Cold War

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The Cold War was political, economic and psychological conflict, together with regional hot wars, between the United States,NATO and other allies, and the USSR, China and their allies between 1947 and 1989.

Although there was no direct fighting between the superpowers, each country was involved in a number of proxy conflicts, most notably in Vietnam, Korea and Afghanistan. The most tense moment between the two main powers came in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, which ended without escalation into warfare.

The Cold War was marked by a nuclear arms race between the two super-powers, and the unchecked proliferation of nuclear weapons was a cause for concern in many quarters. The Cold War also was marked by high levels of espionage.

The root of the Cold War lies in Soviet expansionism and subversion of so-called "bourgeois regimes".

The tension during the war fluctuated, with the super powers going through periods of heightened conflict and also periods of improved relations. It ended on November 11, 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet overseas empire. History closed the books on the Soviet Union itself on December 25, 1991. It was replaced by 15 smaller countries, especially Russia, which all rejected Communism and the Cold War.

Contents

Causes

Following the Russian Revolution in the closing days of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson refused to recognized the communist government of Russia and contributed troops in support of the White Russians. Not until 1933 did the US recognize the Soviet government, and relations did not truly warm until Hitler's invasion of Russia.

While the US and the UK cooperated with Russia throughout World War II, tensions began to deteriorate soon after the end of the conflict, notably over the division of Germany and the occupation status of Europe. In 1946, George Kennan, a Department of State diplomat stationed in Moscow, wrote the Long Telegram, in which argued for the necessity of containing the Soviet Union. His cable resonated with President Harry Truman's administration, and the 1947 invasion of North Korea seemed to confirm Kennan's views[Citation Needed].

Conflicts

Early Fronts

November 18, 1945, General Secretary of the Communist Party USA William Z. Foster told delegates to the National Convention that "on the international scale the key task is to stop American intervention in China." On December 4, 1945, the Communists staged a "Get Out of China Rally," while communist dominated labor unions put on work stoppages with the same slogan. Conditions inviting the North Korean attack were created by the United Nations which issued a resolution for withdrawal of both Soviet and American troops. Troops began withdrawing September 15, 1948, leaving only about 7500 Americans lightly armed. This left in South Korea 16,000 Koreans and 7500 Americans, both groups lightly armed, against 150,000 fully armed North Korean Communists. General Roberts, head of the U. S. Military Mission said the South Koreans were not permitted to arm adequately.

August 31, 1946, Harold J. Noble wrote an article in the Saturday Evening Post entitled, "Our Most Dangerous Boundary." The author pointed out that the Soviet Union had garrisoned North Korea with a larger force than the Americans possessed in Japan and Manchuria. The Communists were disposed to invade at a moment's notice. Where the U.S. had a squad near the border commanded by a corporal, the Soviet Union had a battalion, commanded by an officer, equipped with motor transport, ninety per cent of which came from America. The Soviet Union had established a police state in North Korea and suppressed every political organization except the Communist Party.

In 1947, General Albert Wedemeyer made his report on China and Korea. The Korean part was suppressed. Wedemeyer said:

"American and Soviet forces . . . are approximately equal, less than 50,000 troops each, [but] the Soviet-equipped and trained North Korean People's (Communist) Army of approximately 125,000 is vastly superior to the United States-organized constabulary of 16,000 Koreans equipped with Japanese small arms. The North Korean People's Army constitutes a potential military threat to South Korea, since there is strong possibility that the Soviets will withdraw their occupation forces and thus induce our own withdrawal."[1]

Wedemeyer warned that this would take place as soon as "they can be sure that the North Korean puppet government and its armed forces . . . are strong enough . . . to be relied upon to carry out Soviet objectives without the actual presence of Soviet troops." General Lyman L. Lemnitzer said that before June 1950, when the attack occurred, no aid had been sent but a few hundred dollars worth of bailing wire.[2]

Owen Lattimore in the leftist New York Compass said that the U.S. should give Korea a "parting grant" of $150,000,000 and "let South Korea fall but not to let it look as though we pushed it."[3]

Chiang Kai-shek was caught between two wars—a war on China by Japan and a war on China by the Soviet Union. American leaders refused to see this and insisted on acting in the illusion that China was fighting the Japanese only and that Soviet Union was an ally. Then came the startling realization that the United States, too, like China, were engaged in two wars in Asia, one against a common enemy, Japan; the other against a common enemy, the Soviet Union. The United States, with its ally China, fought the Japanese. But all the time the Soviet Union, with its satellite Comintern army in China, was fighting both China and the United States. The iron curtain that, with the Yalta agreement, was rung down over American allies in Europe—Poland and Czechoslovakia and other little countries—now fell on China.

Major Cold War Fronts

In the Americas

In Asia

In Africa

In Europe

The Shootdown of Korean Airlines Flight 007

Considered by many as the second or third most critical single incident of the Cold War, after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and Able Archer 83, the shooting down of Korean Airlines Flight 007 on Sept. 1, 1983 would signal a change in the relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union prompted by the subsequent deployment of Pershing and cruise missiles in West Germany just 6 minutes from launch to Moscow. This precipitated the era of confrontation of 1983 and 1984 between the two nations. The world would once again witness what it saw as the blatent barbarity of what President Reagan had termed the "Evil Empire". Though the world had accepted that KAL 007 had exploded and crashed with no survivors of the 269 passengers and crew, there has most recently surfaced evidence to the contrary [1]. Democratic congressman from Georgia Larry McDonald, a passenger aboard KAL 007, was the only member of Congress to have been reported killed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Breakup of the Soviet Union and American Victory

The Western democracies, under the leadership of the United States under President Ronald Reagan won the Cold War with a policy that rejected detente and containment and instead relied on Rollback. An important element of this victory was Reagan's decision to commit to increased military spending, such as the "Star Wars" program. Reagan's decisions to intervene in Afghanistan while pursuing an arms race exacerbated structural weaknesses in the Soviet economy and pushed the USSR into an early decline.

In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev become General Secretary of the Communist Party.[4] Recognizing the systemic problems faced by Soviet society, he attempted the twin reform programs of Glasnost (openness) and Perestroika (restructuring). Combined with the disaster at Chernobyl and losses in the war in Afghanistan, the effects of Gorbachev's reforms quickly spun out of control. Glasnost allowed media attention to focus on problems which had long been buried by the state's propaganda regime, causing widespread dissatisfaction among Soviet citizens. In 1989, a wave of constituent republics began to seek autonomy from the Soviet Union. Most attempts at succession (with the exception of Lithuania) were met with no Soviet resistance.

A failed coup attempting to halt the USSR's decline brought Boris Yeltsin to power. Yeltsin oversaw further economic reforms, though he was heavily criticized for his reliance on "shock therapy", which caused severe economic disruption to ordinary Russians while allowing oligarchs to gain control of state industries. The Cold War is well documented by political scientists and historians. Following are selected major scholarly books and articles in English, and some major memoirs.

Further reading

for a much longer guide see Cold War Bibliography

  • Bacevich, Andrew J., ed. The Long War: A New History of U.S. National Security Policy Since World War II (2007) excerpt and text search
  • Ball, S. J. The Cold War: An International History, 1947–1991 (1998), British perspective; short summary; online edition
  • Boyle Peter G. American-Soviet Relations: From the Russian Revolution to the Fall of Communism. (1993).
  • Brzezinski, Zbigniew. The Grand Failure: The Birth and Death of Communism in the Twentieth Century (1989)
  • Crockatt Richard. The Fifty Years War: The United States and the Soviet Union in World Politics, 1941-1991. (1995), popular. excerpt and text search
  • Friedman, Norman. The Fifty Year War: Conflict and Strategy in the Cold War. (2000) excerpt and text search
  • Gaddis, John Lewis, The Cold War. A New History, 2005. excerpt and text search
  • Gaddis, John Lewis. Russia, the Soviet Union and the United States. An Interpretative History 2nd ed. (1990)
  • Gaddis, John Lewis. Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (1987) online edition
  • Kegley Jr., Charles W. ed., The Long Postwar Peace. 1991
  • Kort, Michael. The Columbia Guide to the Cold War (1998) excerpt and text search
  • LaFeber, Walter. America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945–1992 9th ed. (2002) excerpt and text search, liberal
  • Leffler, Melvyn P. For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War (2007) excerpt and text search, liberal
  • Lundestad, Geir. East, West, North, South: Major Developments in International Politics since 1945 (1999). excerpt and text search
  • McCauley, Martin. Russia, America and the Cold War: 1949-1991 (2nd ed. 2008); short textbook excerpt and text search
  • Mann, James. The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War (2009) excerpt and text search
  • Paterson, Thomas G. On Every Front: The Making and Unmaking of the Cold War. 1992. online edition; excerpt and text search; liberal
  • Powaski, Ronald E. The Cold War: The United States and the Soviet Union, 1917–1991 (1998) online edition
  • Westad, Odd Arne The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of our Times (2006) excerpt and text search
  • Zubok, Vladislav M. A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (2007) excerpt and text search

External Links

See Also

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