User:Littlee0804/Cold War

Environmental Impacts

The two main ways in which the Cold War's effects on the environment were perceived to be environmental degradation brought on by American and Soviet efforts to establish military superiority, the hot wars that resulted from the proxy wars.

The Cold War Arms Race

Resource Security

Spraying pesticide in California

Both the U.S. and the Soviet Union participated in initiatives to overexploit land for cultivation in order to ensure enough food stockpiles in the event of a potential war. Additionally, some land that was unfit for cultivation was forcibly developed and irrigated, which had unfavorable outcomes like soil deterioration and salinization.

Stalin launched a program to change nature in 1948 because the Soviet Union was concerned that food supplies were falling far behind demand. This initiative was furthered under Khrushchev's rule and involved clearing enormous tracts of steppe in Kazakhstan and eastern Siberia for farming. There was a risk of weathering in large grassland regions.

In reaction to a potential famine, the United States raised the slogan “Green Revolution". They have greatly increased the use of sophisticated agricultural gear, such as chemical pesticides and fertilizers, which were decried in Rachel Carson's book "Silent Spring" as being extremely hazardous to both human and soil health. Large-scale industrial irrigation in unsuitable soils has also resulted in soil compaction or flooding in some cultivated areas.

In the Soviet Union, planners went out of their way to dam rivers in order to secure energy supplies for military industry. The dam construction advancing eastward from the main Siberian rivers to European rivers disturbed the river ecosystems on a large scale. Untreated waste flowed into the rivers, killing large numbers of fish. In the 1960s, anadromous fish, such as Sturgeon, were nearly extinct in the Soviet Union.

Overdevelopment of the Military Industry of Other Nations

Growing stocks of key ores including uranium, manganese, cobalt, and nickel were crucial as the Cold War's drive to establish military industries on both the American and Soviet sides increased significantly. While the Soviet Union sought to acquire as much uranium as possible in Eastern Europe, the United States worked to encourage corporate mining of strategic ores in central and southern Africa. Radioactive contamination, river landfilling, and slag disposal are all effects of mining on the environment on a global scale.

The geopolitical influence of the Cold War also forced some countries to prepare for possible attacks by either the United States or the Soviet Union. China's position in the late Cold War caused its government to guard against both U.S. and Soviet attacks, accelerating the construction of a military-industrial complex in Sichuan Province with reckless disregard for the impact on the local environment.

Military Testing

Both the U.S. and the Soviet Union made significant investments in improving their nuclear arsenals as a result of the nuclear standoff, which led to an increase in both the quantity and frequency of nuclear testing.

Baker nuclear test at Bikini Atoll, 1946

The largest thermonuclear explosion to occur during the Cold War was the March 1954 nuclear test, Castle Bravo, at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The test was 2.5 times more powerful than scientists had predicted and produced 15 megatons of fallout, contaminating 50,000 square miles of the Pacific Ocean and more than 200 local indigenous people and crew members. The incidence of Thyroid cancer in the local population is extremely high due to nuclear contamination affecting the marine ecosystem in the region. Three months after Castle Bravo, the United States released a film about nuclear testing, Them!. This film served as an opportunity to make the public aware of the uncontrollable and dangerous dispersion of nuclear material in the environment as a result of nuclear testing. The danger of radioactive waste to the human body is far-reaching. A 2001 joint report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, together with the National Cancer Institute, noted that Cold War nuclear testing had left its mark on the bodies of all Americans through radiation exposure. Nuclear testing in deep water has also contaminated deep-sea aquifers. In 1955, the United States conducted an underwater nuclear test that contaminated a deep ocean layer that covered more than 100 square kilometers and was one meter thick. Over the course of the three decades of the Cold War, the Soviet Union carried out 130 nuclear tests at Novaya Zemlya, releasing over 265 megatons of nuclear explosive energy. Of these, 70% are atmospheric tests. As a result, large amounts of nuclear debris entered the stratosphere and began to spread globally. There was also nuclear contamination that entered local ocean waters. On September 7, 1957, in the Gulf of Chernaya, the only ground explosion at the Soviet-led test site left a huge radioactive soil contamination. One hour after the explosion, the gamma radiation intensity near the epicenter was 40,000 roentgens per hour, compared to the then-permitted dose of 2 roentgens per year. Even today, this location is off-limits.

US Army spraying Agent Orange in Vietnam

The Environmental Effects of Proxy Wars

Global proxy wars between the United States and the Soviet Union took place throughout the Cold War, particularly hot wars with the Asian area serving as the primary theatre of conflict.

During the Vietnam War, herbicides and defoliants (mainly Agent Orange) were dumped on the battlefield, severely harming the local ecosystem. Areas in southern and northern Vietnam were repeatedly bombarded with approximately 72.4 million liters of herbicide. Aside from human health risks, the mammals, bird species, and invertebrates that depend on trees have dramatically decreased in Vietnam as a result of the environmental effects of defoliants and herbicides, which leaves the country's ecosystem more vulnerable to invasion by non-native species like bamboo.

File:Rupturing Chasan Dam.jpg

Rupturing Chasan Dam

Environmental warfare can be used to describe the Korean War. In addition to dropping several napalm bombs and biological weapons over Korea, the US Air Force also destroyed farms and dams. The Sup'ung Dam, at the time Asia's largest hydroelectric plant, as well as 20 irrigation dams in Korea were bombed by the US repeatedly, resulting in man-made floods that cut off North Korea's energy source, changed the region's natural topography, inundated the soil, and caused a persistent famine. As a result, the U.S. caused North Korea to lose its ability to wage further war while severely damaging its economy and food security. The blow to the dam is a slow violence. Due to the loss of soil nutrients and North Korea's severe reliance on irrigated agriculture, more people died indirectly because of the prolonged starvation.