Cold War:
1945 - 1990
International Politics and Conflicts
The Cold War
·
After World War II two superpowers emerge – the United States and the USSR. The world is divided on the
basis of capitalism and communism.
Western Europe allies itself with the US – forming NATO. Eastern Europe
allies itself with the USSR
forming the Warsaw Pact, and the “Iron Curtain” divides them.
·
With decolonization in the 1960s, the
Superpowers give foreign aid to the Third
World to create allies, and they tolerate undemocratic regimes (e.g. Iran, Philippines,)
and economic protectionism (e.g. Japan). The “Domino Theory” guides US
foreign policy – that the loss of one country in a region to communism (e.g.
Latin America, Vietnam)
will spread to other countries in the region. Emerging states in Africa and Asia were
sensitive to neocolonialism, made possible by the importation of business
managers and technicians, dependence upon imported military supplies, and
reliance upon set patterns of trade and outside sources of investment. To
support developmental projects, governments sought loans and technical
assistance from the West and USSR,
but simultaneously sought to loosen the dominance by the industrialized
nations. Some underdeveloped states devised a strategy that turned the Cold War
into what they called "creative confrontation"—playing off the
superpowers to their own advantage while maintaining nonalignment, including India’s
Nehru, Egypt’s
Nasser, even France’s
deGaulle.
·
NATO was a product of the containment policy developed by George Kennan and implemented by
Harry Truman and his Secretary of States, George Marshall and Dean Acheson. The
Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan were also aspects of the
same policy that attempted to stop the spread of Soviet Communism.
·
The US
maintains 1400 foreign bases in 31 countries
·
“Mutually assured destruction” is the
guiding deterrent preventing nuclear war
- that a nuclear war will result in total annihilation of both countries
·
Military expenditures consume a large proportion
of both countries’ budget, which the Soviet Union
is eventually unable to sustain, leading to its breakup. The Cold War also spurs a race for space
exploration and technical innovation.
·
1945
The US
uses the atomic bomb - the equivalent of 15,000 tons
of TNT
·
1946 Winston
Churchill's “Iron Curtain” speech warns of Soviet expansion.
·
1946 The School of the Americas is founded in Panama
by the US Army. It was evicted
by Panama
in 1984. The school was moved to Fort Benning, Georgia.
Its curriculum included counterinsurgency, military intelligence, interrogation
techniques, sniper fire, infantry and commando tactics, psychological warfare
and jungle operations. In 2000 the school was renamed as the Defense Institute for Hemispheric Security
Cooperation. The school has trained more than 60,000 military and police
officers from Latin American and
Caribbean
countries. Among the School's most illustrious graduate is Manuel Noriega.
·
1947
Soviet Union rejects U.S.
plan for UN atomic-energy control. Truman proposes the Truman Doctrine, which was to aid Greece
and Turkey
in resisting communist expansion.
·
1948 Berlin blockade begins – USSR isolates western sectors of Berlin (June 24),
prompting Allied airlift (June 26). Blockade ends May 12, 1949; airlift continues until Sept. 30, 1949.
·
1949 First
successful Soviet atomic bomb test occurs.
·
1949 East
and West Germany
are formed.
·
1949 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forms. The
treaty, signed by the Foreign Ministers of Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark,
France, Iceland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and the United States,
provided for mutual assistance should any one member of the alliance be
attacked. Greece and Turkey joined NATO in 1952 and the West Germany in
1955. Spain
joined in 1982.
·
1950 Korean
War begins when North Korean Communist forces invade South Korea.
·
1952
The US
tests a hydrogen bomb - equal to 10.4 million tons of TNT. 1953
Moscow announces
explosion of hydrogen bomb
·
1954
Eisenhower launches a world atomic pool without the Soviet
Union.
·
1954 The Southeast Asia
Treaty Organization (SEATO) formed
·
1955 Baghdad Pact signed
·
1955
Warsaw Pact, east European mutual defense agreement, signed
·
1956
First aerial H-bomb tested—10 million tons TNT equivalent
·
1957
Eisenhower Doctrine calls for aid to Mideast
countries which resist armed aggression from Communist-controlled nations
·
1959 Cuba becomes a
communist nation under Fidel Castro
·
1960
An American U-2 spy plane, piloted by Francis Gary Powers, is shot down over Russia.
Khrushchev kills the Paris
summit conference because of the U-2 incident. Powers is sentenced to prison in
the USSR
for 10 years— he is freed in February 1962 in exchange for Soviet spy.
·
1960s Communist
China and Soviet Union split in a conflict
over Communist ideology. In the China, the
Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution are challenges to Soviet-style
socialism. As "de-Stalinization" went forward in the Soviet Union Mao
Zedong condemned the Soviets for "revisionism." The Chinese also were
growing increasingly annoyed at being constantly in the number two role in the
communist world. The 1960s saw an open split develop between the two powers,
leading to a series of border skirmishes on the PRC-USSR border. The extremely
visible disintegration of the communist block played an important role in the
easing of Sino-American tensions and in the progress towards east-west Détente.
·
1960s The
US and USSR
begin to deploy silo and submarine based nuclear ballistic missiles
·
1961
The Berlin Wall goes up. USSR
fires 50-megaton hydrogen bomb, biggest explosion in history. First manned
space flights by U.S. & U.S.S.R.
·
1962
Cuban missile crisis. USSR's
secret placement of nuclear missiles is discovered in U2 photographs by the
Kennedy administration which imposes naval blockade. Crisis ends when Soviets
agree to withdraw their weapons in exchange for Kennedy's pledge to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey and abandon attempts to
overthrow Castro
·
1963 Washington-to-Moscow
“hot line” communications link opens, designed to reduce risk of accidental war
·
1965 U.S. President Lyndon Johnson lands 22,000 troops
in the Dominican Republic,
claiming to prevent the emergence of another Cuban Revolution
·
1966 France leaves NATO, rejecting US leadership (it would rejoin in
1993)
·
1967 China announces
explosion of its first hydrogen bomb
·
1968 The Soviet Union
crushes the Czechoslovakian "Prague Spring" revolution. Troops from
the Warsaw Pact intervene in accordance with the "Brezhnev Doctrine,"
to protect the gains of socialism. The international image of the Soviet Union
suffered considerably, especially among Western student movements and Mao's China
·
1970s The East and West begin to improve relations in a
period of Détente. In the 1970s the
Cold War gave way to a more complicated pattern of international relations in
which the world was no longer clearly split into two clearly opposed blocs as China
