Need information on Cold War

Question

In what ways did the cold war affect independence movements, or nations that tried to maintain their independence, throughout the world? Please provide examples from Asia, Africa, and the Americas to support the answer.

Answer 1

The main way it affected the independence of new nations undergoing decolonization was that these countries became enticing targets for both the US and USSR to spread their influence through. The US is no saint when it comes to this: the CIA sponsored the overthow of democratic governments in Guatamala in 1954 (Jacobo Arbenz, who had attempted to nationalize land owned by American fruit companies before being toppled), and in Chile in 1973 (Salvador Allende, who was the first ever democratically elected Marxist president until the army threw him out and probably killed him as well). Likewise, the USSR sponsored communist liberation/rebel movements in Mozambique, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and Cape Verde, who successfully overthrew the Portuguese colonial regime and established communist governments under Soviet guidance.

The distribution of aid money and development assistance also played a big role: the US and USSR give it to their friends - often in large quantities - and kept it away from their enemies. These tactics, which were not exclusive to either side, ensured that the world remained divided more or less into two blocs: the communist, and the Western democratic.

Some nations tried to avoid being forced to choose sides by forming the Non-Aligned Movmement, an international organization that still exists today. They attempted to create a third bloc of Third World nations to form a common front when dealing with the US and USSR, but were ultimately unsuccessful. In the end, most members of the Non-Aligned Movement ended up choosing sides anyway.

Many dictators became outrageously wealthy by accepting one side or the other as their patron and embezzling the resulting aid money (the worst was arguably President Mobutu of Zaire, who accumulated $5 billion in ill-gotten funds, much of the money originating in the US, and hid it in Swiss bank accounts).