Russia vs. U.S.A.

These two countries have fought on the same side in many wars and lived in harmony for quite some time. But why are these two mortal enemies now?

It all started in 1922, when Russia, Ukraine, Byelorussia (Belarus), and Transcaucasia (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia) joined to form the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), a communist country. The U.S. did not like this because democratic states do not like communist ones. Anyway, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. lived in peace for 17 years. And then World War II started. Even then, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. fought on the same team. But things soon became heated…

In 1940, the U.S.S.R. invaded the Baltic region and incorporated it into a part of the country. This invading continued throughout the war, with the U.S.S.R. invading Romania in 1944, annexing a part of it, and putting a communist government in charge of the rest of the country. Soon after the war had ended, the U.S.S.R. had a lot of communist allies in Europe, using the invasion tactic. Democratic Western Europe and the U.S. felt threatened and formed a military alliance called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to counter any attacks by the U.S.S.R. In response, the U.S.S.R. and its allies created a similar one called the Warsaw Pact. This marked the beginning of the Cold War, a ‘war’ between communism and democracy.

In Asia, two wars happened because of this communist-democratic fighting, the Korean War and the Vietnamese War. I’m not going to talk about the Korean War because I have put it in a separate article, North Korea vs. South Korea. I will, however, talk about the Vietnamese War. 

When the French lost their colony in Asia, it split into four: Laos, Cambodia, North Vietnam, and South Vietnam. North Vietnam became communist, while South Vietnam became democratic. In time, North Vietnam decided to spread communism to South Vietnam. So, with the help of Soviet forces, it invaded its southern counterpart. The U.S. backed South Vietnam, but their side eventually lost, and communism spread all over the land of Vietnam.

In North America, Cuba had just recently had a civil war, which made it a communist country. It started becoming closer allies with the U.S.S.R. Then, in 1962, a U.S. spy plane spotted missiles in Cuba, pointed toward the U.S.! What followed was a mass panic in the country as nuclear attack drills were carried out in schools everywhere. Finally, U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev reached an agreement. The missiles in Cuba would be removed, while U.S. missiles in Italy and Turkey (pointed at the U.S.S.R.) would also be removed. This missile scare would forever be known as the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In 1991, the U.S.S.R. collapsed, mainly due to nationalist uprisings everywhere in the country. But present-day Russia, seen as the successor of the U.S.S.R., still faces a lot of scorn from the world, especially from the U.S. So when Russia attacked Ukraine in 2022, it comes to no one’s surprise that many countries immediately sent military aid to the defending country. Who knows what will happen? Will the world ultimately forgive the Russian government? Only time will tell.

By Mihir Gupta