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| 2. The Rise and End of the Cold War |
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| The United States and the Soviet Union had been allies in World War II but by the end of the war, the two strongest powers in the world were already in competition in many different areas. This competition was both a military-security rivalry and a continuation of the ideological competition between Leninism and the Wilsonian worldview, or between communism and capitalism, which was first visible after World War I. Because the two superpowers avoided a world war, their competition came to be called the COLD WAR. The conflict affected all parts of the world, often in different ways. On a global scale, the conflict can be seen as having three major phases: the initial phase of an actually bipolar world (1945–60); a phase of superpower competition in an increasingly diversified global arena (1960–75); and a phase of declining relevance and importance of the cold war to basic issues of global affairs (1975–90), leading finally to the end of the cold war. | 1 |
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| 1945–62 |
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| Cold war in a bipolar world. In the years immediately following World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union were the only major powers capable of effective independent action. The old European empires were being dismantled and the Axis powers were destroyed. The global nature of the U.S.-Soviet rivalry was already emerging in 1945. In EUROPE, the Soviet Union established a position of dominance in the east, taking control of the Baltic states and establishing communist regimes, with the aid of the Soviet armies of occupation, from Poland to Bulgaria. By 1947 the United States had instituted the Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of noncommunist Europe and helped to reduce the influence of large communist parties in France and Italy. GERMANY was divided and occupied by the four Allied powers of the war. The Berlin blockade by the Soviets in 1948 increased tensions. In 1949 the zones occupied by U.S., French, and British forces were combined in the new Federal Republic of Germany, and the German Democratic Republic was established in the Soviet zone, thus splitting postwar Germany into two countries. The United States established the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949 for the coordination of Western military forces against the Soviet Union. Rapidly, the European continent was divided into two parts by what Winston Churchill, in 1946, had called the IRON CURTAIN. | 2 |
| The rivalry between the emerging communist world—referred to in cold war terms as the East—and the West extended far beyond Europe, even at the beginning of the cold war. In the Middle East, Soviet forces in northern IRAN at the end of World War II established autonomous republics and evacuated the areas only under strong pressure from the United States in the Azerbaijan crisis of 1945–46 (See Oct). Soviet pressures on TURKEY for new rights in the Straits and the cession of some territory in the Caucasus, as well as Soviet aid for communist guerrillas in GREECE, were important factors leading to the articulation of the Truman Doctrine (See March 12) of 1947 and the U.S. policy on the containment of communism. The Soviet Union was seen as providing support for the communist insurgency in Malaya. In CHINA, the long conflict between the nationalists, supported by the United States, and the communists led by MAO ZEDONG came to an end with the communist victory in 1949, and the establishment of the People's Republic of China. In KOREA, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed in 1945 to a temporary Soviet occupation of the north and a U.S. occupation of the south. It was expected that a unified Korea would soon be established, but Soviet-American disagreements led to the creation of the Republic of Korea in the south and the People's Democratic Republic in the north. North Korean armed forces attacked the south in 1950, initiating the KOREAN WAR (See June 25), in which the United States, through the United Nations, and the People's Republic of China intervened. | 3 |
| The bipolar division of the world became relatively fixed by the middle of the 1950s. The Soviet Union was able, without significant Western response, to crush major anti-Soviet demonstrations in East Berlin in 1953 and the HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION OF 1956. At the same time, the United States established a series of regional military pact organizations, including the Central Treaty Organization in the Middle East (See 1959, March 24) and the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (See Sept. 8) as a part of its broad policy of containment. The Soviet Union became a nuclear power in 1949 and developed a hydrogen bomb by 1953, so the balance of terror of a global nuclear war helped to enforce the stability of the bipolar world. The FOUR-POWER SUMMIT CONFERENCE in Geneva in 1955 showed that some efforts at tension management were possible. Occasionally, as in the Suez Crisis of 1956, when both the Soviet Union and the United States opposed the Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt, the interests of the superpowers would coincide, but this was rare. Soviet advances in missiles and space technology were shown in the launching of Sputnik I (1957), the first satellite to orbit the earth. By the early 1960s, cold war tensions reached a climax. In central Europe, the communists built the BERLIN WALL in 1961, emphasizing the East-West conflict. Soviet support for the revolutionary regime of Fidel Castro, who came to power in CUBA in 1960, brought the cold war openly to the Western Hemisphere. The placing of Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962 brought the two superpowers to the brink of war in the CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS (See Oct. 22–Nov. 20). However, the general framework of the cold war changed significantly soon after the resolution of the Cuban crisis. | 4 |
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| 1962–75 |
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| Cold war in a diversified global arena. By the early 1960s, many changes had taken place in the broader global context of the cold war. In both the West and the East, new centers of power emerged, altering the bipolar structure of the cold war. The communist world had appeared to be united under Soviet leadership, but it became clear that regimes could be communist in ideology and reject Soviet domination. Yugoslavia had broken with the Soviet Union as early as 1948, for example. But the major break in communist unity came with the SINO-SOVIET SPLIT, which became visible through mutual public condemnations and the abrupt withdrawal of Soviet economic and military advisers from China in 1960. In 1961, Albania followed China in its opposition to the Soviets. In the nationalist and radical movements and the new states of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, a major competition for followers developed between MAOISTS and more Soviet-oriented leftists. This undermined Soviet influence in many areas. | 5 |
| Decentralization of power was also visible in the West by the early 1960s. France withdrew its troops from NATO's combined forces in 1966, although it did not withdraw from NATO itself. The beginnings of the European Common Market (1957) provided a rival for U.S. economic domination, and by the 1970s, West Germany and Japan emerged as major economic powers. | 6 |
| In broad global terms, the newly independent states and powers that were not directly allied with either the United States or the Soviet Union began the NONALIGNED MOVEMENT. This group represented a Third World, which had limited military or economic power but, in the context of the cold war, represented a major arena for competition between the Soviet Union and the United States. The precursor of the more formal nonaligned movement was the Bandung Conference in 1955, which was attended by representatives of 29 states. The next major conference was hosted by Marshal TITO in Yugoslavia in 1961, and major conferences of the nonaligned movement were held occasionally in the following years. Major figures in the movement included prominent leaders in Africa and Asia, such as Nehru of India, Sukarno of Indonesia, and Nasser of Egypt. Chinese communist leaders also played an important role in the early years of the movement. During the 1960s the nonaligned forces were important on the global political scene, because they emphasized the diversification of power. The Soviet Union and the United States engaged in a major competition to win the support of the nonaligned nations, using military and economic aid to do it. During the 1960s Egypt, for example, was closely tied in military and economic terms to the Soviet Union, but Soviet advisers were expelled in 1972, and the United States emerged as Egypt's primary patron. In Ethiopia, the United States gave strong support to the conservative emperor, Haile Salessie, until he was overthrown in 1974. His radical successor, Mengistu Haile Miriam, received aid from the Soviet Union. In many areas, the superpower rivalry provided a way for smaller countries to obtain arms and economic aid, and this competition set the tone for the second era of the cold war. | 7 |
| Superpower negotiations between the Soviet Union and the United States were also an important part of the global politics of the 1960s and 1970s. Soon after the Cuban missile crisis, the two powers negotiated and ratified the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963. Despite regional wars of competition between the United States and communist powers, such as the Vietnam War, negotiations continued in the era of DÉTENTE, leading to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) and the arms reduction agreements of 1972 and 1974. In this same time, U.S. president Richard Nixon extended formal diplomatic recognition to the People's Republic of China and, in 1972, made a highly publicized trip to China, emphasizing the mood of the new era. While their major conflicts had not been resolved, normalization of relations between Western and communist states was still possible. A culmination of these developments was the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe held in Helsinki (1973–75). The HELSINKI ACCORDS, signed by the Soviet Union, the United States, Canada, and 32 European states, recognized the validity of the existing borders in Eastern Europe, especially the post–World War II borders of Germany and Poland. The signatories also pledged to respect human rights, giving human rights organizations and Helsinki Watch Committees a legal basis for protesting violations of human rights in all of the countries involved. By the late 1970s, relations between the superpowers became strained again, but the old cold war concerns were increasingly irrelevant to the major global issues. | 8 |
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| 1975–90 |
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| Declining relevance of cold war concerns. In the final decades of the 20th century, the old power conflicts between the Soviet Union and the United States and the ideological competition between the ideologies of Lenin and Wilson no longer dominated global affairs. The rise of economic superpowers like Japan and Germany, the resurgence of ethnic nationalism and religious revivalism in many areas, the global pressures for democratization, and other developments transformed the global scene from the early days of the cold war. The United States and the Soviet Union were still powerful rivals. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 aroused old fears of Soviet expansionism, but the successful response of the Mujahidin, the Afghan religio-national resistance fighters, and the eventual Soviet withdrawal in 1989 showed the weakness of the Soviet military force. In the 1980s, there were Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (1982) but the U.S. movement toward a major arms buildup through the Strategic Defense Initiative and Soviet support for groups like the Sandinistas in Nicaragua revealed a continuing high level of mistrust and tension. The situation changed significantly with the coming to power in the Soviet Union of MIKHAIL GORBACHEV in 1985. His vigorous efforts for internal reform in the Soviet Union and openness in foreign relations helped to set in motion the transformation of the communist world of Eastern Europe and the end of the Soviet Union. In these efforts, the United States became the ally rather than the enemy of the leadership of the Soviet Union. | 9 |
| Between 1989 and 1992, the communist world was transformed. The Berlin Wall was destroyed (1989) and Germany was unified (1990). In every communist state in Eastern Europe, the regime was overthrown and the Communist Party formally disbanded. In the Soviet Union itself, 15 independent states emerged from the structures of the old communist state. In the new state of Russia, elections were held, and the United States made significant efforts to provide economic support in an era of difficult transition. By 1992, the one remaining major communist state was CHINA, where the preservation of administrative stability and economic growth were more important than ideological concerns. Economic liberalization and a greater openness in foreign affairs raised expectations of political liberalization in China. Large student demonstrations in 1986 and 1987 were suppressed, and then a movement for democratic reform erupted in the spring of 1989 with huge demonstrations in a number of cities. The largest, which lasted for a number of weeks, was in Beijing in TIANANMEN SQUARE. Although the prodemocracy movement received much international visibility and sympathy, the government forcibly crushed the demonstration in June 1989, with many casualties. Despite some international protests, the Chinese government soon resumed normal diplomatic and economic relations with the major world powers. The success of efforts to encourage Western investment in China in the 1990s and China's continued most-favored-nation status for trade with the United States, despite U.S. protests about human rights abuses, along with the transformed nature of U.S.-Soviet relations, proved that by the early 1990s the world had witnessed the end of the cold war. | 10 |
| The final phase of the cold war also saw the increasing spread of democracy beyond its previous centers in Western Europe, North America, India, and Japan. Democratic regimes began to spread in Latin America from the late 1970s onward, becoming the standard political form for the first time. Democratic shifts also affected the Philippines and South Korea, and then the states of Eastern Europe from 1989 onward. An increasing move toward democracy reached sub-Saharan Africa in the early 1990s, though it remained incomplete. The major regions resisting the democratic trend were China, Vietnam, North Korea, and some of the Middle East. | 11 |
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