44 The Cold War

World affairs in the second half of the 20th century were dominated by a long period of armed hostility between the capitalist USA and the communist Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (the USSR or Soviet Union) together with their respective allies. This period of heightened tension was dubbed the “Cold War”—a term first used in 1947—as it never quite broke out into a “hot” global conflict.

The USA and the Soviet Union had emerged from the Second World War as the world’s two superpowers, and, although they never directly fought each other, these fervent ideological enemies conducted a number of proxy wars against the other’s allies, and built up enormous stockpiles of nuclear weapons that threatened the very future of humanity.

“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across Europe.”

Winston Churchill, speech at Fulton, Missouri, March 5, 1946

The Iron Curtain The antipathy between the capitalist West and the communist Soviet Union dated back to the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. However, when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, the principle of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” came into play, and the UK, USA and USSR made common cause in the war against Nazi Germany. As Allied victory became more and more certain, the “Big Three”—President F. D. Roosevelt of the USA, British prime minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin—met at Yalta in February 1945, and agreed that those areas of eastern Europe that had been liberated from the Nazis by the Red Army should remain under Soviet influence. Within three years there were pro-Soviet communist governments installed in the eastern occupation zone of Germany, and also in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia and Albania. An “Iron Curtain” had descended across Europe.

By this time, the wartime Allies had long fallen out. Even before the end of the Second World War, fighting had erupted in Greece between communists and non-communists, the latter supported by the British. Soon afterward, the Turkish government found itself faced with a communist insurgency, and in 1947 President Truman enunciated the “Truman Doctrine,” committing the USA to containing the spread of communism around the world.

“At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one … ”

President Harry S. Truman, from the “Truman Doctrine,” March 12, 1947

While the West feared the spread of communism, the Soviets feared that they were under imminent threat of attack. From their point of view they had brought the benefits of their system to previously benighted peoples, while creating a buffer between the USSR and a potentially resurgent Germany, whose war against them had cost the lives of at least 20 million Soviet citizens. For many of those in eastern Europe subjected to Soviet domination, however, they had merely exchanged one tyranny—that of Nazi occupation—for another. When reforming governments in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 attempted to pursue a more independent line, their ambitions were ruthlessly crushed by Soviet tanks. Until the end of the Cold War, only Yugoslavia, Albania and Romania had managed to break away from Moscow’s steel grip.

Nuclear stand-off

At the end of the Second World War the USA was the only country to possess the atomic bomb. But in 1949 the USSR exploded its first atomic weapon, and a nuclear arms race was underway. The USA tested its first hydrogen bomb—a much more powerful weapon—in 1952, and before long the Soviet Union had also produced its own hydrogen bomb. With the subsequent development of intercontinental ballistic missiles, launched from land or from submarines, both sides had the capacity to destroy each other, whoever attacked first. This principle of “mutually assured destruction” (MAD) lay behind the theory of deterrence, which held that the very possession of nuclear weapons by both sides ensured that they would never be used. It was a high-risk strategy.

Conflict beyond Europe While in Europe two armed camps glowered at each other across the Iron Curtain, elsewhere in the world ideological polarization resulted in armed conflict. In 1949, after years of civil war, the communists took power in China, and the following year war broke out in Korea. After its liberation from Japan in 1945 Korea had been divided into a communist northern sector and a capitalist southern sector, and in 1950 North Korea launched an attack on the South, in a bid to reunite the country. Under the aegis of the United Nations, the USA, Britain and their allies intervened to throw back the invaders. The UN force succeeded in this aim, then advanced northward toward the Chinese border. China had warned that it would not tolerate such a move; “If the lips are gone,” the Chinese said at the time, referring to their North Korean ally, “the teeth will feel the cold.” Millions of Chinese troops poured over the border, pushing the UN forces back south again. After two years of stalemate, both sides signed an armistice, although technically North and South Korea are still at war.

The Korean War was a relatively short-lived affair compared to the fighting in Vietnam, a country that had also been divided between a communist North and a capitalist South. The Vietnam War (see The Vietnam War) was to tie up large numbers of US troops and huge amounts of resources, in the belief that, if South Vietnam fell to communism, all the neighboring countries of southeast Asia would soon follow, in a so-called “Domino Effect.” From the communist point of view, the war was to liberate southeast Asia from Western imperialism.

Closer to home, the Americans were particularly sensitive to any suggestion of Soviet penetration in Latin America, which it traditionally regarded as its own sphere of influence. This led the USA to support a number of oppressive right-wing military juntas in the region, and even to back the overthrow of democratically elected socialist governments, as occurred in Chile in 1973. However, the USA proved unable to oust Fidel Castro’s left-wing regime in Cuba, despite backing an unsuccessful invasion by anti-Castro exiles in 1961 and imposing trade embargoes. In 1962 the USSR stationed missiles on the island, and President Kennedy threatened to use nuclear weapons unless they were removed. As the world held its breath, the Soviets backed down.

Such brinkmanship was rare, and both sides, realizing that allout nuclear war would in all probability lead to the extinction of the human race, sought a means of achieving “peaceful coexistence.” During the 1970s, the USA moved to isolate the USSR by opening a process of détente with communist China, which had broken away from the Soviet bloc in the later 1950s. This prompted the Soviets to seek to improve relations with the USA, and the two sides agreed to limitations on the sizes of their nuclear arsenals—although at the same time continuing to fight proxy wars in places as diverse as Angola, Nicaragua and Afghanistan. But in the end, the Soviet Union found it could not compete with the vastly superior resources and hugely successful economy of the USA. As a consequence, not only did the Soviets let go of their empire in eastern Europe, but the USSR itself ceased to exist (see The fall of communism).

the condensed idea

The period when humanity came closest to destroying itself