The Driving Factor
Analysis: For both the capitalist and communist sides, ideology mattered to them because it served as a description and a defense of competing economic and social systems and promoted idealized versions of the respective strengths of the capitalist and the communist society. This makes ideology the core motivation for the U.S.'s and the Soviet Union's attempts to spread their respective establishments of capitalism and communism across Europe.
The spread of capitalism (in blue) and communism (in red) by the time of the early stages of the Cold War.
Capitalism (The United States)
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Communism (The Soviet Union)
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So Why Did Both Sides Revise Their Systems?
Analysis: The U.S. and the Soviet Union both created divergent forms of their social and economic systems (capitalism and communism, respectively) because of their desire to increase their own economic capacities to a level where one country could overthrow the other's economic system due to the growing opposition in the communist and capitalist perspectives.
Citations
1962post-crisis. Digital image. Historum. N.p., 7 Dec. 2009. Web. 14 Apr. 2016. <http://historum.com/speculative-history/9320-cold-war-heats-up-2.html>.
American-flag-1311743_960_720. Digital image. Pixabay. N.p., 7 Apr. 2016. Web. 14 Apr. 2016. <https://pixabay.com/en/american-flag-background-4th-1311743/>.
Capitalist-greed. Digital image. Capitalism At A Dead End. N.p., 27 Sept. 2011. Web. 14 Apr. 2016. <https://redantliberationarmy.wordpress.com/2011/09/27/capitalism-at-a-dead-end/>.
Flag of the Soviet Union.svg. Digital image. - Wikimedia Commons. N.p., 15 Aug. 1980. Web. 14 Apr. 2016. <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_the_Soviet_Union.svg>.
Http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdcVe2lOBBjnLBnVgSElSbA. "20 Century Capitalism Vs Communism - Difference between Worldviews." YouTube. YouTube, 03 Mar. 2015. Web. 14 Apr. 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fhh2qCqOG1g>.
Rswarts. "Nikita Khrushchev - Takes Control of USSR." YouTube. YouTube, 05 Apr. 2011. Web. 14 Apr. 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqB3V7vJOGk>.