Cold War

• Cold War


  Diplomatic and ideological confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union that divided the world into two, each trying to outdo and out-maneuver the other, lasting from 1945 to 1989
• Atomic bomb


  • Made a third world war unthinkable
• Nuclear arms race


  1. Soviets exploded their first bomb in 1949

  2. Superpowers always worked to stay ahead of each other in nuclear technology

  3. Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) recognized
• Economic systems


  • Soviet-style socialism (communism)
  • Western capitalistic countries
• Mixed economy


  Neither the Soviet nor Western system ran in its pure form
• Country alignments


  • First World (aligned with US)
  • Second World (aligned with USSR)
  • Third World (underdeveloped, ties to either side not as strong)
• United Nations

  International organization set up in 1945 to maintain international peace and security and encourage cooperative solutions to international problems
• UN General Assembly


  • Deliberative body in which all member states have an equal vote
  • Became a forum for debate in which developing nations voiced social and economic grievances
• UN Security Council


  • Primary responsibility was to preserve peace
  • Five "Great Powers" (US, USSR, UK, France, China) were permanent members with veto power
• UN had 51 original members and 189 members by 2000
• UN adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 but did not provide a means to ensure them
• Superpowers


  The US and USSR were the only somewhat stable countries after WWII, possessing enormous resources and overshadowing all other states
• The US possessed the atomic bomb after WWII
• The USSR was militarily very strong after WWII and capable of maintaining control over new satellite nations
• Reasons for US-USSR distrust

  • Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War
  • Russia exiting from WWI early
  • Soviet policy to aid socialist revolution in other countries
  • Allies not providing a second front quickly enough in WWII
  • Soviets not living up to post-war agreements in Eastern Europe
  • Differences in post-war expectations
• Containment


  US policy to assist free peoples resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressures, in response to perceived Soviet expansion and aggression
• The US enacted the Truman Doctrine in Greece, the first place it was applied
• The US proposed UN monitoring of atomic energy development but the USSR vetoed it
• The US announced the Marshall Plan in 1947 to provide economic aid to rebuild European countries and slow the spread of communism
• The US created the National Security Council and CIA to protect against communist aggression and intrigue
• The US instituted its first peacetime military draft in 1948
• The Soviets reestablished the Comintern in 1947
• Occupation zones in post-war Germany

  Germany and Berlin were divided into four occupation zones between the US, UK, France, and USSR
• The US and UK/France united their zones

  The Soviets refused to merge their zone
• Berlin Blockade


  1. Soviets blockaded Berlin from road and rail access from West Germany

  2. West responded with an airlift of supplies into West Berlin

  3. Soviets lifted the blockade after 10 months
• West Germany became the Federal Republic of Germany, East Germany became the German Democratic Republic
• NATO


  Military alliance and collective security system created in 1949 with the US, Canada, and 10 Western European nations to defend against the USSR
• The Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, and NATO were the "three prongs" of the Western response to the Soviet challenge
• The Soviets organized their satellite nations into the Council for Mutual Economic Aid and the Warsaw Pact in response to the West
• The Soviets lost momentum in the late 1940s, giving up demands on Turkey and Iran, losing power in Italy, and failing to drive the West from Berlin
• US occupation of Japan

  Used to foster parliamentary institutions and revive the Japanese economy, ending divine-right rule and encouraging self-government
• Japan's economy grew rapidly in the 1950s, reaching pre-war GNP levels by 1954
• The Soviets saw Japan as another threat for several reasons
• Causes of the fall of the Iron Curtain

  Continued resistance, solidarity (Solidarity union in Poland), the Catholic Church, weak European economies, domestic disasters, increased Cold War tensions, technology, Gorbachev's policies of glasnost, perestroika, and demokratizatsiia, overextension of the Soviet military
• Fall of the Iron Curtain

  1. Gorbachev made clear the USSR would no longer back up Eastern European governments

  2. Gorbachev announced removal of Soviet troops from Eastern Europe

  3. Hungary followed Poland in democratic reforms, opening borders

  4. East Germany opened the Berlin Wall in 1989

  5. Czechoslovakia had the "Velvet Revolution" leading to a non-Communist government
• Causes of the fall of the Soviet Union

  Soviet dissidents, weak Soviet economy, Gorbachev's reforms, end of control over Iron Curtain countries, removal of Communist Party's constitutional control, ethnic unrest, failed Communist coup in 1991
• The revolutionary changes of 1989-1991 made possible but did not guarantee democratic and pluralist societies in the former Soviet republics
• Communist coup


  August 18, 1991
• Communist hardliners put Gorbachev under house arrest, insisting that he reinstate Article 6 in the constitution
• Gorbachev refused to make the declaration of emergency rule