Covert Action Dbq

During the Cold War, covert action was necessary. The Cold War was a period of tension between the United States and the Soviet Union. Both were fearful the other would fire first, but neither did. Spies were pivotal figures during the Cold War because they were essential for acquiring secret information. Right before the Cold War began, the Central Intelligence Agency had just been created and was an important organization for obtaining information for the United States. CIA covert action during the Cold War was justified because it minimized confrontation, kept military costs low, and held enemies at a distance by fear.

The first reason covert action during the Cold War was justified is because by using covert methods, confrontation

A major debate about covert action is the question if subversive warfare is better or worse than the mass destruction done to public institutions by aerial bombardment. Subversive warfare is movements and fights that take place undercover and utilize espionage and spying as a way to attain the information to win. Subversive war tactics are much better risks to take than aerial bombardment and other forms of physical warfare because of damage done to public institutions such as schools, hospitals, and houses. By choosing the route of aerial bombardment, many innocent civilian lives could be put at risk by leading to Soviet Union imitation of U.S. tactics, resulting in deaths on both sides and by and large, leading to a war. People would rather face the consequences of a verbal war/arms standoff between the U.S. and Soviet Union than have to experience a bombing first hand because of the choice to go straight into battle. This ties into lowered war costs justifying covert action because once destruction occurs, reconstruction needs to happen. By avoiding all the extra infrastructure funding and rebuilding, the government was able to save money which was able to pay for new technology that enabled better spying and seeing enemy tactics. Costs went to better causes than having to pay for

Many people supported the CIA and covert missions during the Cold War, knowing that the deception and espionage were keeping the army from having to fight in an actual war like World War II, which they had just endured. The first way fear justified CIA covert action through fear was that secrecy inflicted fear among the people. By this, the CIA was able to control a large population and decide what information they would receive about what was happening. Because all of the CIA action was classified, citizens rarely knew what was going on, and therefore felt threatened because they weren’t fully informed of what their nation was doing and if it was moral to be supporting the secret decisions of their nation. By keeping most information secret, people were forced to choose sides; either siding with the CIA and backing the CIA’s decisions of covert work, or opposing the CIA because the people were being left in the dark about what was happening to their nation regarding the CIA’s choices. The United States not knowing what was coming next because the Soviet Union was using espionage as well, created a stronger nation because they were