THE COLD WAR

I. Origins (term "cold war" coined in 1947 by American financier Bernard Baruch)

   The Cold War would result from the divergent historical experiences and the incompatible political ambitions of the United States and the Soviet Union, the major victors that emerged as superpowers from WWII. The balance of power that was ended in the 19th century with the unification of Germany is now restored during the cold war.

•   1. Soviet fear of invasion: because Russia had suffered immensely during both world wars, Stalin was ever worried about the security of his country's western boundaries so that he incorporated the east European countries into a buffer zone for protection against Western attack.  He installed pro-Soviet regimes in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary.
•   2. Russia's establishment of this buffer zone was interpreted by the United States as Soviet expansionism but was powerless to stop it without another war. Then, "Civil war in Greece created another arena for confrontation between the superpowers. In 1946, the Communist People's Liberation Army and the anti-Communist forces supported by the British were fighting each other for control of Greece. But continued postwar economic problems caused the British to withdraw from the active role they had been playing in both Greece and Turkey.  President Harry S. Truman of the United States, alarmed by British weakness and the possibility of Soviet expansion into the eastern Mediterranean, responded with the Truman Doctrine....According to the president, "It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. This statement was made to the American Congress in March 1947 when Truman requested $400 million in economic and military aid for Greece and Turkey. The Truman Doctrine said in essence that the United States would provide money to countries that claimed they were threatened by Communist expansion" ( Spiel.4^th Ed. 848). 
• This reversal in traditional American foreign policy of isolationism to one of worldwide vigilance against any Soviet effort at expansion is referred to as "containment."
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• NOTE:  The Soviet Union would, in the years to come, be involved in encouraging anti-Western revolts in Asian and African countries rising to statehood; also would support anti-American governments in Latin America, like Castro's Cuba. "Since World War II, 130 separate wars (civil and international), almost all of them in developing nations, have killed nearly 25 million people.  Civil war in Nigeria in the late 1960s, the carnage in Cambodia in the 1970s, the Iran-Iraq conflict of the 1980s, the almost complete breakdown of civil order in Somalia, Rwanda, and Liberia in the early 1990s--these are but a few of the conflicts fought largely with imported weapons" (Strayer 488).

Reestablishing a balance of power through military alliances

   Part of the effort to contain Soviet power included the creation of extensive alliances with other anti-Communist states around the world.

• 1. NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), created in 1949, played the biggest role in this containment.  It included the U.S., Canada, Portugal, Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Italy, Britain, France, Benelux; then Greece and Turkey; then West Germany; then Spain.
• "The Eastern European states soon followed suit.  In 1949, they had already formed the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) for economic cooperation.  Then in 1955, Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany. Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union organized a formal military alliance in the Warsaw Pact.  Once again, Europe was tragically divided into hostile alliance systems" (Spiel.4^th Ed. 851).
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• 2. CENTO (Central Treaty Organization) was created to protest the southern neighbors of the Soviet Union from Soviet penetration. Originally included Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and Britain.  The U.S. was not a member, but supported it.
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The Arms Race and the Space Race

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• 1. Russian development of atomic bomb (1949):  This began the escalation of the arms race as each of the superpowers tried to stay ahead of the other in nuclear as well as conventional arms.  The conflict between incompatible ways of life "found expression in competition for political influence around the world and in an enormous and competitive buildup of military forces, including nuclear weapons, wholly unprecedented in human history.  Between 1945 and the mid-1980s, the world moved from a mere handful of nuclear weapons to a global arsenal of close to sixty thousand warheads, and to delivery systems that included bomber aircraft and missiles, some launched from submarines, that could propel numerous warheads across whole continents and oceans with accuracies measured in hundreds of feet" (Strayer 487-8).
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• 2. Sputnik I (1957) and first astronaut (1961):  The launching of Sputnik, the world’s first satellite, shocked the Americans out of complacency and began an era of American expenditures to catch and surpass the Russians in space technology which would be accomplished by the end of the '60's.
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• 3. Cuban missile crisis (1962):  The Russians under Nikita Khrushchev were placing nuclear missiles in Cuba to offset the U.S. missiles in Turkey.  President John F. Kennedy demanded their removal and the U.S. Air Force was called on alert and circling the Arctic reading to go to war, but fortunately for the world Khrushchev was persuaded to back down and remove the missiles.
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• 4. Arms limitation agreements (1960's - present):  Because of the danger an accidental nuclear holocaust and because of the enormous cost, the superpowers began to attempt reductions in nuclear armaments.  "The combined arsenals of the United States and Russia are scheduled to drop from a high of 57,000 nuclear warheads in 1988 to about 12,000 by early in the twenty-first century" (Strayer 490).
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• 5. U.S. landing on the moon (1969) demonstrated the enormous strides in technology that the U.S. was able to make in catching up and even surpassing the Soviet Union.

 Soviet Union

• 1) Nothing changed in Russia after WW II except Stalin became even more ruthless.  Despite the yearning for greater freedom and their exhaustion from the war, all Stalin gave the Russian people was more Five-Year Plans and more terror.
•     The peasants were again forced to furnish the state with food without receiving more than the barest minimum in return. In addition, "The loss of millions of men in the war meant that much of this tremendous workload fell upon Soviet women.  Almost 40 percent of heavy manual labor was performed by women" (Spiel.4^th Ed. 859). But Stalin was able to bring industrial production back to prewar levels within three years (due to planning, selfless hard work, manpower released from the army & resources requisitioned from all occupied territories).  "Although Stalin's economic policy was successful in promoting growth in heavy industry, primarily for the benefit of the military, consumer goods were scarce" (Spiel.4^th Ed. 859).
• In order to achieve ideological control and remove any form of Western influence, the intelligentsia were terrorized, and 1,000's of returning soldiers who had seen too much of the west were put in prison camps. "To sustain the war effort against the Germans, Stalin had fostered superpatriotism among all Soviets, but found that contact with Western ways during the war had shaken many people's belief in the superiority of the Soviet system. Returning Russian soldiers brought back stories of the prosperity of the West, and the obvious disparity between the Western and Soviet systems led to a 'crisis of faith' for many young Communists.  Partly for this reason, Stalin imprisoned many soldiers, who were simply shipped from German concentration camps to Soviet concentration camps. In Stalin's view, Western influence was a threat to Communist ideals" (Spiel.4^th Ed. 859).
•       Stalin got even more paranoid as he grew old and sickly until he even accused his doctors of a plot against him and ordered their torture, killing one of them.  Yet for all that, Stalin effected a number of achievements:
• (1) He increased Soviet power with atomic bomb by 1949, hydrogen bomb by 1953, and the world’s 1st satellite (Sputnik I "fellow traveler" of earth)

• 2) Nikita Krushchev (1954-1964) emerged with a team of party leaders after Stalin's death.  At the Twentieth Party congress in February 1956 he began his attack on the excesses of Stalin; this caused defections from Communism the world over (especially Poland & Hungary).  Then, not wishing to aid China in building atomic weapons, he withdrew Soviet advisers.  In his attempt to move his country toward a higher level of Marxist-Leninist ideology, he         presented a new party program and pressed for reforms in industry, agriculture, and party organization "Most importantly, Khrushchev extended the process of destalinization by reducing the powers of the secret police, freeing a number of political prisoners, and closing some of the Siberian prison camps" (Spiel.4^th Ed. 859).  BUT his ceaseless reorganizations and impatient manner antagonized wide sections of state and party administration & he was ousted in October 1964.  "Khrushchev's personality also did not endear him to the higher Soviet officials who frowned at his tendency to crack jokes and play the clown. Nor were the higher members of the party bureaucracy pleased when Khrushchev tried to curb their privileges.  Foreign policy failures caused additional damage to Khrushchev's reputation among his colleagues.  His rash plan to place missiles in Cuba was the final straw.  While he was away on vacation in 1964, a special meeting of the Soviet Politburo voted him out of office (because of 'deteriorating health') and forced him into retirement" (Spiel.4^th Ed. 859-60).
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