humanities - the 20th century - the cold war - source materials 2

8/14/2019 Humanities - The 20th Century - The Cold War - Source Materials 2

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War

The Cold War was the period of conflict, tension and competition between theUnited Statesand the Soviet Union and their respective allies from the mid-1940suntil the early 1990s. Throughout the period, the rivalry between the twosuperpowers

was played out in multiple arenas: military coalitions; ideology, psychology, andespionage; military, industrial, and technological developments, including the spacerace; costly defence spending; a massive conventional and nuclear arms race; andmanyproxy wars.

There was never a direct military engagement between the US and the Soviet Union,but there was half a century of military buildup as well as political battles for supportaround the world, including significant involvement of allied and satellitenations in

proxy wars. Although the US and the Soviet Union had been allied againstNaziGermany, the two sides differed on how to reconstruct the postwar world even beforethe end ofWorld War II. Over the following decades, the Cold War spread outside

Europe to every region of the world, as the US sought the "containment" ofcommunism and forged numerous alliances to this end, particularly in WesternEurope, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. There were repeated crises thatthreatened to escalate into world wars but never did, notably theBerlin Blockade(1948-1949), the Korean War(1950-1953), the Vietnam War(1959-1975), the CubanMissile Crisis (1962), and the Soviet-Afghan War(1979-1989). There were also

periods when tension was reduced as both sides sought dtente. Direct military attackson adversaries were deterred by the potential formutual assured destruction usingdeliverable nuclear weapons.

The Cold War drew to a close in the late 1980s following Soviet leaderMikhailGorbachev's summit conferences with United States President Ronald Reagan, as wellas Gorbachev's launching of reform programs:perestroika andglasnost.

For forty or fifty years past, Mr. H. G. Wellsand others have been warning us that man is indanger ofdestroying himself with his own weapons, leaving the ants or some other gregariousspecies to take over. Anyone who has seen the ruined cities ofGermany will find this notionat least thinkable. Nevertheless, looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decadeshas been not towardsanarchybut towards the reimposition ofslavery. We may be headingnot for general breakdown but for an epoch as horribly stable as the slave empires ofantiquity.James Burnham's theory has been much discussed, but few people have yetconsidered 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 onceunconquerable and in a permanent state of 'cold war' with its neighbours.[2][1]
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History

Pre-Cold War

There is some disagreement over what constitutes the beginning of the Cold War.While most historians say that it began in the period just after World War II, some saythat it began towards the end of World War I, though tensions between Russia/USSRand Britain and the United States date back to the middle of the 19th century.

The ideological clash betweencommunism

Communism is asocioeconomicstructure that promotes the establishment of aclassless,statelesssocietybased oncommon ownership of the means of production.[1]

It is usually considered a branch of the broadersocialist movementthat draws on thevarious political and intellectual movements that trace their origins back to the work

of theorists of the Industrial Revolution and theFrench Revolution[2]

. Communismlargely offers an alternative to the problems believed to be inherent withrepresentative democracy, capitalisteconomies and the legacy ofimperialismandcolonialism. The dominant forms of communism, such as Leninism, TrotskyismandLuxemburgism, are based on Marxism. Karl Marx is sometimes known as the "fatherof Communism", but non-Marxist versions of communism (such as Christiancommunism and anarchist communism) also exist.

andcapitalism

Capitalism refers to an economic and social system in which themeans of production

are predominantly private[1][2]owned and operated, and in which investments,distribution,income,production andpricing ofgoods and services are determinedthrough the operation of a market economy. It is usually considered to involve theright of individuals and groups of individuals acting as "legal persons" orcorporationsto tradecapital goods, labor, land and money(seefinance and credit).

The concept of capitalism has limited analytic value, given the great variety ofhistorical cases over which it is applied, varying in time, geography, politics andculture, and some feel that the term "mixed economies" more precisely describes mostcontemporary economies.[6][7]Some economists have specified a variety of differenttypes of capitalism, depending on specifics of concentration of economic power andwealth, and methods of capital accumulation.[5] During the last century capitalism has

been contrasted with centrally planned economies, such asMarxist economies.

began in 1917 following the Russian Revolution, when the USSR emerged as the firstmajor communist power. This was the first event which made Russian-Americanrelations a matter of major, long-term concern to the leaders in each country.[3]
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In February 1946, George F. Kennan's "Long Telegram" from Moscow helped toarticulate the growing hard line that was being taken against the Soviets. [14]. OnSeptember 6, 1946, James F. Byrnes made a speech inGermany, repudiating theMorgenthau Plan and warning the Soviets that the US intended to maintain a military

presence in Europe indefinitely. (seeRestatement of Policy on Germany) As Byrnes

admitted one month later, "The nub of our program was to win the German people[...] it was a battle between us and Russia over minds [....]" [15] A few weeks after therelease of this "Long Telegram", former British Prime MinisterWinston Churchilldelivered his famous "Iron Curtain" speech in Fulton, Missouri. The speech called foran Anglo-American alliance against the Soviets, whom he accused of establishing an"iron curtain" from "Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic."[14]
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2. From "Containment" through the Korean War (1947-1953)

Main article: Cold War (1947-1953)

By 1947, Truman's advisors were worried that time was running out to counter the

influence of the Soviet Union.[14] In Europe, post-war economic recovery wasfaltering, and shortages of food and other essential consumer goods were common.Truman's advisors feared that the Soviet Union was seeking to weaken the position ofthe US in a period of post-war confusion and collapse.

The event which spurred Truman on to announce formally the US's adopting thepolicy of "containment" was the British government's announcement in February1947 that it could no longer afford to finance the Greek monarchical military regimein its civil war against communist-led insurgents. (SeeGreek Civil War.) Rather thanview this war as a civil conflict revolving around domestic issues, US policymakersinterpreted it as a Soviet effort; however, the insurgents were helped by Josip BrozTito's Yugoslavia, not Moscow.[5]Secretary of StateDean Acheson accused the SovietUnion of conspiracy against the Greek royalists in an effort to "expand" into theMiddle East, Asia, and Africa, and in March 1947 the administration unveiled the"Truman Doctrine". It "must be the policy of the United States," Truman declared, "tosupport free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities oroutside pressures."

Truman rallied Americans in his famous "Truman Doctrine" speech to spend$400,000,000 on intervention in the civil war in Greece. In order to mobilize anunfriendly Republican Congress, the Democratic president painted the conflict as a

contest between "free" peoples and "totalitarian" regimes, thus dramaticallyheightening the rhetorical stakes of the conflict.[5] By aiding Greece, Truman set aprecedent for US aid to regimes, no matter how repressive and corrupt, that requestedhelp to fight communists. [5]

Without the assistance of huge capital resources to rebuild industry transferred fromthe United States, Western European economies failed to recover from the enormouswartime destruction of the region's infrastructure. Communist parties, meanwhile,were winning large votes in free elections in countries such as France and Italy.American policymakers were worried that economic conditions in Western Europemight deteriorate to the point where communist parties could seize power there, too,

through free elections or popular revolutions.[16]

Some US policymakers also fearedthat their own economy might suffer unless effective demand for their exports inWestern Europe was restored.[17]
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President Truman signs the National Security Act Amendment of 1949 with guests inthe Oval Office.

For US policymakers, threats to Europe's balance of power were not necessarilymilitary ones, but a political and economic challenge. [14] George Kennan helped to

summarise the problem at the State Department Planning Staff in May 1947:"Communist activities" were not "the root of the difficulties of Western Europe" butrather "the disruptive effects of the war on the economic, political, and social structureof Europe."[18]According to this view, the Communists were "exploiting the Europeancrisis" to gain power.[18] In June, following the recommendations of the StateDepartment Planning Staff, the Truman Doctrine was complemented by the MarshallPlan, a pledge of economic assistance aimed at rebuilding the Western political-economic system and countering perceived threats to Europe's balance of power,which the US had gone to war to restore, from the radical left. [19]

After lobbying by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and GeneralsClayandMarshall, the

Truman administration finally realised that economic recovery in Europe could not goforward without the reconstruction of the German industrial base on which it had

previously had been dependent.[20]

In July, Truman rescinded, on "national security grounds", [21] the punitive Morgenthauplan JCS 1067, which had directed the US forces of occupation in Germany to "takeno steps looking toward the economic rehabilitation of Germany." It was replaced byJCS 1779, which stressed instead that "[a]n orderly, prosperous Europe requires theeconomic contributions of a stable and productive Germany."[22]

Also in July, Truman reorganised his government to fight the Cold War. TheNationalSecurity Act of 1947, signed by Truman on July 26, created a unifiedDepartment ofDefense, the Central Intelligence Agency(CIA), and theNational Security Council.These would become the main bureaucracies for US policy in the Cold War.[23]

The twin policies of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan led to billions ineconomic and military aid to Western Europe, and Greece and Turkey. With USassistance, the Greek military won its civil war, and the Italian Christian Democratsdefeated the powerfulCommunist-Socialist alliance in the elections of 1948.[23]

European economic alliances
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European military alliances

The US consolidated its new role as leader of the West. In retaliation to Westernmoves to reunite West Germany, Stalin built blockades to block western access toWest Berlin, but Truman maintained supply lines to the enclave by flying supplies in

over the blockade from 1948 to '49. (seeBerlin Blockade)

The US formally allied itself to the Western European states in theNorth AtlanticTreatyof 1949, establishing theNorth Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Stalincountered by tying together the economies of the Eastern bloc in a Soviet-led versionof the Marshall Plan, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON), andexploding the first Soviet atomic device in August 1949.[5]

The US took the lead in re-establishing West Germany from the three Western zonesof occupation in 1949.[11] To counter this Western reorganisation of Germany, theSoviet Union proclaimed its zone of occupation in Germany the "German Democratic

Republic" in 1949.[11]In the early 1950s, the US worked for the rearmament of WestGermany and, in 1955, its full membership to NATO. [11]

In 1949 Mao's Red Army defeated the US-backed Kuomintang regime in China.Shortly afterwards, the Soviet Union created an alliance with the newly formedPeople's Republic of China. Confronted with the Chinese Revolution and the end ofthe US atomic monopoly in 1949, the Truman administration quickly moved toescalate and expand the containment policy.[5] In a secret 1950 document,NSC-68,Truman administration officials proposed to reinforce pro-Western alliance systemsand quadruple spending on defence.[5]

US officials moved thereafter to expand "containment" into Asia, Africa, and LatinAmerica. At the same time, revolutionary nationalist movements, often led byCommunist parties, were fighting against the restoration of Europe's colonial empiresin South-East Asia. The US formalized an alliance with Japan in the early 1950s,thereby guaranteeing the United States a number of long-term military bases. Trumanalso brought other states, including Australia, New Zealand, Thailand and thePhilippines, into a series of alliances.[11]

To Stalin's surprise, Truman committed US forces to drive back the North Koreans.[5]

Public opinion in countries such as Great Britain, usual allies of the US, was divided

for and against the war. British Attorney General Sir Hartley Shawcross repudiatedthe sentiment of those opposed when he said "I know there are some who think that
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the horror and devastation of a world war now would be so frightful, whoever won,and the damage to civilization so lasting, that it would be better to submit toCommunist domination. I understand that view - but I reject it. [24] In 1953, theKoreanWarended in stalemate, but the US gradually got itself entangled in another civil war.The US supported the South Vietnamese government againstNorth Vietnam, which

was backed by the Soviet Union and China.[11]
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3. Crisis and escalation (1953-1962)


The United States was the leading superpower of the capitalist west

The Soviet Unionwas the leading superpower of thecommunist east

In 1953 changes in political leadership on both sides shifted the dynamic of the ColdWar.[23]Dwight D. Eisenhowerwas inaugurated president in January 1953. During thelast 18 months of the Truman administration, the US defence budget had quadrupled;and Eisenhower resolved to reduce military spending by brandishing the UnitedStates' nuclear superiority while continuing to fight the Cold War effectively. [5]InMarch Joseph Stalin died, and the Soviets, now led byNikita Khrushchev, movedaway from Stalin's policies.[23]

Eisenhower's secretary of state, John Foster Dulles initiated a "New Look" for the

"containment" strategy, calling for a greater reliance on nuclear weapons to USenemies.[23] Dulles also enunciated the doctrine of "massive retaliation," threatening asevere US response to any Soviet aggression. Possessing nuclear superiority, forexample, Eisenhower curtailed Soviet threats to intervene in the Middle East duringthe 1956 Suez Crisis.[5]

There was a slight relaxation of tensions after Stalin's death in 1953, but the Cold Warin Europe remained an uneasy armed truce.[25] US troops seemed stationed indefinitelyin West Germany and Soviet forces seemed indefinitely stationed throughout EasternEurope. To counter West German rearmament, the Soviets established a formalalliance with the Eastern European Communist states termed the Warsaw Pact Treaty

Organization orWarsaw Pact in 1955.[11] In 1956, the status quo was brieflythreatened in Hungary, when the Soviets invaded rather than allow the Hungarians tomove out of their orbit (seeHungarian Revolution of 1956). Berlin remained dividedand contested. In 1961, the East Germans erected the "Berlin Wall" to prevent themovement of East Berliners into West Berlin.

In the US, Wisconsin senatorJoseph McCarthy emerged as an influential proponentof a hard-line stance on the Cold War. Although the president quietly deplored hisdemagoguery, the senator exploited anti-Soviet sentiment when alleging a communistconspiracy to take over the US government, leading to a massive political witch-hunt.

During the 1950s, the Third World was an increasingly important arena of Cold Warcompetition. After the Second World War, the US emerged as the predominant power
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in the Third World, filling the vacuum of the old imperial hegemony of its principalCold War alliesthe traditional Western European colonial powers (particularly theUK, France, and the Netherlands).[26] However, nationalists in manypostcolonialstates were often unsympathetic to the Western bloc. [27] Adjusting to decolonization,meanwhile, was a difficult process economically and psychologically for European

powers; and NATO suffered, as it included all the world's major colonial empires.[28]

Leaders of the major Non-Aligned states meet at the United Nations in New York,

October 1960. From left to right: Prime MinisterJawaharlal Nehru of India, PresidentKwame Nkrumah of Ghana, President Gamal Abdel Nasserof Egypt, PresidentSukarno of Indonesia and President Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia

Nationalist movements in some countries and regions, notably Guatemala,Iran, thePhilippines, andIndochina were often allied with communist groupsor at least were

perceived in the West to be allied with communists.[23] In this context, the US and theSoviet Union increasingly competed for influence by proxy in the Third World asdecolonization gained momentum in the 1950s and early 1960s. The US governmentutilized the CIA in order to remove a string of unfriendly Third World governmentsand to support others.[23] The US used the CIA to overthrow governments suspected

by Washington of turning pro-Soviet, including Iran's first democratically electedgovernment under Prime MinisterMohammed Mossadegh in 1953 (seeOperationAjax) and Guatemala's democratically-elected president Jacobo Arbenz Guzmn in1954 (seeOperation PBSUCCESS) Between 1954 and 1961, the US sent economicaid and military advisors to stem the collapse of South Vietnam's pro-Western regime.[5]

Many emerging nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America rejected the pressure tochoose sides in the East-West competition. In 1955, at the Bandung Conference inIndonesia dozens of Third World governments resolved to stay out of the Cold War.The consensus reach at Bandung culminated with the creation of theNon-AlignedMovement in 1961.[23] Meanwhile, Khrushchev broadened Moscow's policy toestablish ties with India and other key neutral states. Independence movements in theThird World transformed the postwar order into a more pluralistic world ofdecolonized African and Middle Eastern nations and of rising nationalism in Asia andLatin America.[5]

During the 1950s, the US and the USSR pursued nuclear rearmament and developedlong-range weapons with which they could strike the territory of the other. [11] TheSoviets developed their own hydrogen bomb and, in 1957, launched the first earthsatellite. However, the period after 1956 was marked by serious setbacks for the

Soviet Union, most notably the breakdown of the Sino-Soviet alliance. (seeSino-
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Soviet Split) Before Khrushchev's ousting in 1964, the Soviets focused on a bitterrivalry with Mao's China for leadership of the global communist movement.

The nuclear arms racebrought the two superpowers to the brink of nuclear war.Khrushchev formed an alliance withFidel Castro after the Cuban Revolution in 1959.

In 1962, President John F. Kennedyresponded to the installation of nuclear missilesin Cuba with a naval blockadea show of force that brought the world close tonuclear war. [29] TheCuban Missile Crisisshowed that neither superpower was readyto use nuclear weapons for fear of the other's retaliation, and thus ofmutually assureddestruction. The aftermath of the crisis led to the first efforts at nuclear disarmamentand improving relations. [25]
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4. From confrontation through dtente (1962-1979)


In the course of the 1960s and 1970s, both the US and the Soviet Union struggled to

adjust to a new, more complicated pattern of international relations in which the worldwas no longer divided into two clearly opposed blocs by the two superpowers. [30]

Since the beginning of the postwar period, Western Europe and Japan rapidlyrecovered from the destruction of World War II and sustained strong economicgrowth through the 1950s and 1960s, increasing their strength compared to the UnitedStates. As a result of the 1973 oil crisis, combined with the growing influence ofThird World alignments such as theOrganization of Petroleum Exporting Countries(OPEC) and the Non-Aligned Movement, less-powerful countries had more room toassert their independence and often showed themselves resistant to pressure fromeither superpower. (EB) Moscow, meanwhile, was forced to turn its attention inwardto deal with the Soviet Union's deep-seated domestic economic problems. During this

period, Soviet leaders such as Alexei Kosygin and Leonid Brezhnevembraced thenotion ofdtente.[23]

Brezhnev and Nixon during Brezhnev's June 1973 visit to Washington; this marked ahigh-water mark in dtente between the United States and the Soviet Union

On April 29, 1975, the last US helicopters remove Americans and friends from

Saigon as South Vietnam falls.

Nevertheless, both superpowers resolved to reinforce their global leadership. Both theSoviet Union and the United States struggled to stave off challenges to theirleadership in their own regions. President Lyndon B. Johnson landed 22,000 troops inthe Dominican Republic, citing the threat of the emergence of a Cuban-stylerevolution in Latin America. (seeOperation Power Pack)[5] In Eastern Europe, theSoviets in 1968 crushed the Prague Spring reform movement in Czechoslovakia thatmight have threatened to take the country out of the Warsaw Pact.

The US continued to spend heavily on supporting friendly Third World regimes inAsia. Conflicts in peripheral regions and client statesmost prominently in Vietnam

continued.[29] Johnson stationed 575,000 troops in Southeast Asia to defeat the
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National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam(NLF) and their NorthVietnamese allies, but his costly policy weakened the US economy and, by 1975,ultimately culminated in what most of the world saw as a humiliating defeat of theworld's most powerful superpower at the hands of one of the world's poorest nations.Brezhnev, meanwhile, faced far more daunting challenges in reviving the Soviet

economy, which was declining in part because of heavy military expenditures.[5]

Although indirect conflict between Cold War powers continued through the late1960s and early 1970s, tensions began to ease, as the period of dtente began. [25] TheChinese had sought improved relations with the US in order to gain advantage overthe Soviets. In February 1972, Richard Nixontraveled to Beijing and met with MaoZedong and Chou En-Lai. Nixon and Henry Kissingerthen announced a stunningrapprochement with Mao's China.

Later, in June, Nixon and Kissinger met with Soviet leaders in Moscow, andannounced the first of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, aimed at limiting the

development of costly antiballistic missiles and offensive nuclear missiles.[23] Between1972 and 1974, the two sides also agreed to strengthen their economic ties. [5]

Meanwhile, these developments coincided with the "Ostpolitik" of West GermanChancellorWilly Brandt. Other agreements were concluded to stabilize the situationin Europe, culminating in the Helsinki Accords signed by the Conference on Securityand Co-operation in Europe in 1975.

However, the dtente of the 1970s was short-lived. The US Congress limited theeconomic pact between Nixon and Brezhnev so much that the Soviets repudiated it in1975.[5] Indirect conflict between the superpowers continued through this period ofdtente in the Third World, particularly during political crises in the Middle East (seeYom Kippur War), Chile (seeChilean coup of 1973), and Angola (seeAngolan CivilWar). While President Jimmy Carter tried to place another limit on the arms race withaSALT II agreement in 1979, his efforts were undercut by the other events that year,including the Iranian Revolutionand theNicaraguan Revolution, which both ousted

pro-US regimes, and his retaliation against Soviet intervention in Afghanistan inDecember.[5]

5. The "Second Cold War" (1979-1985)
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The Cold War polities of the world, circa 1980

In November 1982 American ten-year-oldSamantha Smith wrote a letter to the SovietleaderYuri Andropov expressing her fear of nuclear war, and pleading with him towork toward peace. Andropov himself replied, and gave her a personal invitation tovisit the country. Smith's visit was one of few prominent attempts to improve relations

between the superpowers during Andropov's brief leadership from 1982-1984 at adangerously low point in US-Soviet relations.

The term "second Cold War" has been used by some historians to refer to the periodof intensive reawakening of Cold War tensions in the early 1980s.[4] In 1980 RonaldReagan defeated Jimmy Carter, vowing to increase military spending and confront theSoviets everywhere.[5] Both Reagan and Britain's new prime minister,MargaretThatcher, denounced the Soviet Union in ideological terms that rivaled that of theworst days of the Cold War in the late 1940s.[11]

Reagan spent $2.2 trillion for the military over eight years. Military spending,combined with the legacy of the economic structural problems of the 1970s,transformed the US from the world's leading creditor in 1981 to the world's leadingdebtor.[5] Tensions intensified in the early 1980s when Reagan installed US cruisemissiles in Europe and announced his experimental "Strategic Defense Initiative,"nicknamed "Star Wars," to shoot down missiles in mid-flight. Reagan also imposedeconomic sanctions to protest the suppression of the opposition Solidaritymovementin Poland.

US domestic public concerns about intervening in foreign conflicts persisted from theend of the Vietnam War.[31] But Reagan did not encounter major public opposition tohis foreign policies. The Reagan administration emphasized the use of quick, low costcounterinsurgency tactics to intervene in foreign conflicts.[32]In 1983, the Reagan

administration intervened in the multisidedLebanese Civil War(see1983 Beirutbarracks bombing), invaded Grenada (seeInvasion of Grenada), bombed Libya (see
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In a famed address, United States PresidentRonald Reagan challengesMikhailGorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, 12 June 1987

By the early 1980s, the Soviet armed forces were the largest in the world by manymeasuresin terms of the numbers and types of weapons they possessed, in thenumber of troops in their ranks, and in the sheer size of their military-industrial base.[37]

However, the quantitative advantages held by the Soviet military often concealedareas where the Eastern bloc dramatically lagged behind the West. This led many USobservers to vastly overestimate Soviet power. [38]

By the late years of the Cold War, Moscow had built up a military that consumed asmuch as twenty-five percent of the Soviet Union's gross national product at theexpense ofconsumer goods and investment in civilian sectors [39]. But the size of theSoviet armed forces was not necessarily the result of a simple action-reaction armsrace with the United States (Odom). Instead, Soviet spending on thearms race andother Cold War commitments can be understood as both a cause and effect of thedeep-seated structural problems in the Soviet system, which accumulated at least a

decade of economic stagnation during the Brezhnev years (seeEconomy of the SovietUnion). Soviet investment in the defence sector was not necessarily driven by militarynecessity, but in large part by the interests of massive party and state bureaucraciesdependent on the sector for their own power and privileges [40].

By the time Mikhail Gorbachev had ascended to power in 1985, the Soviets sufferedfrom an economic growth rate close to zero percent, combined with a sharp fall inhard currency earnings as a result of the downward slide in world oil prices in the1980s. [41](Petroleum exports made up around 60 percent of the Soviet Union's totalexport earnings.) [42] To restructure the Soviet economy before it collapsed, Gorbachevannounced an agenda of rapid reform (seeperestroika andglasnost). Reform requiredGorbachev to redirect the country's resources from costly Cold War militarycommitments to more profitable areas in the civilian sector. As a result, Gorbachevoffered major concessions to the United States on the levels of conventional forces,nuclear weapons, and policy in Eastern Europe.

Many US Soviet experts and administration officials doubted that Gorbachev wasserious about winding down the arms race[43]but the new Soviet leader eventually

proved more concerned about reversing the Soviet Union's deteriorating economiccondition than fighting the arms race with the West.[44]The Kremlin made majormilitary and political concessions; in response Reagan agreed to renew talks on

economic issues and the scaling-back of the arms race. The East-West tensions thathad reached intense new heights earlier in the decade rapidly subsided through the
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mid-to-late 1980s. In 1988, the Soviets officially declared that they would no longerintervene in the affairs of allied states in Eastern Europe - the so-calledSinatraDoctrine. In 1989, Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan.

In December 1989, Gorbachev and George H.W. Bushdeclared the Cold War

officially over at a summit meeting in Malta.[45] But by then, the Soviet alliancesystem was on the brink of collapse, and the Communist leaders of the Warsaw Pactstates were losing power. In the USSR itself, Gorbachev tried to reform the party todestroy resistance to his reforms, but, in doing so, ultimately weakened the bonds thatheld the state and union together. By February 1990, the Communist Party was forcedto surrender its 73-year old monopoly on state power. By December of the next year,the union-state also dissolved, breaking the USSR up into fifteen separate independentstates. (seeDissolution of the USSR)

7. Legacy
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Despite its rapid and relatively bloodless end, the Cold War was fought at atremendous cost globally over the course of more than four decades. It cost the US upto $8 trillion in military expenditures, and the lives of nearly 100,000 Americans inKorea and Vietnam.[46] It cost the Soviets an even higher share of their gross national

product. In Southeast Asia, local civil wars were intensified by superpower rivalry,

leaving millions dead.

The end of the Cold War gave Russia the chance to cut military spendingdramatically, but the adjustment was wrenching. The military-industrial sectoremployed at least one of every five Soviet adults.[47] Its dismantling left millionsthroughout the former Soviet Union unemployed. Russian living standards haveworsened overall in the post-Cold War years, although the economy has resumedgrowth in recent years. In the 1990s, Russia suffered an economic downturn moresevere than the US or Germany had undergone six decades earlier in theGreatDepression after it had embarked on capitalist economic reforms.[48]

The legacy of the Cold War continues to structure world affairs.[4] The Cold Warinstitutionalized the role of the United States in the postwar global economic and

political system. By 1989, the US was responsible for military alliances with 50countries and 1.5 million US troops were posted in 117 countries.[29] The Cold Waralso institutionalized the commitment to a huge, permanent wartime military-industrial complex.[29]

Some of the economic and social tensions that underpinned Cold War competition inparts of the Third World remain acute. The breakdown of state control in a number ofareas formerly ruled by Communist governments has produced new civil and ethnicconflicts, particularly in the formerYugoslavia.[4] In some countries, the breakdownof state control was accompanied by state failure, such as inAfghanistan. But in otherareas, particularly much of Eastern Europe, the end of the Cold War was accompanied

by a large growth in the number ofliberal democracies. In areas where the twosuperpowers had been waging proxy wars, and subsidizing local conflicts, manyconflicts ended with the Cold War; and the occurrence of interstate wars, ethnic wars,revolutionary wars, or refugee and displaced persons crises declined sharply.[49]

8. Cold War Veterans
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Veterans of the Cold War include those who have served both in actual conflicts andon inactive confrontation lines since 1945. Thus Soviet servicemen who served inAfghanistan and Korea, British servicemen from a number of conflicts and in WestGermany, Chinese personnel in Korea and Vietnam, French personnel from Algeria,Vietnam, Lebanon and elsewhere, and U.S. personnel in Vietnam, Korea, Germany

and elsewhere, along with all the other servicemen and women who served frommany other countries in those conflicts and along the confrontation lines in Germanyand elsewhere can be considered Cold War veterans.

Only recently has there been the glimmer of recognition for those who served onactive duty in the US military during the Cold War era (September 1945 to December1991). Through the prompting of such individuals as Cold War scholar Frank Tims,Ph.D., have some veterans organizations begun to officially recognize Cold Warveterans through official proclamations and published articles such as the one

published in VFW Magazine." [50] Coincidently, the editor of VFW Magazine isRichard Kolb ("Cobb"), author ofCold War Clashes: Confronting Communism,

1945-1991.

For at least a decade, a U.S. effort has been underway to pass legislation which wouldgive official recognition to U.S. Cold War veterans beyond the ambiguous Certificatewhich was previously offered. The Cold War Medal Act of 2007[51] passed in theHouse, but was stripped out of a larger bill in the Senate. But, because the Cold WarVictory Medal was passed by the House, it must be considered in the Conference onthe NDAA for 2008.

Historiography

As soon as the term "Cold War" was popularized to refer to postwar tensions betweenthe United States and the Soviet Union, interpreting the course and origins of theconflict has been a source of heated controversy among historians, political scientists,and journalists.[52] In particular, historians have sharply disagreed as to who wasresponsible 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. [53]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 andreaction between the two sides.[4]

While the explanations of the origins of the conflict in academic discussions arecomplex and diverse, several general schools of thought on the subject can beidentified. Historians commonly speak of three differing approaches to the study ofthe Cold War: "orthodox" accounts, "revisionism," and "post-revisionism."

Nevertheless, much of the historiography on the Cold War weaves together two oreven all three of these broad categories. [11]

Orthodox accounts

The first school of interpretation to emerge in the US was the "orthodox" one. For

more than a decade after the end of the Second World War, few US historianschallenged the official US interpretation of the beginnings of the Cold War. [53] This
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"orthodox" school places the responsibility for the Cold War on the Soviet Union andits expansion into Eastern Europe.[29]Thomas A. Bailey, for example, argued in his1950America Faces Russia that the breakdown of postwar peace was the result ofSoviet expansionism in the immediate postwar years. Bailey argued Stalin violated

promises he had made at Yalta, imposed Soviet-dominated regimes on unwilling

Eastern European populations, and conspired to spread communism throughout theworld.[53] From this view, US officials were forced to respond to Soviet aggressionwith the Truman Doctrine, plans to contain communist subversion around the world,and the Marshall Plan.

This interpretation has been described as the "official" US version of Cold Warhistory.[29] Although it lost its dominance as a mode of historical thought in academicdiscussions in 1960s, it continues to be influential.[52]

Revisionism

US involvement in Vietnam in the 1960s disillusioned many historians with thepremise of "containment", and thus with the assumptions of the "orthodox" approachto understanding the Cold War.[53] "Revisionist" accounts emerged in the wake of theVietnam War, in the context of a larger rethinking of the US role in internationalaffairs, which was seen more in terms ofAmerican empireorhegemony.[29]

The Wisconsin school of interpretation argues that the US and the USSR wereeconomic rivals, making them natural adversaries, irrespective of their ideologies.[54]

Walter LaFeber, meanwhile, argues the US and Imperial Russia were already rivalsby 1900 over the development ofManchuria. Russia, unable to compete industrially

with the States, sought to close off parts of East Asia to trade with other colonialpowers. Meanwhile, the US demanded open competition for markets.[55]

While the new school of thought spanned many differences among individualscholars, the works comprising it were generally responses in one way or another toWilliam Appleman Williams' landmark 1959 volume, The Tragedy of American

Diplomacy. Williams challenged the long-held assumptions of "orthodox" accounts,arguing that Americans had always been an empire-building people, even whileAmerican leaders denied it.[52]

Following Williams, "revisionist" writers placed more responsibility for the

breakdown of postwar peace on the United States, citing a range of US efforts toisolate and confront the Soviet Union well before the end of World War II.[29]

According to Williams and later "revisionist" writers, US policymakers shared anoverarching concern with maintaining capitalismdomestically. In order to achievethat objective, they pursued an "open door" policy abroad, aimed at increasing accessto foreign markets for US business and agriculture. [52] From this perspective, agrowing economy domestically went hand-in-hand with the consolidation of US

power internationally.

"Revisionist" scholars challenged the widely accepted notion that Soviet leaders werecommitted to postwar "expansionism". They cited evidence that the Soviet Union's

occupation of Eastern Europe had a defensive rationale, and that Soviet leaders sawthemselves as attempting to avoid encirclement by the United States and its allies.[29]
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In this view, the Soviet Union was so weak and devastated after the end of the SecondWorld War as to be unable to pose any serious threat to the United States; moreover,the US maintained a nuclear monopoly until the USSR tested its first atomic bomb inAugust 1949.[53]

Revisionist historians have also challenged the assumption that the origins of the ColdWar date no further back than the immediate postwar period.[52]Notably, WalterLaFeber, in his landmark study,America, Russia, and the Cold War, first published in1972, argued that the Cold War had its origins in 19th century conflicts betweenRussia and America over the opening of East Asia to US trade, markets, andinfluence.[52]LaFeber argued that the US commitment at the close of World War II toensuring a world in which every state was open to US influence and trade,underpinned many of the conflicts that triggered the beginning of the Cold War. [53]

Starting with Gar Alperovitz, in his influentialAtomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima andPotsdam (1965), "revisionist" scholars have focused on the US decision to use atomic

weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the last days of World War II.[53]Intheir view, the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, in effect, started the ColdWar. According to Alperovitz, the bombs were not used on an already defeated Japanto win the war, but to intimidate the Soviets, signaling that the US would use nuclearweapons to structure a postwar world around US interests as US policymakers saw fit.[52] According to some revisionists, Japan had tried to surrender for several months,

but the US wanted to test nuclear weapons in war and, most importantly, show itspower to the Soviet Union.[56][57]

Joyce and Gabriel Kolko's The Limits of Power: The World and US Foreign Policy,19451954 (1972) has a

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