?)

Strangely, we still are arguing about the crisis even til today and it is a hot topic that perhaps can never truly have one answer. So it boils down to our own value systems to make the judgement.