How did containment and the arms race contribute to the cold war?

The Cold war was started after the second world war finished and was basically America being paranoid about Communism spreading from Russia and West Germany in the South East Asia and then onto America.

Containment was what America was trying to do to Communism. Because they 'lost' China they wanted to contain it. Korea was split in the Cold War as part of containment and also Vietnam. The Korean and Vietnam wars were both against Communism.

The arms race was about nuclear weapons as straight after the second world war, America were the only country in the world with nuclear weapons and they didn't want the Russians getting them. They eventually did and this lead to events such as the Cuban Missiles crisis and also led to a drastic change in foreign policy from Eisenhower wanting to use nuclear weapons against communism to Kennedy having to avoid it because the Russia's would use them on America.