1947–1991 geopolitical rivalry between US and USSR
This article is about the state of political tension in the 20th century. For the general term, seeCold war (term). For other uses, seeCold War (disambiguation).
WriterGeorge Orwell usedcold war, as a general term, in his essay "You and the Atomic Bomb", published 19 October 1945. Contemplating a world living in the shadow of the threat ofnuclear warfare, Orwell looked atJames Burnham's predictions of a polarized world, writing:
Looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery... James Burnham's theory has been much discussed, but few people have yet considered its ideological implications—that is, the kind of world-view, the kind of beliefs, and the social structure that would probably prevail in a state which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of "cold war" with its neighbours.[1]
InThe Observer of 10 March 1946, Orwell wrote, "after the Moscow conference last December, Russia began to make a 'cold war' on Britain and the British Empire."[2]
The first use of the term to describe the specificpost-war geopolitical confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States came in a speech byBernard Baruch, an influential advisor to Democratic presidents,[3] on 16 April 1947. The speech, written by journalistHerbert Bayard Swope,[4] proclaimed, "we are today in the midst of a cold war."[5] Newspaper columnistWalter Lippmann gave the term wide currency with his bookThe Cold War. When asked in 1947 about the source of the term, Lippmann traced it to a French term from the 1930s,la guerre froide.[6][B]
The roots of the Cold War can be traced to diplomatic and military tensions preceding World War II. The 1917Russian Revolution and the subsequentTreaty of Brest-Litovsk, where Soviet Russia ceded vast territories to Germany, deepened distrust among the Western Allies. Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War further complicated relations, and although the Soviet Union later allied with Western powers to defeatNazi Germany, this cooperation was strained by mutual suspicions.
In the immediate aftermath of World War II, disagreements about the future of Europe, particularlyEastern Europe, became central. The Soviet Union's establishment of communist regimes in the countries it had liberated from Nazi control—enforced by the presence of theRed Army—alarmed the US and UK. Western leaders saw this as Soviet expansionism, clashing with their vision of a democratic Europe. Economically, the divide was sharpened with the introduction of theMarshall Plan in 1947, a US initiative to provide financial aid to rebuild Europe and prevent the spread of communism by stabilizing capitalist economies. The Soviet Union rejected the Marshall Plan, seeing it as an effort by the US to impose its influence on Europe. In response, the Soviet Union establishedComecon (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) to foster economic cooperation among communist states.
The United States and itsWestern European allies sought to strengthen their bonds and used the policy ofcontainment against Soviet influence; they accomplished this most notably through the formation ofNATO, which was essentially a defensive agreement in 1949. The Soviet Union countered with theWarsaw Pact in 1955, which had similar results with the Eastern Bloc. As by that time the Soviet Union already had an armed presence and political domination all over its eastern satellite states, the pact has been long considered superfluous.[7] Although nominally a defensive alliance, the Warsaw Pact's primary function was to safeguardSoviet hegemony over itsEastern European satellites, with the pact's only direct military actions having been the invasions of its own member states to keep them from breaking away;[8] in the 1960s, the pact evolved into a multilateral alliance, in which the non-Soviet Warsaw Pact members gained significant scope to pursue their own interests. In 1961, Soviet-alliedEast Germany constructed theBerlin Wall to prevent the citizens ofEast Berlin from fleeing toWest Berlin, at the time part of United States-alliedWest Germany.[9] Major crises of this phase included theBerlin Blockade of 1948–1949, theChinese Communist Revolution of 1945–1949, theKorean War of 1950–1953, theHungarian Revolution of 1956 and theSuez Crisis of that same year, theBerlin Crisis of 1961, theCuban Missile Crisis of 1962, and theVietnam War of 1955–1975. Both superpowers competed for influence inLatin America and theMiddle East, and the decolonising states ofAfrica,Asia, andOceania.
Détente collapsed at the end of the decade with the beginning of theSoviet–Afghan War in 1979. Beginning in the 1980s, this phase was another period of elevated tension. TheReagan Doctrine led to increased diplomatic, military, and economic pressures on the Soviet Union, which at the time was undergoing theEra of Stagnation. This phase saw the new Soviet leaderMikhail Gorbachev introducing the liberalizing reforms ofglasnost ("openness") andperestroika ("reorganization") and ending Soviet involvement in Afghanistan in 1989. Pressures for national sovereignty grew stronger in Eastern Europe, and Gorbachev refused to further support the Communist governments militarily.
Remains of the "Iron Curtain" in theCzech Republic, 2014
In February 1946,George F. Kennan's "Long Telegram" from Moscow to Washington helped to articulate the US government's increasingly hard line against the Soviets, which would become the basis for US strategy toward the Soviet Union. The telegram galvanized a policy debate that would eventually shape theTruman administration's Soviet policy.[11] Washington's opposition to the Soviets accumulated after broken promises by Stalin andMolotov concerning Europe and Iran.[12] Following the World War IIAnglo-Soviet invasion of Iran, the country was occupied by the Red Army in the far north and the British in the south.[13] Iran was used by the United States and British to supply the Soviet Union, and the Allies agreed to withdraw from Iran within six months after the cessation of hostilities.[13] However, when this deadline came, the Soviets remained in Iran under the guise of theAzerbaijan People's Government andKurdishRepublic of Mahabad.[14] On 5 March, former British prime minister Winston Churchill delivered his famous "Iron Curtain" speech calling for an Anglo-American alliance against the Soviets, whom he accused of establishing an "iron curtain" dividing Europe.[15][16]
A week later, on 13 March, Stalin responded vigorously to the speech, saying Churchill could be compared toAdolf Hitler insofar as he advocated the racial superiority ofEnglish-speaking nations so that they could satisfy their hunger for world domination, and that such a declaration was "a call for war on the USSR." The Soviet leader also dismissed the accusation that the USSR was exerting increasing control over the countries lying in its sphere. He argued that there was nothing surprising in "the fact that the Soviet Union, anxious for its future safety, [was] trying to see to it that governments loyal in their attitude to the Soviet Union should exist in these countries."[17][18]
European military alliances
European economic blocs
Soviet territorial demands to Turkey regarding the Dardanelles in theTurkish Straits crisis and Black Seaborder disputes were also a major factor in increasing tensions.[12][19] In September, the Soviet side produced theNovikov telegram, sent by the Soviet ambassador to the US but commissioned and "co-authored" byVyacheslav Molotov; it portrayed the US as being in the grip of monopoly capitalists who were building up military capability "to prepare the conditions for winning world supremacy in a new war".[20] On 6 September 1946,James F. Byrnes delivered aspeech in Germany repudiating theMorgenthau Plan (a proposal to partition and de-industrialize post-war Germany) and warning the Soviets that the US intended to maintain a military presence in Europe indefinitely.[21][22] As Byrnes stated a month later, "The nub of our program was to win the German people ... it was a battle between us and Russia over minds ..." In December, the Soviets agreed to withdraw from Iran after persistent US pressure, an early success of containment policy.
By 1947, US presidentHarry S. Truman was outraged by the perceived resistance of the Soviet Union to American demands in Iran, Turkey, and Greece, as well as Soviet rejection of theBaruch Plan on nuclear weapons.[23] In February 1947, the British government announced that it could no longer afford to finance theKingdom of Greece inits civil war against Communist-led insurgents.[24] In the same month, Stalin conducted the rigged1947 Polish legislative election which constituted an open breach of theYalta Agreement. TheUS government responded by adopting a policy ofcontainment,[25] with the goal of stopping the spread ofcommunism. Truman delivered a speech calling for the allocation of $400 million to intervene in the war and unveiled theTruman Doctrine, which framed the conflict as a contest between free peoples andtotalitarian regimes.[25] American policymakers accused the Soviet Union of conspiring against the Greek royalists in an effort toexpand Soviet influence even though Stalin had told the Communist Party to cooperate with the British-backed government.[26][27][28]
Enunciation of the Truman Doctrine marked the beginning of a US bipartisan defense and foreign policy consensus betweenRepublicans andDemocrats focused on containment anddeterrence that weakened during and after theVietnam War, but ultimately persisted thereafter.[29] Moderate and conservative parties in Europe, as well as social democrats, gave virtually unconditional support to the Western alliance,[30] whileEuropean andAmerican Communists, financed by theKGB and involved in its intelligence operations,[31] adhered to Moscow's line, although dissent began to appear after 1956. Other critiques of the consensus policy came fromanti-Vietnam War activists, theCampaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and theanti-nuclear movement.[32]
Marshall Plan, Czechoslovak coup and formation of two German states
The labeling used on theMarshall Plan economicaid to Western Europe.Map of Cold War-era Europe and theNear East showing countries that received Marshall Plan aid. The red columns show the relative amount of total aid received per nation.Construction inWest Berlin under Marshall Plan aid
In early 1947, France, Britain and the United States unsuccessfully attempted to reach an agreement with the Soviet Union for a plan envisioning an economically self-sufficient Germany, including a detailed accounting of the industrial plants, goods and infrastructure already taken by the Soviets.[33] In June 1947, in accordance with theTruman Doctrine, the United States enacted theMarshall Plan, a pledge of economic assistance for all European countries willing to participate.[33] Under the plan, which President Harry S. Truman signed on 3 April 1948, the US government gave to Western European countries over $13 billion (equivalent to $189 billion in 2016). Later, the program led to the creation of theOECD.
Stalin believed economic integration with the West would allowEastern Bloc countries to escape Soviet control, and that the US was trying to buy a pro-US re-alignment of Europe.[37] Stalin therefore prevented Eastern Bloc nations from receiving Marshall Plan aid.[37] The Soviet Union's alternative to the Marshall Plan, which was purported to involve Soviet subsidies and trade with central and eastern Europe, became known as theMolotov Plan (later institutionalized in January 1949 as theCouncil for Mutual Economic Assistance).[27] Stalin was also fearful of a reconstituted Germany; his vision of a post-war Germany did not include the ability to rearm or pose any kind of threat to the Soviet Union.[38]
In early 1948, Czech Communists executed acoup d'état inCzechoslovakia (resulting in the formation of theCzechoslovak Socialist Republic), the only Eastern Bloc state that the Soviets had permitted to retain democratic structures.[39] The public brutality of the coup shocked Western powers more than any event up to that point and swept away the last vestiges of opposition to the Marshall Plan in the United States Congress.[40][41]
In an immediate aftermath of the crisis, theLondon Six-Power Conference was held, resulting in theSoviet boycott of the Allied Control Council and its incapacitation, an event marking the beginning of the full-blown Cold War, as well as ending any hopes at the time for a single German government and leading to formation in 1949 of theFederal Republic of Germany andGerman Democratic Republic.[42]
Outside of Europe, the United States also began to express interest in the development of many other countries, so that they would not fall under the sway of Eastern Bloc communism. In his January 1949 inaugural address, Truman declared for the first time in U.S. history thatinternational development would be a key part of U.S. foreign policy. The resulting program later became known as thePoint Four Program because it was the fourth point raised in his address.[44]
All major powers engaged in espionage, using a great variety of spies,double agents,moles, and new technologies such as the tapping of telephone cables.[45] The SovietKGB ("Committee for State Security"), the bureau responsible for foreign espionage and internal surveillance, was famous for its effectiveness. The most famous Soviet operation involved itsatomic spies that delivered crucial information from the United States'Manhattan Project, leading the USSR to detonate its first nuclear weapon in 1949, four years after the American detonation and much sooner than expected.[46][47] A massive network of informants throughout the Soviet Union was used to monitor dissent from official Soviet politics and morals.[45][48] Although to an extentdisinformation had always existed, the term itself was invented, and the strategy formalized by ablack propaganda department of the Soviet KGB.[49][C]
Based on the amount of top-secret Cold War archival information that has been released, historianRaymond L. Garthoff concludes there probably was parity in the quantity and quality of secret information obtained by each side. However, the Soviets probably had an advantage in terms ofHUMINT (human intelligence or interpersonal espionage) and "sometimes in its reach into high policy circles." In terms of decisive impact, however, he concludes:[50]
We also can now have high confidence in the judgment that there were no successful "moles" at the political decision-making level on either side. Similarly, there is no evidence, on either side, of any major political or military decision that was prematurely discovered through espionage and thwarted by the other side. There also is no evidence of any major political or military decision that was crucially influenced (much less generated) by an agent of the other side.
According to historian Robert L. Benson, "Washington's forte was'signals' intelligence – the procurement and analysis of coded foreign messages," leading to theVenona project or Venona intercepts, which monitored the communications of Soviet intelligence agents.[51]Moynihan wrote that the Venona project contained "overwhelming proof of the activities of Soviet spy networks in America, complete with names, dates, places, and deeds."[52] The Venona project was kept highly secret even from policymakers until theMoynihan Commission in 1995.[52] Despite this, the decryption project had already been betrayed and dispatched to the USSR byKim Philby andBill Weisband in 1946,[52][53] as was discovered by the US by 1950.[54] Nonetheless, the Soviets had to keep their discovery of the program secret, too, and continued leaking their own information, some of which was still useful to the American program.[53] According to Moynihan, even President Truman may not have been fully informed of Venona, which may have left him unaware of the extent of Soviet espionage.[55][56]
Clandestineatomic spies from the Soviet Union, who infiltrated theManhattan Project during WWII, played a major role in increasing tensions that led to the Cold War.[51]
In addition to usual espionage, the Western agencies paid special attention to debriefingEastern Bloc defectors.[57]Edward Jay Epstein describes that the CIA understood that the KGB used "provocations", or fake defections, as a trick to embarrass Western intelligence and establish Soviet double agents. As a result, from 1959 to 1973, the CIA required that East Bloc defectors went through a counterintelligence investigation before being recruited as a source of intelligence.[58]
During the late 1970s and 1980s, the KGB perfected its use of espionage to sway and distort diplomacy.[59]Active measures were "clandestine operations designed to further Soviet foreign policy goals," consisting of disinformation, forgeries, leaks to foreign media, and the channeling of aid to militant groups.[60] Retired KGB Major GeneralOleg Kalugin described active measures as "the heart and soul ofSoviet intelligence."[61]
In September 1947, the Soviets createdCominform to impose orthodoxy within the international communist movement and tighten political control over Sovietsatellites through coordination of communist parties in theEastern Bloc.[37] Cominform faced an embarrassing setback the following June, when theTito–Stalin split obliged its members to expel Yugoslavia, which remained communist but adopted anon-aligned position and began accepting financial aid from the US.[63]
Besides Berlin, the status of the city ofTrieste was at issue. Until the break between Tito and Stalin, the Western powers and the Eastern bloc faced each other uncompromisingly. In addition to capitalism and communism, Italians and Slovenes, monarchists and republicans as well as war winners and losers often faced each other irreconcilably. The neutral buffer stateFree Territory of Trieste, founded in 1947 with the United Nations, was split up and dissolved in 1954 and 1975, also because of the détente between the West and Tito.[64][65]
The US and Britain merged their western German occupation zones into "Bizone" (1 January 1947, later "Trizone" with the addition of France's zone, April 1949).[66] As part of the economic rebuilding of Germany, in early 1948, representatives of a number of Western European governments and the United States announced an agreement for a merger of western German areas into a federal governmental system.[67] In addition, in accordance with theMarshall Plan, they began to re-industrialize and rebuild the West German economy, including the introduction of a newDeutsche Mark currency to replace the oldReichsmark currency that the Soviets had debased.[68] The US had secretly decided that a unified and neutral Germany was undesirable, withWalter Bedell Smith telling General Eisenhower "in spite of our announced position, we really do not want nor intend to accept German unification on any terms that the Russians might agree to, even though they seem to meet most of our requirements."[69]
Shortly thereafter, Stalin instituted the Berlin Blockade (June 1948 – May 1949), one of the first major crises of the Cold War, preventing Western supplies from reaching West Germany's exclave ofWest Berlin.[70] The United States (primarily), Britain, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and several other countries began the massive "Berlin airlift", supplying West Berlin with provisions despite Soviet threats.[71]
The Soviets mounted a public relations campaign against the policy change. Once again, the East Berlin communists attempted to disrupt theBerlin municipal elections,[66] which were held on 5 December 1948 and produced a turnout of 86% and an overwhelming victory for the non-communist parties.[72] The results effectively divided the city into East and West, the latter comprising US, British and French sectors. 300,000 Berliners demonstrated and urged the international airlift to continue,[73] and US Air Force pilotGail Halvorsen created "Operation Vittles", which supplied candy to German children.[74] The Airlift was as much a logistical as a political and psychological success for the West; it firmly linked West Berlin to the United States.[75] In May 1949, Stalin lifted the blockade.[76][77]
In 1952, Stalin repeatedlyproposed a plan to unify East and West Germany under a single government chosen in elections supervised by the United Nations, if the new Germany were to stay out of Western military alliances, but this proposal was turned down by the Western powers. Some sources dispute the sincerity of the proposal.[78]
Media in theEastern Bloc was anorgan of the state, completely reliant on and subservient to the communist party. Radio and television organizations were state-owned, while print media was usually owned by political organizations, mostly by the local communist party.[82] Soviet radio broadcasts used Marxist rhetoric to attack capitalism, emphasizing themes of labor exploitation, imperialism and war-mongering.[83]
Along with the broadcasts of theBBC and theVoice of America to Central and Eastern Europe,[84] a major propaganda effort began in 1949 wasRadio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, dedicated to bringing about the peaceful demise of the communist system in the Eastern Bloc.[85] Radio Free Europe attempted to achieve these goals by serving as a surrogate home radio station, an alternative to the controlled and party-dominated domestic press in the Soviet Bloc.[85] Radio Free Europe was a product of some of the most prominent architects of America's early Cold War strategy, especially those who believed that the Cold War would eventually be fought by political rather than military means, such as George F. Kennan.[86] Soviet and Eastern Bloc authorities used various methods to suppress Western broadcasts, includingradio jamming.[87][88]
American policymakers, including Kennan andJohn Foster Dulles, acknowledged that the Cold War was in its essence a war of ideas.[86] The United States, acting through the CIA, funded a long list of projects to counter the communist appeal among intellectuals in Europe and the developing world.[89] The CIA alsocovertly sponsored a domestic propaganda campaign calledCrusade for Freedom.[90]
The rearmament of West Germany was achieved in the early 1950s. Its main promoter wasKonrad Adenauer, the chancellor of West Germany, with France the main opponent. Washington had the decisive voice. It was strongly supported by the Pentagon (the US military leadership), and weakly opposed by President Truman; the State Department was ambivalent. The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 changed the calculations and Washington now gave full support. That also involved namingDwight D. Eisenhower in charge of NATO forces and sending more American troops to West Germany. There was a strong promise that West Germany would not develop nuclear weapons.[91]
Widespread fears of another rise ofGerman militarism necessitated the new military to operate within an alliance framework underNATO command.[92] In 1955, Washington secured full German membership of NATO.[81] In May 1953,Lavrentiy Beria, by then in a government post, had made an unsuccessful proposal to allow the reunification of a neutral Germany to prevent West Germany's incorporation into NATO, but his attempts were cut short after he wasexecuted several months later during a Soviet power struggle.[93] The events led to the establishment of theBundeswehr, the West German military, in 1955.[94][95]
In 1949,Mao Zedong'sPeople's Liberation Army defeatedChiang Kai-shek's United States-backedKuomintang (KMT) Nationalist Government in China. The KMT-controlled territory was nowrestricted to the island ofTaiwan, the nationalist government of which exists to this day. The Kremlin promptly created an alliance with the newly formed People's Republic of China.[96] According to Norwegian historianOdd Arne Westad, the communists won the Civil War because they made fewer military mistakes than Chiang Kai-Shek made, and because in his search for a powerful centralized government, Chiang antagonized too many interest groups in China. Moreover, his party was weakened during thewar against Japan. Meanwhile, the communists told different groups, such as the peasants, exactly what they wanted to hear, and they cloaked themselves under the cover ofChinese nationalism.[97]
Confronted with thecommunist revolution in China andthe end of the American atomic monopoly in 1949, the Truman administration quickly moved to escalate and expand itscontainment doctrine.[27] InNSC 68, a secret 1950 document, the National Security Council proposed reinforcing pro-Western alliance systems and quadrupling spending on defense.[27] Truman, under the influence of advisorPaul Nitze, saw containment as implying completerollback of Soviet influence in all its forms.[98]
United States officials moved to expand this version of containment intoAsia,Africa, andLatin America, in order to counter revolutionary nationalist movements, often led by communist parties financed by the USSR.[99] In this way, this US would exercise "preponderant power," oppose neutrality, andestablish globalhegemony.[98] In the early 1950s (a period sometimes known as the "Pactomania"), the US formalized a series of alliances withJapan (a former WWII enemy),South Korea,Taiwan,Australia,New Zealand,Thailand and thePhilippines (notablyANZUS in 1951 andSEATO in 1954), thereby guaranteeing the United States a number of long-term military bases.[81]
One of the more significant examples of the implementation of containment was the United Nations US-led intervention in theKorean War. In June 1950, after years of mutual hostilities,[D][100][101]Kim Il Sung'sNorth Korean People's Army invadedSouth Korea. Stalin had been reluctant to support the invasion[E] but ultimately sent advisers.[102] To Stalin's surprise,[27] theUnited Nations Security Council backed the defense of South Korea, although the Soviets were then boycotting meetings in protest of the fact thatTaiwan (Republic of China), not thePeople's Republic of China, held a permanent seat on the council.[103] AUN force of sixteen countries faced North Korea,[104] although 40 percent of troops were South Korean, and about 50 percent were from the United States.[105]
US Marines engaged in street fighting during the liberation ofSeoul, September 1950
The US initially seemed to follow containment, only pushing back North Korea across the38th Parallel and restoring South Korea's sovereignty while allowing North Korea's survival as a state. However, the success of theInchon landing inspired the US/UN forces to pursue arollback strategy instead and to overthrow communist North Korea, thereby allowing nationwide elections under U.N. auspices.[106] GeneralDouglas MacArthur then advanced into North Korea. The Chinese, fearful of a possible US invasion, sent in a large army and pushed the U.N. forces back below the 38th parallel.[107] The episode was used to support the wisdom of thecontainment doctrine as opposed to rollback. The Communists were later pushed to roughly around the original border, with minimal changes. Among other effects, the Korean War galvanisedNATO to develop a military structure.[108] TheKorean Armistice Agreement was approved in July 1953.[109][110]
NATO and Warsaw Pact troop strengths in Europe in 1959
In 1953, changes in political leadership on both sides shifted the dynamic of the Cold War.[36]Dwight D. Eisenhower was inaugurated president that January. During the last 18 months of the Truman administration, the American defense budget had quadrupled, and Eisenhower moved to reduce military spending by a third while continuing to fight the Cold War effectively.[27]
On 18 November 1956, while addressing Western dignitaries at a reception in Moscow's Polish embassy, Khrushchev infamously declared, "Whether you like it or not, history is on our side.We will bury you", shocking everyone present.[111] He would later claim he had not been referring to nuclear war, but the "historically fated victory of communism over capitalism."[112]
Eisenhower's secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, initiated a "New Look" for thecontainment strategy, calling for a greater reliance on nuclear weapons against US enemies in wartime.[36] Dulles also enunciated the doctrine of "massive retaliation", threatening a severe US response to any Soviet aggression. Possessing nuclear superiority, for example, allowed Eisenhower to face down Soviet threats to intervene in the Middle East during the 1956Suez Crisis.[27] The declassified US plans for retaliatory nuclear strikes in the late 1950s included the "systematic destruction" of 1,200 major urban centers in the Soviet Bloc and China, including Moscow, East Berlin and Beijing.[113][114]
In spite of these events, there were substantial hopes for détente whenan upswing in diplomacy took place in 1959, including a two-week visit by Khrushchev to the US, and plans for a two-power summit for May 1960. The latter was disturbed by theU-2 spy plane scandal, however, in which Eisenhower was caught lying about the intrusion of American surveillance aircraft into Soviet territory.[115][116]
WhileStalin's death in 1953 slightly relaxed tensions, the situation in Europe remained an uneasy armed truce.[117] The Soviets, who had already created a network of mutual assistance treaties in theEastern Bloc by 1949, established a formal alliance therein, theWarsaw Pact, in 1955. It stood opposed to NATO.[81]
Hungarian flag (1949–1956) with the communist coat of arms cut out was an anti-Soviet revolutionary symbol
TheHungarian Revolution of 1956 occurred shortly after Khrushchev arranged the removal of Hungary's Stalinist leaderMátyás Rákosi.[118] In response to a popular anti-communist uprising,[F] the new regime formally disbanded thesecret police, declared its intention to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact and pledged to re-establish free elections. TheSoviet Army invaded.[119] Thousands of Hungarians were killed and arrested, imprisoned and deported to the Soviet Union,[120] and approximately 200,000 Hungarians fled Hungary.[121] Hungarian leaderImre Nagy and others were executed following secret trials.[122]
From 1957 through 1961, Khrushchev openly and repeatedly threatened the West with nuclear annihilation. He claimed that Soviet missile capabilities were far superior to those of the United States, capable of wiping out any American or European city. According toJohn Lewis Gaddis, Khrushchev rejected Stalin's "belief in the inevitability of war," however. The new leader declared his ultimate goal was "peaceful coexistence".[123] In Khrushchev's formulation, peace would allow capitalism to collapse on its own,[124] as well as giving the Soviets time to boost their military capabilities,[125] which remained for decades until Gorbachev's later "new thinking" envisioning peaceful coexistence as an end in itself rather than a form of class struggle.[126]
The events in Hungary produced ideological fractures within the communist parties of the world, particularly in Western Europe, with great decline in membership, as many in both western and socialist countries felt disillusioned by the brutal Soviet response.[127] The communist parties in the West would never recover.[127]
In 1957, Polish foreign ministerAdam Rapacki proposed theRapacki Plan for a nuclear free zone in central Europe. Public opinion tended to be favourable in the West, but it was rejected by leaders of West Germany, Britain, France and the United States. They feared it would leave the powerful conventional armies of the Warsaw Pact dominant over the weaker NATO armies.[128]
During November 1958, Khrushchev made an unsuccessful attempt to turn all of Berlin into an independent, demilitarized "free city". He gave the United States, Great Britain and France a six-month ultimatum to withdraw their troops from the sectors of West Berlin, or he would transfer control of Western access rights to the East Germans. Khrushchev earlier explained toMao Zedong that "Berlin is the testicles of the West. Every time I want to make the West scream, I squeeze on Berlin."[129] NATO formally rejected the ultimatum in mid-December and Khrushchev withdrew it in return for a Geneva conference on the German question.[130]
Like Truman and Eisenhower,John F. Kennedy supported containment. President Eisenhower'sNew Look policy had emphasized the use of less expensive nuclear weapons todeter Soviet aggression by threatening massive nuclear attacks on all of the Soviet Union. Nuclear weapons were much cheaper than maintaining a large standing army, so Eisenhower cut conventional forces to save money. Kennedy implemented a new strategy known asflexible response. This strategy relied on conventional arms to achieve limited goals. As part of this policy, Kennedy expanded theUnited States special operations forces, elite military units that could fight unconventionally in various conflicts. Kennedy hoped that the flexible response strategy would allow the US to counter Soviet influence without resorting to nuclear war.[131]
To support his new strategy, Kennedy ordered a massive increase in defense spending and a rapid build-up of the nuclear arsenal to restore the lost superiority over the Soviet Union. In his inaugural address, Kennedy promised "to bear any burden" in the defense of liberty, and he repeatedly asked for increases in military spending and authorization of new weapons systems. From 1961 to 1964, the number of nuclear weapons increased by 50 percent, as did the number of B-52 bombers to deliver them. The new ICBM force grew from 63 intercontinental ballistic missiles to 424. He authorized 23 new Polaris submarines, each of which carried 16 nuclear missiles. Kennedy also called on cities to construct fallout shelters.[132][133]
Europeancolonial empires in Asia and Africa all collapsed in the years after 1945.
Nationalist movements in some countries and regions, notablyGuatemala, Indonesia andIndochina, were often allied with communist groups or otherwise perceived to be unfriendly to Western interests.[36] In this context, the United States and the Soviet Union increasingly competed for influence by proxy in the Third World asdecolonization gained momentum in the 1950s and early 1960s.[134] Both sides were selling armaments to gain influence.[135] The Kremlin saw continuing territorial losses by imperial powers as presaging the eventual victory of their ideology.[136]
The United States used theCentral Intelligence Agency (CIA) to undermine neutral or hostile Third World governments and to support allied ones.[137] In 1953, President Eisenhower implementedOperation Ajax, a covert coup operation to overthrow the Iranian prime minister,Mohammad Mosaddegh. The popularly elected Mosaddegh had been a Middle Eastern nemesis of Britain since nationalizing the British-ownedAnglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951.Winston Churchill told the United States that Mosaddegh was "increasingly turning towards Communist influence."[138][139] The pro-Westernshah,Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, assumed control as anautocratic monarch.[140] The shah's policies included banning the communistTudeh Party of Iran, and general suppression of political dissent bySAVAK, the shah's domestic security and intelligence agency.
The non-aligned Indonesian government ofSukarno was faced with a major threat to its legitimacy beginning in 1956 when several regional commanders began to demand autonomy fromJakarta. After mediation failed, Sukarno took action to remove the dissident commanders. In February 1958, dissident military commanders in Central Sumatra (ColonelAhmad Husein) and North Sulawesi (Colonel Ventje Sumual) declared theRevolutionary Government of the Republic of Indonesia-Permesta Movement aimed at overthrowing the Sukarno regime. They were joined by many civilian politicians from theMasyumi Party, such asSjafruddin Prawiranegara, who were opposed to the growing influence of the communistPartai Komunis Indonesia. Due to their anti-communist rhetoric, the rebels received arms, funding, and other covert aid from the CIA untilAllen Lawrence Pope, an American pilot, was shot down after a bombing raid on government-heldAmbon in April 1958. The central government responded by launching airborne and seaborne military invasions of rebel strongholds atPadang andManado. By the end of 1958, the rebels were militarily defeated, and the last remaining rebel guerilla bands surrendered by August 1961.[143]
In theRepublic of the Congo, also known as Congo-Léopoldville, newly independent fromBelgium since June 1960, theCongo Crisis erupted on 5 July leading to the secession of the regionsKatanga andSouth Kasai. CIA-backed PresidentJoseph Kasa-Vubu ordered the dismissal of the democratically elected Prime MinisterPatrice Lumumba and the Lumumba cabinet in September over massacres by the armed forces during theinvasion of South Kasai and for involving Soviets in the country.[144][145] Later the CIA-backed ColonelMobutu Sese Seko quickly mobilized his forces to seize power through a military coup d'état,[145] and worked with Western intelligence agencies to imprison Lumumba and hand him over to Katangan authorities who executed him by firing squad.[146][147]
InBritish Guiana, the leftistPeople's Progressive Party (PPP) candidateCheddi Jagan won the position of chief minister in a colonially administered election in 1953 but was quickly forced to resign from power after Britain's suspension of the still-dependent nation's constitution.[148] Embarrassed by the landslide electoral victory of Jagan's allegedly Marxist party, the British imprisoned the PPP's leadership and maneuvered the organization into a divisive rupture in 1955.[149] Jagan again won the colonial elections in 1957 and 1961, despite Britain's shift to a reconsideration of its view of the left-wing Jagan as a Soviet-style communist at this time. The United States pressured the British to withholdGuyana's independence until an alternative to Jagan could be identified, supported, and brought into office.[150] InMalaya, the British colonialistssuppressed the communist anti-colonial rebellion.
Worn down by the communistguerrilla war for Vietnamese full independence and handed a watershed defeat by communistViet Minh rebels at theBattle of Dien Bien Phu, the French accepted a negotiated abandonment of their neo-colonial stake in Vietnam right in 1954. On June 4, France granted full sovereignty to the anti-communistState of Vietnam, an independent country within theFrench Union.[151] In theGeneva Conference in July, peace accords were signed, leaving Vietnam divided between a pro-Soviet administration inNorth Vietnam and a pro-Western administration inSouth Vietnam at the17th parallel north. Between 1954 and 1961, Eisenhower's United States sent economic aid and military advisers to strengthen South Vietnam's pro-Western government against communist efforts to destabilize it.[27]
Many emerging nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America rejected the pressure to choose sides in the East–West competition. In 1955, at theBandung Conference in Indonesia, dozens of Third World governments resolved to stay out of the Cold War.[152] The consensus reached at Bandung culminated with the creation of theBelgrade-headquarteredNon-Aligned Movement in 1961.[36] Meanwhile, Khrushchev broadened Moscow's policy to establish ties withIndia and other key neutral states. Independence movements in the Third World transformed the post-war order into a more pluralistic world of decolonized African and Middle Eastern nations and of rising nationalism in Asia and Latin America.[27]
Map showing greatest territorial extent of the Soviet Union and the states that it dominated politically, economically and militarily in 1960, after theCuban Revolution of 1959 but before the officialSino-Soviet split of 1961 (total area: c. 35,000,000 km2)[G]
After 1956, the Sino-Soviet alliance began to break down. Mao had defended Stalin when Khrushchev criticized him in 1956 and treated the new Soviet leader as a superficial upstart, accusing him of having lost his revolutionary edge.[153] For his part, Khrushchev, disturbed by Mao's glib attitude toward nuclear war, referred to the Chinese leader as a "lunatic on a throne".[154]
After this, Khrushchev made many desperate attempts to reconstitute the Sino-Soviet alliance, but Mao considered it useless and denied any proposal.[153] The Chinese-Soviet animosity spilled out in an intra-communist propaganda war.[155] Further on, the Soviets focused on a bitter rivalry with Mao's China for leadership of the global communist movement.[156] Historian Lorenz M. Lüthi argues:
The Sino-Soviet split was one of the key events of the Cold War, equal in importance to the construction of the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Second[clarification needed] Vietnam War, andSino-American rapprochement. The split helped to determine the framework for theCold War period 1979–1985 in general, and influenced the course of the Second Vietnam War in particular.[157]
Clockwise from top left: Sputnik 1,Apollo 11 Moon landing, Space stationMir
On thenuclear weapons front, the United States and the Soviet Union pursued nuclear rearmament and developed long-range weapons with which they could strike the territory of the other.[81] In August 1957, the Soviets successfully launched the world's firstintercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM),[158] and in October they launched the first Earth satellite,Sputnik 1.[159] This led to what became known as theSputnik crisis. TheCentral Intelligence Agency described the orbit of Sputnik 1 as a "stupendous scientific achievement" and concluded that the USSR had likely perfected an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of reaching 'any desired target with accuracy'.[160]
The launch of Sputnik inaugurated theSpace Race. This led to a series of historic space exploration milestones, and most notably theApolloMoon landings from 1969 by the United States, which astronautFrank Borman later described as "just a battle in the Cold War."[161] The public's reaction in the Soviet Union was mixed. The Soviet government limited the release of information about the lunar landing, which affected the reaction. A portion of the populace did not give it any attention, and another portion was angered by it.[162] A major Cold War element of the Space Race wassatellite reconnaissance, as well assignals intelligence to gauge which aspects of the space programs had military capabilities.[163] The SovietSalyut programme, conducted in the 1970s and 80s, put a manned space station in long term orbit; two of the successful installations to the station were covers for secret militaryAlmaz reconnaissance stations:Salyut 3, andSalyut 5.[164][165][166][167]
During the whole duration of the cold war, the US and the USSR represented the largest and dominant space powers of the world.[168] Despite their fierce competition, both nations signed international space treaties in the 1960s which would limit the militarization of space.[169]
InCuba, the26th of July Movement, led by young revolutionariesFidel Castro andChe Guevara, seized power in theCuban Revolution on 1 January 1959.[172] Although Fidel Castro's first refused to categorize his new government as socialist and repeatedly denying being a communist, Castro appointed Marxists to senior government and military positions.[173][174][175]
Diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States continued for some time after Batista's fall, but President Eisenhower deliberately left the capital to avoid meeting Castro during the latter's trip toWashington, D.C. in April, leaving Vice PresidentRichard Nixon to conduct the meeting in his place.[176] Cuba began negotiating for arms purchases from the Eastern Bloc in March 1960.[177] The same month, Eisenhower gave approval toCIA plans and funding to overthrow Castro.[178]
In January 1961, just prior to leaving office, Eisenhower formally severed relations with the Cuban government. That April, the administration of newly elected American PresidentJohn F. Kennedy mounted the unsuccessful CIA-organizedship-borne invasion of the island byCuban exiles at Playa Girón and Playa Larga inSanta Clara Province—a failure that publicly humiliated the United States.[179] Castro responded by publicly embracingMarxism–Leninism, and the Soviet Union pledged toprovide further support.[179] In December, the US governmentbegan a violent campaign ofterrorist attacks against civilians in Cuba, andcovert operations and sabotage against the administration, in an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government.[184]
The emigration resulted in a massive "brain drain" from East Germany to West Germany of younger educated professionals, such that nearly 20% of East Germany's population had migrated to West Germany by 1961.[188] That June, theSoviet Union issued a newultimatum demanding the withdrawal ofAllied forces from West Berlin.[189] The request was rebuffed, but the United States now limited its security guarantees to West Berlin.[190] On 13 August, East Germany erected a barbed-wire barrier that would eventually be expanded through construction into theBerlin Wall, effectively closing the loophole and preventing its citizens from fleeing to the West.[191]
Aerial photograph of a Soviet missile site inCuba, taken by a USspy aircraft, 1 November 1962
The Kennedy administration continued seeking ways to oust Castro following the Bay of Pigs invasion, experimenting with various ways of covertly facilitating the overthrow of the Cuban government. Significant hopes were pinned on the program of terrorist attacks and other destabilization operations known asOperation Mongoose, that was devised under the Kennedy administration in 1961. Khrushchev learned of the project in February 1962,[192] and preparations to install Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba were undertaken in response.[192]
Alarmed, Kennedy considered various reactions. He ultimately responded to the installation of nuclear missiles in Cuba with anaval blockade, and he presented an ultimatum to the Soviets. Khrushchev backed down from a confrontation, and the Soviet Union removed the missiles in return for a public American pledge not to invade Cuba again as well as a covert deal to remove US missiles from Turkey.[193]
TheCuban Missile Crisis (October–November 1962) brought the world closer tonuclear war than ever before.[194] The aftermath led to efforts in thenuclear arms race at nuclear disarmament and improving relations, although the Cold War's first arms control agreement, theAntarctic Treaty, had come into force in 1961.[J]
The compromise embarrassed Khrushchev and the Soviet Union because the withdrawal of US missiles from Italy and Turkey was a secret deal between Kennedy and Khrushchev, and the Soviets were seen as retreating from circumstances that they had started. In 1964, Khrushchev's Kremlin colleagues managed tooust him, but allowed him a peaceful retirement.[195] He was accused of rudeness and incompetence, and John Lewis Gaddis argues that he was also blamed with ruining Soviet agriculture, bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war, and becoming an "international embarrassment" when he authorized construction of the Berlin Wall.[196] According to Dobrynin, the top Soviet leadership took the Cuban outcome as "a blow to its prestige bordering on humiliation".[197][198]
In the course of the 1960s and 1970s, Cold War participants struggled to adjust to a new, more complicated pattern of international relations in which the world was no longer divided into two clearly opposed blocs.[36] From the beginning of the post-war period, with American help Western Europe and Japan rapidly recovered from the destruction of World War II and sustained strong economic growth through the 1950s and 1960s, with per capita GDPs approaching those of the United States, whileEastern Bloc economies stagnated.[36][199]
TheVietnam War descended into a quagmire for the United States, leading to a decline in international prestige and economic stability, derailing arms agreements, and provoking domestic unrest. America's withdrawal from the war led it to embrace a policy ofdétente with both China and the Soviet Union.[200]
In the1973 oil crisis, Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) cut their petroleum output. This raised oil prices and hurt Western economies, but helped the Soviet Union by generating a huge flow of money from its oil sales.[201]
As a result of the oil crisis, combined with the growing influence of Third World alignments such as OPEC and theNon-Aligned Movement, less powerful countries had more room to assert their independence and often showed themselves resistant to pressure from either superpower.[99] Meanwhile, Moscow was forced to turn its attention inward to deal with the Soviet Union's deep-seated domestic economic problems.[36] During this period, Soviet leaders such asLeonid Brezhnev andAlexei Kosygin embraced the notion of détente.[36]
Under PresidentJohn F. Kennedy, US troop levels in Vietnam grew from just under a thousand in 1959 to 16,000 in 1963.[202][203] South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem's heavy-handedcrackdown on Buddhist monks in 1963 led the US to endorse a deadlymilitary coup against Diem.[204] The war escalated further in 1964 following the controversialGulf of Tonkin incident, in which a US destroyer was alleged to have clashed with North Vietnamese fast attack craft. TheGulf of Tonkin Resolution gave PresidentLyndon B. Johnson broad authorization to increase US military presence, deploying groundcombat units for the first time and increasing troop levels to 184,000.[205] Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev responded by reversing Khrushchev's policy of disengagement and increasing aid to the North Vietnamese, hoping to entice the North from its pro-Chinese position. The USSR discouraged further escalation of the war, however, providing just enough military assistance to tie up American forces.[206] From this point, thePeople's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) engaged in moreconventional warfare with US and South Vietnamese forces.[207]
TheTet Offensive of 1968 proved to be the turning point of the war. Despite years of American tutelage and aid, the South Vietnamese forces were unable to withstand the communist offensive and the task fell to US forces instead.[208] At the same time, in 1963–1965, American domestic politics saw the triumph ofliberalism. According to historian Joseph Crespino:
It has become a staple of twentieth-century historiography that Cold War concerns were at the root of a number of progressive political accomplishments in the postwar period: a high progressive marginal tax rate that helped fund the arms race and contributed to broad income equality; bipartisan support for far-reaching civil rights legislation that transformed politics and society in the American South, which had long given the lie to America's egalitarian ethos; bipartisan support for overturning an explicitly racist immigration system that had been in place since the 1920s; and free health care for the elderly and the poor, a partial fulfillment of one of the unaccomplished goals of the New Deal era. The list could go on.[209]
Nuclear testing and Use of Outer-Space treaties
ThePartial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was signed on August 5, 1963, by the United States, the Soviet Union, and over 100 other nations. This treaty banned nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere, outer space, and underwater, restricting such tests to underground environments.[210][211][212][213] The treaty followed heightened concerns over the militarization of space, amplified by the United States' Starfish Prime test in 1962, which involved the detonation of a nuclear device in the upper atmosphere.[214][215]
To further delineate the peaceful use of outer space, the United Nations facilitated the drafting of theTreaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, commonly known as the Outer Space Treaty. Signed on January 27, 1967, by the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom, it entered into force on October 10, 1967. The treaty established space as a domain to be used exclusively for peaceful purposes, prohibiting the placement of nuclear weapons or any other weapons of mass destruction in orbit or on celestial bodies.[216][217][218]
In answer to the Prague Spring, on 20 August 1968, theSoviet Army, together with most of their Warsaw Pact allies,invaded Czechoslovakia.[222] The invasion was followed by a wave of emigration, including an estimated 70,000 Czechs and Slovaks initially fleeing, with the total eventually reaching 300,000.[223][224] The invasion sparked intense protests from Yugoslavia, Romania, China, and from Western European countries.[225]
Although indirect conflict between Cold War powers continued through the late 1960s and early 1970s, tensions were beginning to ease.[229] Following the ousting of Khrushchev, another period ofcollective leadership ensued, consisting of Leonid Brezhnev as general secretary,Alexei Kosygin as Premier andNikolai Podgorny as Chairman of the Presidium, lasting until Brezhnev established himself in the early 1970s as the preeminent Soviet leader.
Following his visit to China, Nixon met with Soviet leaders in Moscow.[230] TheseStrategic Arms Limitation Talks resulted in landmark arms control treaties. These aimed to limit the development of costly anti-ballistic missiles and nuclear missiles.[36]
Nixon and Brezhnev proclaimed a new era of "peaceful coexistence" and established the groundbreaking new policy ofdétente (or cooperation) between the superpowers. Meanwhile, Brezhnev attempted to revive the Soviet economy, which was declining in part because of heavy military expenditures. The Soviet Union'smilitary budget in the 1970s was massive, 40–60% of the federal budget and 15% of GDP.[231] Between 1972 and 1974, the two sides also agreed to strengthen their economic ties,[27] including agreements for increased trade. As a result of their meetings,détente would replace the hostility of the Cold War and the two countries would live mutually.[232] These developments coincided withBonn's "Ostpolitik" policy formulated by the West German ChancellorWilly Brandt,[225] an effort to normalize relations between West Germany and Eastern Europe. Other agreements were concluded to stabilize the situation in Europe, culminating in theHelsinki Accords signed at theConference on Security and Co-operation in Europe in 1975.[233]
The Helsinki Accords, in which the Soviets promised to grant free elections in Europe, has been called a major concession to ensure peace by the Soviets. In practice, the Soviet government significantly curbed therule of law,civil liberties,protection of law andguarantees of property,[234][235] which were considered examples of "bourgeois morality" by Soviet legal theorists such asAndrey Vyshinsky.[236] The Soviet Union signed legally-binding human rights documents, such as theInternational Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1973 and the Helsinki Accords in 1975, but they were neither widely known or accessible to people living under Communist rule, nor were they taken seriously by the Communist authorities.[237] Human rights activists in the Soviet Union were regularly subjected to harassment, repressions and arrests.
The pro-Soviet American business magnateArmand Hammer ofOccidental Petroleum often mediated trade relations. AuthorDaniel Yergin, in his bookThe Prize, writes that Hammer "ended up as a go-between for five Soviet General Secretaries and seven U.S. Presidents."[238] Hammer had extensive business relationship in the Soviet Union stretching back to the 1920s with Lenin's approval.[239][240] According toChristian Science Monitor in 1980, "although his business dealings with the Soviet Union were cut short when Stalin came to power, he had more or less single-handedly laid the groundwork for the [1980] state of Western trade with the Soviet Union."[239]
Kissinger and Nixon were "realists" who deemphasized idealistic goals like anti-communism or promotion of democracy worldwide because those goals were too expensive in terms of America's economic capabilities.[241] They rejected "idealism" as impractical and too expensive, and neither man showed much sensitivity to the plight of people living under Communism. Kissinger's realism fell out of fashion as idealism returned to American foreign policy with Carter's moralism emphasizing human rights, and Reagan's rollback strategy aimed at destroying Communism.[242]
In the 1970s, the KGB, led byYuri Andropov, continued to persecute distinguishedSoviet dissidents, such asAleksandr Solzhenitsyn andAndrei Sakharov, who were criticising the Soviet leadership in harsh terms.[243] Indirect conflict between the superpowers continued through this period of détente in the Third World, particularly during political crises in the Middle East, Chile, Ethiopia, and Angola.[244]
In 1973, Nixon announced his administration was committed to seekingmost favored nation trade status with the USSR,[245] which was challenged by Congress in theJackson-Vanik Amendment.[246] The United States had long linked trade with the Soviet Union to its foreign policy toward the Soviet Union and, especially since the early 1980s, toSoviet human rights policies. TheJackson-Vanik Amendment, which was attached to the1974 Trade Act, linked the granting ofmost-favored-nation to the USSR to the right of persecutedSoviet Jews to emigrate. Because the Soviet Union refused the right of emigration to Jewishrefuseniks, the ability of the President to apply most-favored nation trade status to the Soviet Union was restricted.[247]
Protest in Amsterdam against the deployment ofPershing II missiles in Europe, 1981
The period in the late 1970s and early 1980s showed an intensive reawakening of Cold War tensions and conflicts. Tensions greatly increased between the major powers with both sides becoming more militant.[249]Diggins says, "Reagan went all out to fight the second cold war, by supporting counterinsurgencies in the third world."[250]Cox says, "The intensity of this 'second' Cold War was as great as its duration was short."[251]
In April 1978, the communistPeople's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) seized power inAfghanistan in theSaur Revolution. Within months, opponents of the communist regime launched an uprising in eastern Afghanistan that quickly expanded into acivil war waged by guerrillamujahideen against government forces countrywide.[252] TheIslamic Unity of Afghanistan Mujahideen insurgents received military training and weapons in neighboringPakistan andChina,[253][254] while the Soviet Union sent thousands of military advisers to support the PDPA government.[252] Meanwhile, increasing friction between the competing factions of the PDPA—the dominantKhalq and the more moderateParcham—resulted in the dismissal of Parchami cabinet members and the arrest of Parchami military officers under the pretext of a Parchami coup. By mid-1979, the United States had started a covert program to assist the mujahideen.[255][256]
In September 1979, Khalqist PresidentNur Muhammad Taraki was assassinated in a coup within the PDPA orchestrated by fellow Khalq memberHafizullah Amin, who assumed the presidency. Distrusted by the Soviets, Amin was assassinated by Soviet special forces duringOperation Storm-333 in December 1979. Afghan forces suffered losses during the Soviet operation; 30 Afghan palace guards and over 300 army guards were killed while another 150 were captured.[257] In the aftermath of the operation, a total of 1,700 Afghan soldiers who surrendered to Soviet forces were taken as prisoners,[258] and the Soviets installedBabrak Karmal, the leader of the PDPA's Parcham faction, as Amin's successor. Veterans of the Soviet Union'sAlpha Group have stated that Operation Storm-333 was one of the most successful in the unit's history. Documents released following thedissolution of the Soviet Union in the 1990s revealed that the Soviet leadership believed Amin had secret contacts within theAmerican embassy in Kabul and "was capable of reaching an agreement with the United States";[259] however, allegations of Amin colluding with the Americans have been widely discredited.[260][K][L] The PDBA was tasked to fill the vacuum and carried out a purge of Amin supporters. Soviet troops were deployed to put Afghanistan under Soviet control with Karmal in more substantial numbers, although the Soviet government did not expect to do most of the fighting in Afghanistan. As a result, however, the Soviets were now directly involved in what had been a domestic war in Afghanistan.[261]
President Reagan publicizes his support by meeting withAfghan mujahideen leaders in the White House, 1983.
Carter responded to the Soviet invasion by withdrawing theSALT II treaty from ratification, imposing embargoes on grain and technology shipments to the USSR, and demanding a significant increase in military spending, and further announced theboycott of the1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, which was joined by 65 other nations.[262][263][264] He described the Soviet incursion as "the most serious threat to the peace since the Second World War".[265]
President Reagan with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher during a working luncheon atCamp David, December 1984The world map of military alliances in 1980
In January 1977, four years prior to becoming president,Ronald Reagan bluntly stated, in a conversation withRichard V. Allen, his basic expectation in relation to the Cold War. "My idea of American policy toward the Soviet Union is simple, and some would say simplistic," he said. "It is this: We win and they lose."[266] In 1980, Ronald Reagan won the1980 presidential election, vowing to increase military spending and confront the Soviets everywhere.[267] Both Reagan and new British Prime MinisterMargaret Thatcher denounced the Soviet Union and its ideology. Reagan labeled the Soviet Union an "evil empire" and predicted that Communism would be left on the "ash heap of history," while Thatcher inculpated the Soviets as "bent on world dominance."[268] In 1982, Reagan tried to cut off Moscow's access to hard currency by impeding its proposed gas line to Western Europe. It hurt the Soviet economy, but it also caused ill will among American allies in Europe who counted on that revenue. Reagan retreated on this issue.[269][270]
By early 1985, Reagan's anti-communist position had developed into a stance known as the newReagan Doctrine—which, in addition to containment, formulated an additional right to subvert existing communist governments.[271] Besides continuing Carter's policy of supporting the Islamic opponents of the Soviet Union and the Soviet-backedPDPA government in Afghanistan, the CIA also sought to weaken the Soviet Union itself by promotingIslamism in the majority-MuslimCentral Asian Soviet Union.[272] Additionally, the CIA encouraged anti-communist Pakistan's ISI to train Muslims from around the world to participate in thejihad against the Soviet Union.[272]
Pope John Paul II provided a moral focus foranti-communism; a visit to his native Poland in 1979 stimulated a religious and nationalist resurgence centered on theSolidarity movement trade union that galvanized opposition, and may have led to hisattempted assassination two years later.[273][274][275] In December 1981, Poland'sWojciech Jaruzelski reacted to the crisis by imposinga period of martial law. Reagan imposed economic sanctions on Poland in response.[276]Mikhail Suslov, the Kremlin's top ideologist, advised Soviet leaders not to intervene if Poland fell under the control of Solidarity, for fear it might lead to heavy economic sanctions, resulting in a catastrophe for the Soviet economy.[276]
US and USSR/Russian nuclear weapons stockpiles, 1945–2006
The Soviet Union had built up a military that consumed as much as 25 percent of its gross national product at the expense ofconsumer goods and investment in civilian sectors.[277] Soviet spending on thearms race and other Cold War commitments both caused and exacerbated deep-seated structural problems in the Soviet system,[278] which experienced at leasta decade of economic stagnation during the late Brezhnev years.
Soviet investment in the defense sector was not driven by military necessity but in large part by the interests of thenomenklatura, which was dependent on the sector for their own power and privileges.[279] TheSoviet Armed Forces became the largest in the world 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 theirmilitary–industrial base.[280] However, the quantitative advantages held by the Soviet military often concealed areas where the Eastern Bloc dramatically lagged behind the West.[281] For example, thePersian Gulf War demonstrated how thearmor,fire control systems, and firing range of the Soviet Union's most common main battle tank, theT-72, were drastically inferior to the AmericanM1 Abrams, yet the USSR fielded almost three times as many T-72s as the US deployed M1s.[282]
By the early 1980s, the USSR had built up a military arsenal and army surpassing that of the United States. Soon after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, President Carter began massively building up the United States military. This buildup was accelerated by the Reagan administration, which increased the military spending from 5.3 percent of GNP in 1981 to 6.5 percent in 1986,[283] the largest peacetime defense buildup in United States history.[284] The American-Soviet tensions present during 1983 was defined by some as the start of "Cold War II". While in retrospective this phase of the Cold War was generally defined as a "war of words",[285] the Soviet's "peace offensive" was largely rejected by the West.[286]
Tensions continued to intensify as Reagan revived theB-1 Lancer program, which had been canceled by the Carter administration,[287] producedLGM-118 Peacekeeper missiles,[288] installed US cruise missiles in Europe, and announced the experimentalStrategic Defense Initiative, dubbed "Star Wars" by the media, a defense program to shoot down missiles in mid-flight.[289] The Soviets deployedRSD-10 Pioneerballistic missiles targeting Western Europe, and NATO decided, under the impetus of the Carter presidency, to deployMGM-31 Pershing and cruise missiles in Europe, primarily West Germany.[290] This deployment placed missiles just 10 minutes' striking distance from Moscow.[291]
After Reagan's military buildup, the Soviet Union did not respond by further building its military,[292] because the enormous military expenses, along with inefficientplanned manufacturing andcollectivized agriculture, were already a heavy burden for theSoviet economy.[293] At the same time,Saudi Arabia increased oil production,[294] even as other non-OPEC nations were increasing production.[M] These developments contributed to the1980s oil glut, which affected the Soviet Union as oil was the main source of Soviet export revenues.[277] Issues withcommand economics,[295] oil price decreases and large military expenditures gradually brought the Soviet economy to stagnation.[294]
After ten-year-old AmericanSamantha Smith wrote a letter toYuri Andropov expressing her fear of nuclear war, Andropov invited Smith to the Soviet Union.
On 1 September 1983, the Soviet Union shot downKorean Air Lines Flight 007, aBoeing 747 with 269 people aboard, including sitting CongressmanLarry McDonald, an action which Reagan characterized as a massacre. The airliner was en route from Anchorage to Seoul but owing to a navigational mistake made by the crew, it flew through Russianprohibited airspace. TheSoviet Air Force treated the unidentified aircraft as an intruding U.S.spy plane and destroyed it withair-to-air missiles.[296] The incident increased support for military deployment, overseen by Reagan, which stood in place until the later accords between Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev.[297] During the early hours of 26 September 1983, the1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident occurred; systems inSerpukhov-15 underwent a glitch that claimed severalintercontinental ballistic missiles were heading towards Russia, but officerStanislav Petrov correctly suspected it was afalse alarm, ensuring the Soviets did not respond to the non-existent attack.[298] As such, he has been credited as "the man who saved the world".[299] TheAble Archer 83 exercise in November 1983, a realistic simulation of a coordinated NATO nuclear release, was perhaps the most dangerous moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis, as the Soviet leadership feared that a nuclear attack might be imminent.[300]
American domestic public concerns about intervening in foreign conflicts persisted from the end of the Vietnam War.[301] The Reagan administration emphasized the use of quick, low-costcounterinsurgency tactics to intervene in foreign conflicts.[301] In 1983, the Reagan administration intervened in the multisidedLebanese Civil War,invaded Grenada,bombed Libya and backed the Central AmericanContras, anti-communist paramilitaries seeking to overthrow the Soviet-alignedSandinista government in Nicaragua.[99] While Reagan's interventions against Grenada and Libya were popular in the United States, his backing of the Contra rebels wasmired in controversy.[302] The Reagan administration's backing of the military government ofGuatemala during theGuatemalan Civil War, in particular the regime ofEfraín Ríos Montt, was also controversial.[303]
Meanwhile, the Soviets incurred high costs for their own foreign interventions. Although Brezhnev was convinced in 1979 that theSoviet war in Afghanistan would be brief, Muslim guerrillas, aided by the US, China, Britain, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan,[254] waged a fierce resistance against the invasion.[304] The Kremlin sent nearly 100,000 troops to support its puppet regime in Afghanistan, leading many outside observers to dub the war "the Soviets' Vietnam".[304] 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 seniorUS State Department official predicted such an outcome as early as 1980, positing that the invasion resulted in part from a:
...domestic crisis within the Sovietsystem. ... It may be that the thermodynamic law ofentropyhas ... caught up with the Soviet system, which now seems to expend more energy on simply maintaining its equilibrium than on improving itself. We could be seeing a period of foreign movement at a time of internal decay.[305]
By the time the comparatively youthfulMikhail Gorbachev becameGeneral Secretary in 1985,[268] the Soviet economy was stagnant and faced a sharp fall in foreign currency earnings as a result of the downward slide in oil prices in the 1980s.[306] These issues prompted Gorbachev to investigate measures to revive the ailing state.[306]
An ineffectual start led to the conclusion that deeper structural changes were necessary, and in June 1987 Gorbachev announced an agenda of economic reform calledperestroika, or restructuring.[307] Perestroika relaxed theproduction quota system, allowed cooperative ownership of small businesses and paved the way for foreign investment. These measures were intended to redirect the country's resources from costly Cold War military commitments to more productive areas in the civilian sector.[307]
Despite initial skepticism in the West, the new Soviet leader proved to be committed to reversing the Soviet Union's deteriorating economic condition instead of continuing the arms race with the West.[308] Partly as a way to fight off internal opposition from party cliques to his reforms, Gorbachev simultaneously introducedglasnost, or openness, which increased freedom of the press and the transparency of state institutions.[309]Glasnost was intended to reduce the corruption at the top of theCommunist Party and moderate theabuse of power in theCentral Committee.[310] Glasnost also enabled increased contact between Soviet citizens and the Western world, particularly with the United States, contributing to the acceleratingdétente between the two nations.[311]
The beginning of the 1990s brought a thaw in relations between the superpowers.
In response to the Kremlin's military andpolitical concessions, Reagan agreed to renew talks on economic issues and the scaling-back of the arms race.[312] The firstsummit was held in November 1985 inGeneva,Switzerland.[312] Asecond summit was held in October 1986 inReykjavík,Iceland. Talks went well until the focus shifted to Reagan's proposedStrategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which Gorbachev wanted to be eliminated. Reagan refused.[313] The negotiations failed, but the third summit (Washington Summit (1987), 8–10 December 1987) led to a breakthrough with the signing of theIntermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). The INF treaty eliminated all nuclear-armed, ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers (310 and 3,420 mi) and their infrastructure.[314]
During 1988, it became apparent to the Soviets that oil and gas subsidies, along with the cost of maintaining massive troops levels, represented a substantial economic drain.[315] In addition, the security advantage ofa buffer zone was recognised as irrelevant and the Sovietsofficially declared that they would no longer intervene in the affairs ofsatellite states in Central and Eastern Europe.[316]George H. W. Bush and Gorbachev met at theMoscow Summit in May 1988 and theGovernors Island Summit in December 1988.
Two developments dominated the decade that followed: the increasingly apparent crumbling of the Soviet Union's economic and political structures, and the patchwork attempts at reforms to reverse that process. Kenneth S. Deffeyes argued inBeyond Oil that theReagan administration encouragedSaudi Arabia tolower the price of oil to the point where the Soviets could not make a profit selling their oil, and resulted in the depletion of the country'shard currency reserves.[322]
Brezhnev's next two successors, transitional figures with deep roots in his tradition, did not last long.Yuri Andropov was 68 years old andKonstantin Chernenko 72 when they assumed power; both died in less than two years. In an attempt to avoid a third short-lived leader, in 1985, the Soviets turned to the next generation and selectedMikhail Gorbachev. He made significant changes in the economy and party leadership, calledperestroika. His policy ofglasnost freed publicaccess to information after decades of heavy government censorship. Gorbachev also moved to end the Cold War. In 1988, the USSR abandoned itswar in Afghanistan and began towithdraw its forces. In the following year,Gorbachev refused to interfere in the internal affairs of the Soviet satellite states, which paved the way for theRevolutions of 1989. In particular, the standstill of the Soviet Union at thePan-European Picnic in August 1989 then set a peaceful chain reaction in motion, at the end of which the Eastern Bloc collapsed. With the tearing down of theBerlin Wall and with East and West Germany pursuing re-unification, theIron Curtain betweenthe West and Soviet-occupied regions came down.[323][324][325]
By 1989, the Soviet alliance system was on the brink of collapse, and, deprived of Soviet military support, the communist leaders of the Warsaw Pact states were losing power.[317] Grassroots organizations, such as Poland'sSolidarity movement, rapidly gained ground with strong popular bases.
ThePan-European Picnic took place in August 1989 on the Hungarian-Austrian border.
The Pan-European Picnic in August 1989 in Hungary finally started a peaceful movement that the rulers in the Eastern Bloc could not stop. It was the largest movement of refugees from East Germany since the Berlin Wall was built in 1961 and ultimately brought about the fall of the Iron Curtain. The patrons of the picnic,Otto von Habsburg and the Hungarian Minister of StateImre Pozsgay, saw the planned event as an opportunity to test Mikhail Gorbachev's reaction. The Austrian branch of thePaneuropean Union, which was then headed byKarl von Habsburg, distributed thousands of brochures inviting the GDR holidaymakers in Hungary to a picnic near the border at Sopron. But with the mass exodus at the Pan-European Picnic the subsequent hesitant behavior of the ruling Socialist Unity Party of East Germany and the non-interference of the Soviet Union broke the dams. Now tens of thousands of media-informed East Germans made their way to Hungary, which was no longer willing to keep its borders completely closed or to oblige its border troops to use armed force. On the one hand, this caused disagreement among the Eastern European states and, on the other hand, it was clear to the Eastern European population that the governments no longer had absolute power.[323][324][325][326]
East German leaderErich Honecker lost control in August 1989.
In 1989, the communist governments in Poland and Hungary became the first to negotiate the organization of competitive elections. In Czechoslovakia and East Germany, mass protests unseated entrenched communist leaders. The communist regimes in Bulgaria and Romania also crumbled, in the latter case as the result of aviolent uprising. Attitudes had changed enough that US Secretary of StateJames Baker suggested that the American government would not be opposed to Soviet intervention in Romania, on behalf of the opposition, to prevent bloodshed.[327]
The tidal wave of change culminated with thefall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, which symbolized the collapse of European communist governments and graphically ended the Iron Curtain divide of Europe. The1989 revolutionary wave swept across Central and Eastern Europe and peacefully overthrew all of the Soviet-styleMarxist–Leninist states: East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria;[328] Romania was the only Eastern-bloc country to topple its communist regime violently and execute its head of state.[329]
At the same time, the Soviet republics started legal moves towards potentially declaringsovereignty over their territories, citing the freedom to secede in Article 72 of the USSR constitution.[330] On 7 April 1990, a law was passed allowing a republic to secede if more than two-thirds of its residents voted for it in a referendum.[331] Many held their first free elections in the Soviet era for their own national legislatures in 1990. Many of these legislatures proceeded to produce legislation contradicting the Union laws in what was known as the 'War of Laws'. In 1989, theRussian SFSR convened a newly elected Congress of People's Deputies.Boris Yeltsin was elected its chairman. On 12 June 1990, the Congressdeclared Russia's sovereignty over its territory and proceeded to pass laws that attempted to supersede some of the Soviet laws. After a landslide victory ofSąjūdis in Lithuania, that country declared its independence restored on 11 March 1990, citing the illegality of theSoviet occupation of the Baltic states. Soviet forces attempted to halt the secession by crushing popular demonstrations in Lithuania (Bloody Sunday) and Latvia (The Barricades), as a result, numerous civilians were killed or wounded. However, these actions only bolstered international support for the secessionists.[332]
Areferendum for the preservation of the USSR was held on 17 March 1991 in nine republics (the remainder having boycotted the vote), with the majority of the population in those republics voting for preservation of the Union in the form of a new federation. The referendum gave Gorbachev a minor boost. In the summer of 1991, theNew Union Treaty, which would have turned the country into a much looser Union, was agreed upon by eight republics. The signing of the treaty, however, was interrupted by theAugust Coup—an attempted coup d'état by hardline members of the government and the KGB who sought to reverse Gorbachev's reforms and reassert the central government's control over the republics. After the coup collapsed, Russian president Yeltsin was seen as a hero for his decisive actions, while Gorbachev's power was effectively ended. The balance of power tipped significantly towards the republics. In August 1991, Latvia and Estonia immediately declared the restoration of their full independence (following Lithuania's 1990 example). Gorbachev resigned as general secretary in late August, and soon afterwards, the party's activities were indefinitely suspended—effectively ending its rule. By the fall, Gorbachev could no longer influence events outside Moscow, and he was being challenged even there by Yeltsin, who had been electedPresident of Russia in July 1991.
Later in August, Gorbachev resigned asgeneral secretary of the Communist party, andRussian President Boris Yeltsin ordered the seizure of Soviet property. Gorbachev clung to power as the President of the Soviet Union until 25 December 1991, when theUSSR dissolved.[333]Fifteen states emerged from the Soviet Union, with by far the largest and most populous one (which also was the founder of the Soviet state with theOctober Revolution in Petrograd), theRussian Federation, taking full responsibility for all the rights and obligations of the USSR under the Charter of the United Nations, including the financial obligations. As such, Russia assumed the Soviet Union'sUN membership and permanent membership on the Security Council, nuclear stockpile and the control over the armed forces.[10]
In his1992 State of the Union Address, US President George H. W. Bush expressed his emotions: "The biggest thing that has happened in the world in my life, in our lives, is this: By the grace of God, America won the Cold War."[334] Bush and Yeltsin met in February 1992, declaring a new era of "friendship and partnership".[335] In January 1993, Bush and Yeltsin agreed toSTART II, which provided for further nuclear arms reductions on top of the original START treaty.[336]
Changes in national boundaries after the end of the Cold War
In summing up the international ramifications of these events,Vladislav Zubok stated: 'The collapse of theSoviet empire was an event of epochal geopolitical, military, ideological, and economic significance.'[337] After thedissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia drastically cutmilitary spending, and restructuring the economy left millions unemployed.[338] According to Western analysis, the neoliberal reforms in Russia culminated in arecession in the early 1990s more severe than theGreat Depression as experienced by the United States and Germany.[339] Western analysts suggest that in the 25 years following the end of the Cold War, only five or six of the post-communist states are on a path to joining the rich and capitalist world while most are falling behind, some to such an extent that it will take several decades to catch up to where they were before the collapse of communism.[340][341]
Decommunization
Stephen Holmes of theUniversity of Chicago argued in 1996 that decommunization, after a brief active period, quickly ended in near-universal failure. After the introduction oflustration, demand for scapegoats has become relatively low, and former communists have been elected for high governmental and other administrative positions. Holmes notes that the only real exception was formerEast Germany, where thousands of formerStasi informers have been fired from public positions.[342]
Holmes suggests the following reasons for the failure of decommunization:[342]
After 45–70 years of communist rule, nearly every family has members associated with the state. After the initial desire "to root out the reds" came a realization that massive punishment is wrong and finding only some guilty is hardly justice.
The urgency of the current economic problems of postcommunism makes the crimes of the communist past "old news" for many citizens.
Decommunization is believed to be a power game of elites.
The difficulty of dislodging the social elite makes it require atotalitarian state to disenfranchise the "enemies of the people" quickly and efficiently and a desire for normalcy overcomes the desire for punitive justice.
Very few people have a perfectly clean slate and so are available to fill the positions that require significant expertise.
Compared with thedecommunization efforts of the other former constituents of theEastern Bloc and theSoviet Union, decommunization in Russia has been restricted to half-measures, if conducted at all.[343] Notable anti-communist measures in the Russian Federation include the banning of theCommunist Party of the Soviet Union (and the creation of theCommunist Party of the Russian Federation) as well as changing the names of some Russian cities back to what they were before the 1917October Revolution (Leningrad toSaint Petersburg, Sverdlovsk toYekaterinburg and Gorky toNizhny Novgorod),[344] though others were maintained, withUlyanovsk (former Simbirsk),Tolyatti (former Stavropol) andKirov (former Vyatka) being examples. Even though Leningrad and Sverdlovsk were renamed, regions that were named after them are still officially called Leningrad and Sverdlovsk oblasts.[345]
TheSpasskaya Tower had kept its red star and did not restore the two-headed eagle present before communist takeover.
The Cold War had provided external stabilizing pressures. Both the United States and the Soviet Union had a vested interest in Yugoslavia’s stability, ensuring it remained a buffer state in the East-West divide. This resulted in financial and political support for its regime. When the Cold War ended, this external support evaporated, leaving Yugoslavia more vulnerable to internal divisions.[362][363]
As Yugoslavia fragmented,the wars began afterSlovenia andCroatia declared independence in 1991.Serbia, underSlobodan Milošević, opposed these moves.[364]The Bosnian War (1992–1995) was the most brutal of the Yugoslav Wars, characterized by ethnic cleansing and genocide. International organizations, including the United Nations, struggled to manage the violence. NATO eventually intervened with airstrikes in Bosnia (1995) as part ofOperation Deliberate Force and later in Kosovo (1999) as part ofOperation allied force. These interventions marked the transition of NATO as a deterrent to the Soviet Union, to also functioning at the time as an active peacekeeping and conflict-resolution force.[365]
Influence
The post-Cold War world is considered to beunipolar, with the United States the sole remainingsuperpower.[366][367] The Cold War defined the political role of the United States after World War II—by 1989 the United States had military alliances with 50 countries, with 526,000 troops stationed abroad,[368] with 326,000 in Europe (two-thirds of which were inWest Germany)[369] and 130,000 in Asia (mainlyJapan andSouth Korea).[368] The Cold War also marked the zenith of peacetimemilitary–industrial complexes and large-scalemilitary funding of science.[370]
Since the end of the Cold War, theEU hasexpanded eastwards into the former Warsaw Pact and parts of the former Soviet Union.
Cumulative US military expenditures throughout the entire Cold War amounted to an estimated $8 trillion. Nearly 100,000 Americans died in theKorean andVietnam Wars.[371] Although Soviet casualties are difficult to estimate, as a share of gross national product the financial cost for the Soviet Union was much higher than that incurred by the United States.[372]
Millions died in the superpowers'proxy wars around the globe, most notably in eastern Asia.[373][N] Most of the proxy wars and subsidies for local conflicts ended along with the Cold War; interstate wars, ethnic wars, revolutionary wars, as well as refugee and displaced persons crises have declined sharply in the post-Cold War years.[374]
However, the aftermath of the Cold War is not considered to be concluded. Many of the economic and social tensions that were exploited to fuel Cold War competition in parts of the Third World remain acute. The breakdown of state control in a number of areas formerly ruled by communist governments produced new civil and ethnic conflicts, particularly in the formerYugoslavia. In Central and Eastern Europe, the end of the Cold War has ushered in an era ofeconomic growth and an increase in the number ofliberal democracies, while in other parts of the world, such as Afghanistan, independence was accompanied bystate failure.[249]
The Cold War endures as a popular topic reflected in entertainment media, and continuing to the present with post-1991 Cold War-themed feature films, novels, television and web series, and other media. In 2013, a KGB-sleeper-agents-living-next-door action drama series,The Americans, set in the early 1980s, was ranked No. 6 on theMetacritic annual Best New TV Shows list; its six-season run concluded in May 2018.[375][376]
Interpreting the course and origins of the conflict has been a source of heated controversy among historians, political scientists, and journalists.[377] In particular, historians have sharply disagreed as to who was responsible for the breakdown of Soviet–US relations after the Second World War; and whether the conflict between the two superpowers was inevitable or could have been avoided.[378] Historians have also disagreed on what exactly the Cold War was, what the sources of the conflict were, and how to disentangle patterns of action and reaction between the two sides.[249]
Although 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 different approaches to the study of the Cold War: "orthodox" accounts, "revisionism", and "post-revisionism".[370]
"Orthodox" accounts place responsibility for the Cold War on the Soviet Union and its expansion further into Europe.[370] "Revisionist" writers place more responsibility for the breakdown of post-war peace on the United States, citing a range of US efforts to isolate and confront the Soviet Union well before the end of World War II.[370] "Post-revisionists" see the events of the Cold War as more nuanced and attempt to be more balanced in determining what occurred during the Cold War.[370] Much of the historiography on the Cold War weaves together two or even all three of these broad categories.[81]
^Jowett & O'Donnell 2005, pp. 21–23: "In fact, the word disinformation is a cognate for the Russian dezinformatsia, taken from the name of a division of the KGB devoted to black propaganda."
^Matray 2002: "South Korea's President Rhee was obsessed with accomplishing early reunification through military means. The Truman administration's fear that Rhee would launch an invasion prompted it to limit South Korea's military capabilities, refusing to provide tanks, heavy artillery, and combat planes. This did not stop the South Koreans from initiating most of the border clashes with North Korean forces at the thirty-eighth parallel beginning in the summer of 1948 and reaching a high level of intensity and violence a year later. Historians now acknowledge that the two Koreas already were waging a civil conflict when North Korea's attack opened the conventional phase of the war."
^Matray 2002: "Contradicting traditional assumptions, however, available declassified Soviet documents demonstrate that throughout 1949 Stalin consistently refused to approve Kim Il Sung's persistent requests to approve an invasion of South Korea. The Soviet leader believed that North Korea had not achieved either military superiority north of the parallel or political strength south of that line. His main concern was the threat South Korea posed to North Korea's survival, for example fearing an invasion northward following U.S. military withdrawal in June 1949."
^"Revolt in Hungary". Archived fromthe original on 17 November 2007. Narrator:Walter Cronkite, producer: CBS (1956) – Fonds 306, Audiovisual Materials Relating to the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, OSA Archivum, Budapest, Hungary ID number: HU OSA 306-0-1:40
^Prados & Jimenez-Bacardi 2019: "The memorandum showed no concern for international law or the unspoken nature of these operations as terrorist attacks."
^International Policy Report (Report).Washington, D.C.:Center for International Policy. 1977. pp. 10–12.To coordinate and carry out its war of terror and destruction during the early 1960s, the CIA established a base of operations, known asJMWAVE.
^National Research Council Committee on Antarctic Policy and Science, p. 33
^Coll 2004, pp. 47–49: "Frustrated and hoping to discredit him, the KGB initially planted false stories that Amin was a CIA agent. In the autumn these rumors rebounded on the KGB in a strange case of "blowback," the term used by spies to describe planted propaganda that filters back to confuse the country that first set the story loose."
^Jones, S. 2010, pp. 16–17: "'It was total nonsense,' said the CIA'sGraham Fuller. 'I would have been thrilled to have those kinds of contacts with Amin, but they didn't exist.'"
^Kim 2014, p. 45: "With three of the four major Cold War fault lines—divided Germany, divided Korea, divided China, and divided Vietnam—East Asia acquired the dubious distinction of having engendered the largest number of armed conflicts resulting in higher fatalities between 1945 and 1994 than any other region or sub-region. Even in Asia, while Central and South Asia produced a regional total of 2.8 million in human fatalities, East Asia's regional total is 10.4 million including the Chinese Civil War (1 million), the Korean War (3 million), the Vietnam War (2 million), and the Pol Pot genocide in Cambodia (1 to 2 million)."
^Kalabekov, I.G."Расходы на оборону и численность вооруженных сил СССР" [Defense spending and size of the Armed Forces of the USSR].СССР и страны мира в цифрах, 2008 – 2023 [USSR and countries of the world in figures, 2008 – 2023] (in Russian).
^Kenneth S. Deffeyes, Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert's Peak.
^abAndreas Rödder, Deutschland einig Vaterland – Die Geschichte der Wiedervereinigung (2009).
^abThomas Roser: DDR-Massenflucht: Ein Picknick hebt die Welt aus den Angeln (German – Mass exodus of the GDR: A picnic clears the world) in: Die Presse 16 August 2018.
^abOtmar Lahodynsky: Paneuropäisches Picknick: Die Generalprobe für den Mauerfall (Pan-European picnic: the dress rehearsal for the fall of the Berlin Wall – German), in: Profil 9 August 2014.
^Hilde Szabo: Die Berliner Mauer begann im Burgenland zu bröckeln (The Berlin Wall began to crumble in Burgenland – German), in Wiener Zeitung 16 August 1999.
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