What were the cold war fears of the american people in the af

Well, there’s not enough room here to treat the topic exhaustively, but here are a few high points:

Some in America feared the global expansion of communism, especially the brand practiced by the Soviet Union.

While the strategic nuclear capabilities of the USSR were a real threat, many people that the other capacities of the Soviets were greatly exaggerated by the “military-industrial complex” that President Eisenhower warned us about when he was leaving office.

What we learned after the fall of the USSR was that the whole country was rust bucket held together with duct tape and vodka labels. (Okay, that’s hyperbole…but the commies were made out to be a bigger threat than they ever really were.)

My personal opinion is that the fact the we talked them up as being such a huge threat to us, that it scared the bejeezus out of them and made them a bigger danger than they would have been otherwise. (If you make even a weakling fear you, you make him more dangerous.)

Remember, when they looked at us they saw the only country that ever used a nuclear weapon in war, and we sent troops to attempt to end their revolution.