During the designated time for Capstone a total of about 6 – 7 weeks I felt like it was an amazing experience. Although the work was hard to go through I am thankful that I made it through Capstone. Almost. Working on my script writing my essay and trying to memorize my script….. All of that has made remarkable memories in my mind.
In my opinion memorizing my script was the hardest part in the Capstone project. One technique I used is to write down key words and emphasize on which made it 10 tons easier. Since my topic is heavy see for yourself my script.
Brief Introduction – Slide 1 (The Cold War Era By Jason Ling)
Hello my name is Jason Ling and for my Capstone project I chose the topic of the Cold War. Just by a show of hands who here knows about the Cold War? Good cause’ you’re about to learn more about.
Back on the focus, The Cold War was a period of geopolitical tension between the Soviet Union and its satellite states (the Eastern Bloc), and the United States with its allies (the Western Bloc) after World War II. The Soviet Union is a union republic which incorporated different countries that formed a greater and stronger country. Communism and Capitalism played an important part in the Cold War. Capitalism is an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state. And Communism is a political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs.
Spies – Slide 2 (CIA vs. KGB)
Because America feared the expansion of communism something called the Red Scare was starting to stir in the U.S in 1917 30 years before the Cold War had started. The Red part of the Red Scare can be known as the Soviet Union Scare also considering Red as in communism and Soviet Union as the leader of it. It happened because of early Soviet – U.S political clashes which provoked and scared the U.S about the Soviet Union’s spread of its Communist ideology. Soon after it became clear that there were spies who posed threats to both the U.S and the Soviet Union’s security. The two main spy agencies were the KGB and the CIA. So basically the CIA stands for the Central Intelligence Agency and KGB stands for the Committee for States Security when translated into English. The Central Intelligence Agency was for exploring international relations and solving crimes around the world. The KGB was established for intelligence gathering, border security, and propaganda enforcement. More than half a million people were employed in the KGB.
Slide 5 – Picture of Korean War fight scene
My main Inquiry question is How has the Cold War impacted the world in both positive and negative way? To answer this we will talk about first a negative effect, the amount of money spent and the people who died because of fighting. Let’s start with a quick example, the Korean War. It started in 1950. It was fought because of the idea of democracy and communism. Again. It started because the Soviet Union infiltrated places beyond the 38th parallel which is basically a separation line for North and South Korea. Eventually the conflict ended in 1953 with a win to the U.N. 5 million people died in total and in total 30 billion dollars were spent!
Similarly another negative effect would be that in the financial side of it, the US has spent itself already 5.5 trillion dollars on military arms which a large percentage spent on nuclear weapons. But even worse, most of those nuclear weapons were just wasted and never put into use, just used as a component of threats. When the 5.5 trillion dollars could be used on education we used it on military arms that were almost NEVER put into use.
Slide 6 – Conclusion
Now some positive effects would be: A nuclear war never happened. Threats like the Cuban missile crisis never actually took action. Now if we look deeper into what actually happened According to the philosopher Karl Marx, Such as people unemployed and inequality would be a not a problem. But the inequality part? Not so true and that’s a lie. They claim that they would terminate poverty but in reality it would only make matters worse. The problem is that how they organize their economies wrong. There economic system is called ‘plan’ economy. The specialty about plan economy is that everything is the government’s. The government conducts trade industry and many else. The US has an economic system called Market economy, the Market economic system all the trade and industry are conducted by the Market. So why has communism led to poverty? The plan economy system will lead to economic deterioration, with this you can’t create much wealth and the accumulation of wealth. While Capitalism is a totally different story. The pros of it would be it encourages innovation or in other words, creativity. Another positive effect might be that it increases competition. In communism basically everything is the government’s so there is no competition. For example if a shop is beside another shop in the US and is the ame shop there is competition but if there are no private owners there is no competition. But there also are some negative effects on it too. And I am going to list them now. As stated before there is competition but if the competition goes intensive that it is out of reach. Elders and Children won’t be able to consume any skill. Which is kind of a big problem. Anyways, in my opinion I think that the Cold War was absolutely necessary. Communism to me is like a dark dimension where everything is messed up and obsessing with human rights I mean, who would want property controlled by the government? Sharing your house with strangers. As a result, how is the communism beneficial except for killing people? When Mao ZeDong was ruling the 4 years of the Great Leap Forward a horrendous project that united people in farms and every bit of food was given to the government. But nevertheless the U.S succeeded and at least minimized the amount of communist countries. Now today a trade war is going on between China and the U.S. Do you think the trade war is part of the Cold War Era?
Making this script was hard enough and trying to memorize it 11 tons harder.
My favorite part of Capstone is making my essay. This was because it was the time to put all my information into a cohesive essay.
To future students where Capstone awaits you should put all your effort into this final project of 5th grade.