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Cold War

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Recent History

                                                            History of the
                                                                  Cold War
                                                                   Origins
                                                                 1947–1953
                                                                 1953–1962
                                                                 1962–1979
                                                                 1979–1985
                                                                 1985–1991

   The Cold War was the period of protracted conflict and competition
   between the United States and the Soviet Union and their allies from
   the late 1950s until the late 1980s. The main U.S. allies were Western
   Europe and Japan. The main Soviet allies were Eastern Europe and (until
   the Sino-Soviet Split), China. Throughout the period, the rivalry was
   played out in multiple arenas: military coalitions, ideology; a massive
   conventional and nuclear arms race; and proxy wars.

   In 1947 the term "Cold War" was introduced by Americans Bernard Baruch
   and Walter Lippmann to describe emerging tensions between the two
   former wartime allies. There never was a major battle between the U.S.
   and the Soviets. But there was a half-century of military buildups, and
   political battles for support around the world. There also were proxy
   wars, such as the Korean War and the Vietnam War.

   Although the U.S. and the Soviet Union had been wartime allies against
   Nazi Germany, even before the end of the Second World War, the two
   sides differed on how to reconstruct the postwar world. Over the
   following decades, the Cold War spread outside Europe to every region
   of the world, as the U.S. sought " containment" of communism and forged
   alliances, particularly in Western Europe, the Mideast, and Southeast
   Asia.

   There were repeated crises that threatened to escalate into world wars
   (but never did), notably the Korean War (1950-1953), the Cuban Missile
   Crisis (1962), and the Vietnam War (1964-1975), but there were also
   periods when tension was reduced as both sides sought détente. The Cold
   War ended in the late 1980s with Mikhail Gorbachev's launching of his
   internal reform programs perestroika and glasnost and gave up power
   over Eastern Europe; in 1991 Soviet Union dissolved.

History

Origins

   The challenge of Nazi Germany forced the Western Allies and the Soviets
   into wartime cooperation. However, from the start, the alliance between
   the Soviet Union, the world's first Communist state; the United States,
   the capitalist world's leading economic power; and the United Kingdom,
   the world's largest colonial empire; were marked by mutual distrust and
   ideological tension.

   U.S. historian Walter LaFeber argues that the roots of U.S.-Russan
   tensions can be traced back to the 1890s, when U.S. and Tsarist Russia
   became rivals over the development of Manchuria. Russia, unable to
   compete industrially with the U.S., sought to close off parts of East
   Asia to trade with other colonial powers; the U.S., however, demanded
   open competition for markets. (LeFaber 2002, pp. 1-2)

   In World War I, the U.S., Britain, and Russia had been allies until the
   Bolsheviks seized power in 1917 and, after winning a civil war (see
   Russian Civil War), proclaimed of a worldwide challenge to capitalism.
   (Fred Halliday) The U.S. finally recognized the Soviet Union
   diplomatically in 1933. The period of prewar diplomacy also left both
   sides were wary of the other's intentions and motives. Both sides
   feared the other might pull out of the war effort and make a separate
   settlement with Germany. Moscow recalled Western appeasement of Adolf
   Hitler after the signing of the Munich Pact in 1936. U.S. President
   Franklin D. Roosevelt, however, feared Joseph Stalin would again, make
   a settlement with Germany, as he did in August 1939 with the
   German-Soviet Non-aggression Pact. (LaFeber 1991) From 1941 to 1945,
   the alliance was only a temporary aberration in the post-1890s
   relationship between Russia and America. (LaFeber 1991)

   During the war, both sides disagreed on military tactics, especially
   the question of the opening of a second front against Germany in
   Western Europe, which Stalin had requested of the Anglo-American Allies
   since 1942—around two years before D-Day on June 6, 1944. The Soviets
   believed at the time, and charged throughout the Cold War, that the
   delay in opening a second front was intentional; Franklin Roosevelt and
   Winston Churchill, the Soviets suspected, decided to allow the Russians
   to bear the brunt of the war effort, leaving the Western allies the
   chance to intervene at the last minute to influence the peace
   settlement and dominate Europe themselves.
   Soviet soldiers raise the glag of the Soviet Union over the Reichstag
   building during the Battle of Berlin on April 30, 1945. Even before the
   end fo the war, plans for postwar occupied Germany were the focal point
   of major tensions between the Western Allies and the Soviets.
   Enlarge
   Soviet soldiers raise the glag of the Soviet Union over the Reichstag
   building during the Battle of Berlin on April 30, 1945. Even before the
   end fo the war, plans for postwar occupied Germany were the focal point
   of major tensions between the Western Allies and the Soviets.

   Moreover, both sides held very dissimilar concepts of establishing
   postwar security. Americans tended to understand security in
   situational terms, assuming that if U.S.-style government and markets
   were established as widely as possible, states could resolve their
   differences peacefully through international organizations. (Gaddis,
   176) The key to the U.S. vision of security was a postwar world shpaped
   according to the principles laid out in the Atlantic Charter in 1941—a
   liberal international system based on free trade and open markets. This
   vision would require a rebuilt capitalist Europe with a healthy Germany
   at its centre that could again serve as a hub in world affairs.
   (LaFeber 1991) It would also require U.S. economic and political
   leadership of the postwar world. U.S. allies in capitalist Western
   Europe needed U.S. assistance to rebuild their domestic production and
   to finance their international trade. The U.S. was the only world power
   not economically devastated by the fighting. By the end of the war, the
   U.S. produced around fifty percent of the world's industrial goods and
   had a monopoly of the new atomic bomb. (LaFeber 1991)

   Soviet leaders, however, tended to understand security in territorial
   terms; this reasoning was conditioned by Russia's historical
   experiences, given the frequency with which their country had been
   invaded over the previous 150 years. (Gaddis, p. 176) The experiences
   of the Second World War were particularly dramatic for the Russians.
   The Soviet Union suffered unprecedented devastation as a result of the
   Nazi onslaught. Over 20 million Soviet citizens died during the war.
   Tens of thousands Soviet cities, towns, and villages were leveled; and
   30,100 Soviet factories were destroyed. In order to prevent a similar
   assault in the future, Stalin was determined to use the Red Army to
   control Poland, dominate the Balkans, and destroy Germany's capacity
   for another war. (LaFeber 1991)

   At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the Allies attempted to
   define the framework for a postwar settlement in Europe. The Allies
   could not reach firm agreements on the crucial questions of the
   occupation of Germany and postwar reparations from Germany and loans.
   No final consensus was reached on Germany, other than to conclude, "as
   a basis for negotiations," a Soviet request for reparations totalling
   $10 billion. (Gaddis, 164) Debates over the composition of postwar
   Poland's government were also acrimonious. (LaFeber 2002, 15)

   Following the Allied Victory in May, the Soviets effectively occupied
   the countries of Eastern Europe; and the U.S. occupied much of Western
   Europe. In occupied, Germany the U.S. and the Soviet Union—the world's
   two superpowers, along with France and Britain, established zones of
   occupation and a loose framework for four-power control.
   Harry S. Truman and Joseph Stalin meeting at the Potsdam Conference on
   July 18, 1945. From left to right, first row: Stalin, Truman, Soviet
   Ambassador Andrei Gromyko, Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, and
   Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov. Second row: Truman
   confidant Harry Vaughan [1], Russian interpreter Charles Bohlen, Truman
   naval aide James K. Vardaman, Jr., and Charles Griffith Ross (partially
   obscured) [2].
   Enlarge
   Harry S. Truman and Joseph Stalin meeting at the Potsdam Conference on
   July 18, 1945. From left to right, first row: Stalin, Truman, Soviet
   Ambassador Andrei Gromyko, Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, and
   Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov. Second row: Truman
   confidant Harry Vaughan , Russian interpreter Charles Bohlen, Truman
   naval aide James K. Vardaman, Jr., and Charles Griffith Ross (partially
   obscured) .

   At the Potsdam Conference starting in late July, serious differences
   had emerged over the future development of Germany and Eastern Europe.
   At Potsdam, the U.S. was represented by the new president Harry S.
   Truman, who on April 12 succeeded to the office upon Roosevelt's death.
   Truman was unaware of Roosevelt's plans for postwar engagement with
   Soviet Union, and generally uninformed about foreign policy and
   military matters. (Schmitz) Therefore, the new president was initially
   reliant upon a set of advisers, including Ambassador to the Soviet
   Union Averell Harriman, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, and his own
   choice for secretary of state, James F. Byrnes. This group tended to
   take a harder line toward Moscow than had Roosevelt. (Schmitz)
   Administration officials favoring cooperation with the Soviet Union and
   incorporation of socialist economies into a world trade system were
   marginalized.

   One week after the Potsdam Conference ended, the atomic bombings of
   Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki added to
   Soviet distrust of the United States; and shortly followign the
   attacks, Stalin protested to U.S. officials when Truman offered the
   Soviets little real influence in occupied Japan. (LaFeber 2002, p. 28)

   In February 1946, George F. Kennan's "Long Telegram" from Moscow helped
   articulate the growing hard line against the Soviets. (Schmitz) The
   telegram argued that the Soviet Union was motivated by both traditional
   Russian imperialism and by Marxist ideology; Soviet behaviour was
   inherently expansionist and paranoid, posing a threat to the United
   States and its allies. Later writing as "Mr. X" in his article "The
   Sources of Soviet Conduct" in Foreign Affairs (July 1947), Kennan
   drafted classic argument for adopting a policy of "containment" toward
   the Soviet Union.

   A few weeks later the release of the "Long Telegram," Former British
   Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivered his famous "Iron Curtain" in
   Fulton, Missouri; the speech called for an Anglo-American alliance
   against the Soviets, whom he accused of establishing "iron curtain"
   from "Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic." (Schmitz)

"Containment" to the Korean War (1947-1953)

   Truman delivering the Truman Doctrine on March 12, 1947
   Enlarge
   Truman delivering the Truman Doctrine on March 12, 1947

   By 1947, Truman's advisers worried time was running out to counter the
   influence of the Soviet Union. (Schmitz) In Europe, postwar economic
   recovery was faltering; shortages of food and other essential consumer
   goods were common. In this setting, Communist parties, particularly in
   France and Italy, were gaining ground through the ballot box. (Schmitz)
   Truman's advisors feared the Soviet Union sought to weaken the position
   of the U.S. in a period of postwar confusion and collapse. The threat
   was not necessarily a military one, but a political and economic
   challenge. (Schmitz)

   The event that spurred Truman into formally announcing the policy of
   "containment" was the British government's announcement in February
   1947 that it could no longer afford to finance the Greek
   monarchical-military regime in its civil war against communist-led
   insurgents. (see Greek Civil War) Rather than viewing Britain's pullout
   from Greece as the related to a civil conflict revolving around
   domestic issues, U.S. policymakers mistakenly interpreted it as a
   Soviet effort; the insurgents were helped by Josip Broz Tito's
   Yugoslavia, not Moscow. (LaFeber 1991) Secretary of State Dean Acheson
   accused the Soviet Union of conspiracy against the Greek royalists in
   an effort to 'expand' into the Middle East, Asia, and Africa; and in
   March 1947, the administration unveiled the " Truman Doctrine." It
   "must be the policy of the United States," Truman declared, "to support
   free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed
   minorities or outside pressures."

   Truman rallied Americas to spend $400 million to intervene in the civil
   war in Greece in his famous Truman Doctrine speech. In order to
   mobilize an unfriendly Republican Congress, the Democratic president
   painted the conflict as a contest between "free" peoples and
   "totalitarian" regimes, thus dramatically heightening the rhetorical
   stakes of the conflict. (LaFeber 1991) By aiding Greece, Truman set a
   precedent for U.S. aid to regimes no matter how repressive and corrupt,
   that request help to fight communists. (LaFeber 1991)

   In June, the Truman Doctrine was followed by the unveiling of the
   Marshall Plan, a pledge of economic assistance aimed at staving off the
   collapse of Washington-friendly governments in Western Europe.
   (Schmitz) The twin policies of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall
   Plan led to billions in economic and military aid to Western Europe and
   Greece and Turkey. With American U.S. assistance, the Greek military
   won the civil war, and the Christian Democrats in Italy defeated the
   powerful Communist-Socialist alliance in the elections of 1948.
   (Zachary Karabell)
   President Truman signs the National Security Act Amendment of 1949 with
   guests in the Oval Office.
   Enlarge
   President Truman signs the National Security Act Amendment of 1949 with
   guests in the Oval Office.

   In 1947, Truman also reorganized the U.S. government to fight the Cold
   War. The National Security Act of 1947 created a unified Department of
   Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the National
   Security Council. These would become the main bureaucracies for U.S.
   policy in the Cold War. (Zachary Karabell)

   The U.S. consolidated its new role as leader of the West. After Stalin
   retaliated against Western moves to reunite western Germany by blocking
   western access to West Berlin, Truman maintained supply lines to the
   enclave by flying supplies over the blockade during 1948-1949. (see
   Berlin Blockade) The U.S. formally allied itself to the Western
   European states in the North Atlantic Treaty of 1949, creating the
   North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Stalin countered by tying
   together the economies of the Eastern bloc in a Soviet-led version of
   the Marshall Plan and exploding the first Soviet atomic devise in
   August 1949. Stalin countered by tying together the economies of the
   Eastern bloc in a Soviet-led version of the Marshall Plan, the Council
   for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON), and exploding the first
   Soviet atomic devise in August 1949. (LaFeber 1991)

   The U.S. took the lead in establishing the West Germany from the three
   Western zones of occupation in 1949. (Peter Byrd) To counter the
   Western reorganization of Germany, the Soviet Union proclaimed its zone
   of occupation in Germany as the German Democratic Republic in 1949.
   (Peter Byrd) In the early 1950s, the U.S. worked for the rearmament of
   West Germany and its full membership of NATO in 1955. (Byrd)

   In 1949 Mao's Red Army defeated the U.S.-backed Kuomintang regime in
   China. Shortly afterward, the Soviet Union concluded an alliance with
   the new People's Republic of China. Confronted with the Chinese
   Revolution and the end of the U.S. atomic monopoly in 1949, the Truman
   administration quickly moved to escalate and expand the "containment"
   policy. (LaFeber 1991) In a secret 1950 document, NSC-68, Truman
   administration officials proposed to reinforce pro-Western alliance
   systems and quadruple defense spending. (LaFeber 1991)

   Afterwards, U.S. officials moved to expand "containment" into Asia,
   Africa, and Latin America. (Schmitz) At the time, revolutionary
   nationalist movements, often led by Communist parties, were fighting
   against the restoration of Europe's colonial empires in Southeast Asia.
   The U.S. formalized an alliance with Japan in early 1950s, guaranteeing
   Washington long-term military bases; and brought other states,
   including Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, and the Philippines, within
   a series of alliances. (Byrd)

   To Stalin's surprise, Truman committed U.S. forces to drive back the
   North Koreans. (LaFeber 1991) In 1953 the Korean War ended in
   stalemate. But the U.S. gradually became entangled in another civil
   war. In Vietnam, the U.S. supported South Vietnam against the North
   Vietnam, which was backed by the Soviet Union and China. (Byrd)

Crisis and escalation (1953-1962)

   In 1953 changes in political leadership on both sides shifted the
   dynamic of the Cold War. (Zachary Karabell) Dwight D. Eisenhower was
   inaugurated president in January 1953. During the last 18 months of the
   Truman administration, the U.S. defense budget had quadrupled; and
   Eisenhower resolved to reduce military spending by brandishing the
   United States' nuclear superiority while contining to fight the Cold
   War effectively. (LaFeber 1991) In March Joseph Stalin died, and the
   Soviets, now led by Nikita Khrushchev, moved away from Stalinist
   terror. (Zachary Karabell)

   Eisenhower's secretary of state, John Foster Dulles initiated a "New
   Look" for the "containment" strategy, calling for a greater reliance on
   nuclear weapons to U.S. enemies. (Zachary Karabell) Dulles also
   enunciated the doctrine of "massive retaliation," threatening severe
   U.S. to any Soviet aggression. Possessing nuclear superiority, for
   example, Eisenhower curtailed Soviet threats to intervene in the Middle
   East during the 1956 Suez Crisis. (LaFeber 1991)

   There was a slight relaxation of tensions after Stalin's death in 1953,
   but the Cold War in Europe remained an uneasy armed truce. U.S. troops
   seemed stationed indefinitely in West Germany and Soviet forces seemed
   indefinitely stationed throughout Eastern Europe. To counter West
   German rearmament, the Soviets established a formal alliance with the
   Eastern European Communist states termed the Warsaw Pact Treaty
   Organization or Warsaw Pact in 1955. (Peter Byrd) But in 1956, the
   status quo was briefly threatened in Hungary. In 1956, the Soviets
   invaded Hungary rather than allow the Hungarians to move out of their
   orbit. (see Hungarian Revolution of 1956) Berlin remained divided and
   contested. In 1961, the East Germans erected the "Berlin Wall" to
   prevent the movement of East Berliners into West Berlin.

   In the U.S., Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy emerged as an
   influential proponent of hard-line stances on the Cold War. Although
   the president quietly deplored his demagoguery, the senator exploited
   anti-Soviet sentiment when alleging a communist conspiracy to take over
   the U.S. government, leading to a massive political witch-hunt.

   During the 1950s, the Third World was an increasingly important arena
   of Cold War competition. After the Second World War, the U.S. emerged
   as the predominat power in Third World, filling the vacuum of the old
   of the imperial hegemony of its principal Cold War allies—the
   traditional Western European colonial powers (particularly the UK,
   France, and the Netherlands). Nationalists in many postcolonial states,
   however, were often unsympathetic to the Western bloc. (Hobsbawm, 227)
   Adjusting to decolonization, meanwhile, was a difficult process
   economically and psychologically for European powers; and NATO
   suffered, as it included all the world's major colonial empires.

   Nationalist movements in some countries and regions, notably Guatemala,
   Iran, the Philippines, and Indochina were often allied with communist
   groups—or at least were perceived in the West to be allied with
   communists. In this context, the U.S. and the Soviets increasingly
   competed for influence by proxy in the Third World as decolonization
   gained momentum in the 1950s and early 1960s. The U.S. government
   utilized the CIA in order to a remove string of unfriendly Third World
   governments and to support others. (Karabell) The U.S. used the CIA to
   overthrow governments suspected by Washington of turning pro-Soviet,
   including Iran's first democratically elected government under Prime
   Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 (see Operation Ajax) and
   Guatemala's democratically-elected president Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in
   1954 (see Operation PBSUCCESS) Between 1954 and 1961, the U.S. sent
   economic aid and military advisors to stem the collapse of South
   Vietnam's pro-Western regime. (LaFeber 1991)

   Many emerging nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America rejected the
   pressure to choose sides in the East-West competition. In 1955, at the
   Bandung Conference in Indonesia dozens of Third World governments
   resolved on staying out of the Cold War. The consensus reach at Bandung
   culminated with the creation of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961.
   (Karabell) Meanwhile, Khrushchev broadened Moscow's policy to establish
   ties with India and other key neutral states. Independence movements in
   the Third World transformed the postwar order into a more pluralistic
   world of decolonized African and Middle Eastern nations and of rising
   nationalism in Asia and Latin America. (LaFeber 1991)

   During the 1950s, the U.S. and the USSR pursued nuclear rearmament and
   developed long-range weapons with which they could strike the territory
   of the other. (Peter Byrd) The Soviets developed their own hydrogen
   bomb and, in 1957, launched the first earth satellite. However, the
   period after 1956 marked by serious setbacks for the Soviet, most
   notably the breakdown of the Sino-Soviet alliance. (see Sino-Soviet
   Split) Before Khrushchev's ouster in 1964, the Soviets focused on a
   bitter rivalry with Mao's China for leadership of the world communist
   movement.

   The nuclear arms race brought the two superpowers to the brink of
   nuclear war. Khrushchev formed an alliance with Fidel Castro after the
   Cuban Revolution in 1959. In 1962, President John F. Kennedy responded
   to the installation of nuclear missiles in Cuba with a naval blockade—a
   show of force that brought the world close to nuclear war. The Cuban
   Missile Crisis showed that neither superpower was ready to use nuclear
   weapons for fear of the other's retaliation, and thus of mutally
   assured destruction. The aftermath of the crisis led to the first
   efforts at nuclear disarmament and improving relations. (Palmowski)

From confrontation to détente (1962-1979)

   In the course of the 1960s and 1970s, both the U.S. and the Soviet
   Union struggled to adjust to a new, more complicated pattern of
   international relations in which the world was no longer by the two
   superpowers and divided into into two clearly opposed blocs. Since the
   beginning of the postwar period, Western Europe and Japan rapidly
   recovered from the destruction of World War II and sustained strong
   economic growth through the 1950s and 1960s, increasing their strenght
   compared to the United States. As a result of the 1973 oil crisis,
   combined with the growing influence of Third World alignments such as
   the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the
   Non-Aligned Movement, less-powerful countries had more room to assert
   their independence and often showed themselves resistant to pressure
   from either superpower. (EB) Moscow, meanwhile, was forced to turn its
   attention inward to deal with the Soviet Union's deep-seated domestic
   economic problems. During this period, Soviet leaders such as Alexei
   Kosygin and Leonid Brezhnev embraced the notion of détente. (Karabell)

   Nevertheless, but both superpowers resolved to reinforce their global
   leadership. Both the Soviet Union and the United States struggled to
   stave off challenges to their leadership in their own regions.
   President Lyndon B. Johnson landed 22,000 troops in the Dominican
   Republic, citing the threat of the emergence of a Cuban-style
   revolution in Latin America. (see Operation Power Pack) (LaFeber 1991)
   In Eastern Europe, the Soviets in 1968 crushed the Prague Spring reform
   movement in Czechoslovakia that might have threatened to take the
   country out of the Warsaw Pact.

   The U.S. continued to spend heavily on supporting friendly Third World
   regimes in Asia. Conflicts in peripheral regions and client states—most
   prominently in Vietnam—continued. (Calhoun) Johnson stationed 575,000
   troops in Southeast Asia to defeat the National Front for the
   Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF) and their North Vietnamese allies,
   but his costly policy weakened the U.S. economy and, by 1975,
   ultimately culimatied in a humiliating defeat of the world's most
   powerful superpower at the hands of one of the world's poorest nations.
   Brezhnev, meanwhile, faced far more daunting challenges in reviving the
   Soviet economy, which was declining in part because of heavy military
   expenditures. (LaFeber 1991)

   Although indirect conflict between Cold War powers continued through
   the late 1960s and early 1970s, tensions began to ease. (Palmowski) The
   Chinese had sought improved relations with the U.S. in order to gain
   advantage over the Soviets. In February 1972, Richard Nixon traveled
   Beijing and met with Mao Zedong and Chou En-Lai. Nixon and and Henry
   Kissinger then announced a stunning rapprochement with Mao's China.
   Brezhnev and Nixon talk during Brezhnev's June 1973 visit to
   Washington—a high-water mark in détente between the United States and
   the Soviet Union.
   Enlarge
   Brezhnev and Nixon talk during Brezhnev's June 1973 visit to
   Washington—a high-water mark in détente between the United States and
   the Soviet Union.

   Later, in June, Nixon and Kissinger met with Soviet leaders in Moscow,
   and announced the first of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks), aimed
   at limiting to limit the development of costly antiballistic missiles
   and offensive nuclear missiles. (Karabell) Between 1972 and 1974, the
   two sides also agreed to strengthen their economic ties. (LaFeber 1991)
   Meanwhile, these developments coincided with the " Ostpolitik" of West
   German Chancellor Willy Brandt. Other agreements were concluded to
   stabilize the situation in Europe, culminating in the Helsinki Accords
   signed by the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe in
   1975.

   However, the détente of the 1970s was short-lived. The economic pact
   between Nixon and Brezhnev was limited so much by the U.S. Congress
   that the Soviets repudiated it in 1975. (LaFeber 1991) Indirect
   conflict between the superpowers continued through this period of
   détente in the Third World, particularly during political crises in the
   Middle East (see Yom Kippur War), Chile (see Chilean coup of 1973), and
   Angola (see Angolan Civil War). While President Jimmy Carter tried to
   place another limit on the arms race with a SALT II agreement in 1979,
   his efforts we undercut other events that year, including the Iranian
   Revolution and the Nicaraguan Revolution, which both ousted pro-U.S.
   regimes, and his retaliation against Soviet intervention in Afghanistan
   in December. (LaFeber 1991)

The "Second Cold War" (1980-1985)

   The term "second Cold War" has been used by historians to refer to the
   period of intensive reawakening of Cold War tensions in the early
   1980s. (Halliday) In 1980 Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter, vowing
   to increase military spending and confront the Soviets everywhere.
   (LaFeber 1991) Both Reagan and Britain's new prime minister, Margaret
   Thatcher, denounced the Soviet Union in ideological terms that rivaled
   that of the worst days of the Cold War in the late 1940s. (Byrd)

   Reagan spent $2.2 trillion for the military over eight years. Military
   spending, combined with the legacy of the economic structural problems
   of the 1970s, transformed the U.S. from the world's leading creditor in
   1981 to the world's leading debtor. (LaFeber 1991) Tensions intensified
   in the early 1980s when Reagan installed U.S. cruise missiles in Europe
   and announced his experimental " Strategic Defense Initiative" to shoot
   down missiles in mid-flight. Reagan also imposed economic sanctions to
   protest the suppression of the opposition Solidarity movement in
   Poland.

   U.S. domestic public concerns about intervening in foreign conflicts
   persisted from the end of the Vietnam War. (LaFeber, 323) But Reagan
   did not encounter major public opposition to his foreign policies. The
   Reagan administration emphasized the use of quick, low cost
   counterinsurgency tactics to intervene in foreign conflicts. (LaFeber,
   323) In 1983, the Reagan administration intervened in the multisided
   Lebanese Civil War (see 1983 Beirut barracks bombing), invaded Grenada
   (see Invasion of Grenada), bombed Libya (see United States bombing of
   Libya), and backed the Central American Contras—right-wing
   paramilitaries seeking overthrow the Soviet-aligned Sandinista
   government in Nicaragua. While Reagan's interventions against Granada
   and Libya were popular in the U.S., his backing of the Contra rebels
   was mired in controversy. In 1985, the president authorized the sale of
   arms to Iran; later, administration subordinates illegally diverted the
   proceeds to the Contras. (see Iran-Contra)

   Meanwhile, the Soviets incurred high costs for their own foreign
   interventions. Although Brezhnev was convinced in 1979 that the Soviet
   war in Afghanistan would be brief, Muslim guerrillas waged a
   surprisingly fierce resistance against the invasion. (LaFeber, 314) The
   Kremlin sent nearly 100,000 troops to support its puppet regime in
   Afghanistan, leading many outside observers to call the war the
   Soviets' Vietnam. (LaFeber, 314) However, Moscow's quagmire in
   Afghanistan was far more disastrous for the Soviets than Vietnam had
   been for the Americans because the conflict coincided with a period of
   internal decay and domestic crisis in the Soviet system. A high U.S.
   State Department official outcome was predicted such an outcome as
   early as 1980, posting that the invasion resulted in part from a
   "domestic crisis within the Soviet system.... It may be that the
   thermodynamic law of entropy has... caught up with the Soviet system,
   which now seems to expend more energy on simply maintaining its
   equilibrium than on improving itself. We could," he construed, "be
   seeing a period of foreign movement at a time of internal decay."

End of the Cold War

   By the early 1980s, the Soviet Armed Forces were the largest in the
   world by many measures—in terms of the numbers and types of weapons
   they possessed, in the number of troops in their ranks, and in the
   sheer size of their military-industrial base. However, the quantitative
   advantages held by the Soviet military often concealed areas where the
   Eastern bloc dramatically lagged the West, and led many U.S. observers
   to vastly overestimate Soviet power. (LaFeber 2002, 340)

   By the late years of the Cold War, Moscow had built up a military that
   consumed as much as twenty-five percent of the Soviet Union's gross
   national product at the expense of consumer goods and investment in
   civilian sectors. (LaFeber 2002, 332) But the size of the Soviet Armed
   forces was not necessarily the result of a simple action-reaction arms
   race with the United States. (Odom) Instead, Soviet spending on the
   arms race and other Cold War committments can be understood as both a
   cause and effect of the deep-seated structural problems in the Soviet
   system, which accumulated over at least a decade of economic stagnation
   during the Brezhnev years. (see Economy of the Soviet Union) Soviet
   investment in the defense sector was necessarily driven by military
   necessity, but in large part by the interests of massive party and
   state bureaucracies dependent on the sector for their own power and
   privileges. (LaFeber 2002, 335)

   By the time Mikhail Gorbachev had ascended to power in 1985, the
   Soviets suffered from an economic growth rate close to zero percent,
   combined with a sharp fall in hard currency earnings as a result in the
   downward slide in world oil prices in the 1980s. (LaFaber 2002,
   331-333) (Petroleum exports made up around 60 percent of country's
   total export earnings.) (LaFeber 2002, 332) To restructure the Soviet
   economy before it collapsed, Gorbachev announced an agenda of rapid
   reform. (see perestroika and glasnost) Reform required Gorbachev to
   redirect the country's resources from costly Cold War military
   commitments to more profitable areas in the civilian sector. As a
   result, Gorbachev offered major concessions on the levels of
   conventional forces, nuclear weapons, and policy in Eastern Europe.

   However, many U.S. Soviet experts and administration officials doubted
   that Gorbachev was serious about winding down the arms race. (LaFeber,
   2002) But the new Soviet leader eventually proved more concerned about
   reversing the Soviet Union's deteriorating economic position than
   fighting the arms race with the West. (Palmowski) The Kremlin made
   major concessions on the levels of conventional forces, nuclear
   weapons, and policy in Eastern Europe; in response Reagan agreed to
   renew talk and agreements on economic ties and scaling back the arms
   race. The East-West tensions that had reached intensive new heights
   earlier in the decade rapidly subsided through the mid-to-late 1980s.
   In 1988, the Soviets officially declared that they would no longer
   intervene in the affairs of allied states in Eastern Europe. In 1989,
   Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan.

   In December 1989, Gorbachev and George H.W. Bush declared the Cold War
   officially ended at a summit meeting in Malta. But by then, the Soviet
   alliance system was on the brink of collapse, and the Communist regimes
   of the Warsaw Pact were losing power. In the USSR itself, Gorbachev
   tried to reform the party in order to destroy resistance to his
   reforms, but, in doing so, ultimately weakened the bonds that held the
   state and union together. By February 1990, the Communist Party was
   forced to surrender its 73-year old monopoly of state power. By
   December of the next year, the union-state also dissolved, breaking the
   USSR up into fifteen separate independent states. (see Dissolution of
   the USSR)

Post-Cold War era

   Despite its rapid and relatively bloodless end, the Cold War was fought
   at a tremendous cost globally over the course of more than four
   decades. It cost the U.S. up to $8 trillion in military expenditures,
   and the lives of nearly 100,000 Americans (LaFeber 2002, 1). It even
   cost the Soviets a far higher share of their gross national product. In
   Southeast Asia, local civil wars were intensified by superpower
   rivalry, leaving millions dead.

   The end of the Cold War gave Russia the chance to cut military spending
   dramatically, but the adjustment was wrenching. The military-industrial
   sector employed at least one of every five Soviet adults. Its
   dismantling left millions throughout the former Soviet Union
   unemployed. Russian living standards have worsened overall in the
   post-Cold War years, although the economy has resumed growth in recent
   years. In the 1990s, Russia suffered an economic downturn more severe
   than U.S. or Germany had undergone six decades earlier in the Great
   Depression as it embarked on capitalist economic reforms.

   The legacy of the Cold War continues to structure world affairs.
   (Halliday) The Cold War institutionalized the role of the United States
   in the postwar world economic and political system. In stark contrast
   to the prewar period, when the U.S., for example, no troops stationed
   in non-U.S. territory in 1938, by 1989, the U.S. is responsible for
   military alliances in effect with 50 countries, with 1.5 million U.S.
   troops posted in 117 countries. (Calhoun) The Cold War also
   institutionalized the commitment to a huge, permanent wartime
   military-industrial complex. (Calhoun)

   Many of the economic and social tensions that underpinned Cold War
   competition in much of the Third World remain acute. The breakdown of
   state control in a number of areas formerly ruled by Communist parties
   has also produced many new civil and ethnic conflicts. (Halliday) Both
   superpowers had actually begun losing control of the respective blocs
   since the late 1950s and, especially, in the 1970s. Today, the U.S. is
   challenged to make Cold War institutions under its leadership such as
   NATO in a post-Cold War era.

   In 1997, the Russia-NATO Joint Permanent Council was established to
   reinforce cooperation. However, nostalgia for Soviet times is pervasive
   in Russia, exacerbated by the economic collapse that has followed
   reforms aimed at dismantling the socialist economic system. (Halliday)
   The U.S. and Russia agreed to cooperate on after September 11, 2001
   terrorist attacks, but tensions between the two powers later flared up
   in other areas.

   As an alternative ideology to Western capitalism, communism has been
   discredited in much of Eastern Europe, but retains influence in much of
   the Third World. In China, for example, the Communist Party still
   governs, while prioritizing economic integration with the capitalist
   world and eschewing its past Mao-era radicalism. Communist parties are
   also actively contending for power in places such as India, the
   Philippines, Colombia, and Nepal.

   The legacy of the Cold War also structures many educational
   institutions in the United States. Defense dollars shaped the growth
   academic fields devoted to national security concerns; and underwrote
   the growth of many universities, policy institutes, and " think tanks."
   (Calhoun)

Historiography

   As soon as the term "Cold War" was popularized to refer to postwar
   tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, interpreting the course
   and origins of the conflict has been a source of heated controversy
   among historians, political scientists, and journalists. In particular,
   historians have sharply disagreed as to who was responsible for the
   breakdown of Soviet-U.S. relations after the Second World War; and
   whether the conflict between the two superpowers was inevitable, or
   could have been avoided. Historians have also disagreed on what exactly
   the Cold War was, what the sources of the conflict were, and how to
   disentangle patters of action and reaction between the two sides.
   (Halliday)

   While the explanations of the origins of the conflict in academic
   discussions are complex and diverse, several general schools of thought
   on the subject can be identified. Historians commonly speak of three
   differing approaches to the study of the Cold War: "orthodox" accounts,
   "revisionism," and "post-revisionism." Nevertheless, much of the
   historiography on the Cold War weaves together two or even all three of
   these broad categories. (Byrd)

"Orthodox accounts"

   The first school of interpretation to emerge in the U.S. was the
   "orthodox" one. For more than a decade after the end of the Second
   World War, few U.S. historians challenged the official U.S.
   interpretation of the beginnings of the Cold War. (Brinkley, 798-799)
   This "orthodox" school places the responsibility for the Cold War on
   the Soviet Union and its expansion into Eastern Europe. (Calhoun)
   Thomas A. Bailey, for example, argued in his 1950 America Faces Russia
   that the breakdown of postwar peace was the result of Soviet
   expansionism in the immediate postwar years. Bailey argued Stalin
   violated promises he had made at Yalta, imposed Soviet-dominated
   regimes on unwilling Eastern European populations, and conspired to
   spread communism throughout the world. (Brinkley, 798-799) From this
   view, U.S. officials were forced to respond to Soviet aggression with
   the Truman Doctrine, plans to contain communist subversion around the
   world, and the Marshall Plan.

   This interpretation has been described as the "official" U.S. version
   of Cold War history. (Craig Calhoun) Although it lost its dominance as
   a dominant mode of historical thought in academic discussions in 1960s,
   it continues to be influential. (Nashel) Writers such as Jean
   Kirkpatrick and, more recently, Stephen Ambrose have attempted to
   reintroduce this perspective in various forms. (Craig Calhoun)

"Revisionism”

   U.S. involvement in Vietnam in the 1960s disillusioned many historians
   with the premises of "containment" and thus with assumptions of the
   "orthodox" approach to understanding the Cold War. (Brinkley, 798-799)
   "Revisionist" accounts emerged in the wake of the Vietnam War, in the
   context of a larger rethinking of the U.S. role in international
   affairs. (Calhoun)

   While the new school of thought contained many differences between
   individual scholars, the works comprising it were generally responses
   in one way or another to William Appleman Williams' landmark 1959 The
   Tragedy of American Diplomacy. Williams challenged the long-held
   assumptions of "orthodox" accounts, arguing that Americans had always
   been an empire-building people, even as U.S. officials denied it.
   (Nashel)

   Following Williams, "revisionist" writers saw more responsibility for
   the breakdown of postwar peace resulting from the U.S. and cited a
   range of U.S. efforts to isolate and confront the Soviet Union well
   before the end of World War II. (Calhoun) According to Williams and
   later "revisionist" writers, U.S. policymakers shared an overarching
   concern with maintaining capitalism domestically; in order to ensure
   this goal, they understood an "open door" policy abroad, increasing
   access to foreign markets for U.S. business and agriculture would be
   required. (Nashel) From this perspective, a growing economy
   domestically went hand-in-hand with the consolidation of U.S. power
   internationally.

   "Revisionist" writers also complicated the assumption that Soviet
   leaders were committed to postwar 'expansionism.' They cited evidence
   that Soviet Union's occupation of Eastern Europe had a defensive
   rationale, and Soviet leaders saw themselves as attempting to avoid
   encirclement by the United States and its allies. (Calhoun) From this
   view, the Soviet Union was so weak and devastated after the end of the
   Second World War as to be unable to pose any serious threat to the
   United States; in addition, the U.S. even had a nuclear monopoly until
   1949. (Brinkley, 798-799)

   Revisionist writers have also challenged the assumption that the
   origins of the Cold War began only as recently as the immediate postwar
   period. (Nashel) Notably, Walter LaFeber, in his landmark America,
   Russia, and the Cold War, first published in 1972, argued that the Cold
   War had its origins in 19th century conflicts between Russia and
   America over the opening of East Asia to U.S. trade, markets, and
   influence. (Nashel) LaFeber argues that the U.S. commitment at the
   close of the war to ensure a world in which every state was open to
   U.S. influence and trade underpinned many of the conflicts that
   triggered the beginning of the Cold War. (Brinkley, 798-799)

   Starting with Gar Alperovitz, in his influential Atomic Diplomacy:
   Hiroshima and Potsdam (1965), "revisionist" scholars have focused on
   the U.S. decision to use atomic weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki
   during the last days of World War II. (Brinkley, 798-799) According to
   Alperovitz, the bombs were not used on an already defeated Japan to win
   the war, but to intimidate the Soviets, signaling that the U.S. would
   use nuclear weapons to structure a postwar world around U.S. interests
   as U.S. policymakers saw fit. (Nashel)

   Joyce and Gabriel Kolko's The Limits of Power: The World and U.S.
   Foreign Policy, 1945–1954 (1972) has also received considerable
   attention in the historiography on the Cold War. The Kolkos argued U.S.
   policy was both reflexively anticommunist and counterrevolutionary. The
   U.S. was not necessarily fighting Soviet influence, but any form of
   challenge to the U.S. economic and political prerogatives through
   either covert or military means. (Nashel) In this sense, the Cold War
   is less a story of rivalry between two blocs, and more a story of the
   ways by which the dominant states within each bloc controlled and
   disciplined their own populations and clients, and about who supported
   and stood to benefit from increased arms production and political
   anxiety over a perceived external enemy. (Halliday)

"Post-revisionism"

   The "revisionist" interpretation produced a critical reaction of its
   own. In a variety of ways, "post-revisionist" scholarship has
   challenged earlier works on the origins and course of the Cold War.

   One current of "post-revisionism" challenges the "revisionists" by
   accepting some of their findings but rejecting most of their key
   claims. (Brinkley, 798-799) Another current has attempted to strike a
   balance between the "orthodox" and "revisionist" camps, identifying
   areas of responsibility for the origins of the conflict on both sides.
   (Brinkley, 798-799) Thomas G. Paterson, in Soviet-American
   Confrontation (1973), for example, viewed Soviet hostility and U.S.
   efforts to dominate the postwar world as equally responsible for the
   Cold War. (Brinkley, 798-799)

   The seminal work of the new approach was John Lewis Gaddis's The United
   States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941–1947 (1972). The account
   was immediately hailed as the beginning of a new school of thought on
   the Cold War claiming to synthesize a variety of interpretations.
   (Nashel) Gaddis's maintained that "neither side can bear sole
   responsibility for the onset of the Cold War." (Brinkley, 798-799)
   Gaddis emphasized the limitations of U.S. policymakers because of
   domestic politics, and the complications these constraints imposed on
   U.S. policymakers. (Brinkley) Gaddis, however, has criticized some
   "revisionist" scholars, particularly Williams, for failing to
   understand the role of Soviet policy in the origins of the Cold War.
   (Nashel) While Gaddis does not hold either side as entirely responsible
   for the onset of the conflict, he has argued that the Soviets must be
   held at least slightly more accountable for the problems. According to
   Gaddis, Stalin was in a much better position to compromise than his
   Western counterparts, given his much broader power within his own
   regime than Truman, who was often undermined by vociferous political
   opposition at home. (Brinkley, 798-799)

   Out of the "post-revisionist" literature has emerged a new and more
   sensitive to nuance area of inquiry interested less in the question of
   who started the conflict than in offering insight into U.S. and Soviet
   actions and perspectives. (Calhoun) From this perspective, the Cold War
   was not so much the responsibility of either side as the result of
   predictable tensions between two world powers that had been suspicious
   of one another for nearly a century. For example, Ernest May wrote in a
   1984 essay:

     After the Second World War, the United States and the Soviet Union
     were doomed to be antagonists.... There probably was never any real
     possibility that the post-1945 relationship could be anything but
     hostility verging on conflict... Traditions, belief systems,
     propinquity, and convenience ... all combined to stimulate
     antagonism, and almost no factor operated in either country to hold
     it back. (Brinkley, 799)

   From this current of post-revisionism emerged an area of inquiry
   interested in how Cold War actors perceived various events, and the
   degree of misperception involved in the failure of the two sides to
   reach common understandings of their wartime alliance and disputes.
   (Halliday)
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