Assess the Cold War. How did it affect American diplomacy and what were the results for Europe and Asia? What were the final results of the Cold War on the United Staes ?

The Cold War loomed large over America foreign policy, and virtually every situation was analyzed through the lens of the bilateral conflict between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. In Europe, this was played out most dramatically in the virtual bifurcation of Europe between democratic Western Europe, allied with the United States, and communist Eastern Europe, dominated by the U.S.S.R. in nearly every way. In Germany, in particular, the construction of the Berlin Wall was the physical manifestation of the Soviet attempt to cut off its citizens from what it deemed to be threatening Western ideology. The Cold War also led directly to the rise of the NATO and Warsaw Pact military alliances which demanded that member nations defend each other in case of war. The Cold War caused a massive increase in defense spending and the stockpiling of conventional and nuclear weapons, an attempt to make true the theory that MAD or mutually assured destruction was the only way to avoid war. In Asia, the Domino Theory—the Cold War-driven notion that the "falling" of one nation to communism would inevitably lead to more nations becoming communist, like dominoes falling in a row—led to American involvement in both the Korean War and the Vietnam War in an attempt to prevent those nations from embracing communism and allying with the Soviet Union.