(Redirected from Cold war)
The 'Cold War' was the period of conflict, tension and competition between the
United States and the
Soviet Union and their respective allies from the mid-
1940s to the early
1990s. Throughout the period, the rivalry between the two
superpowers was played out in multiple arenas and had a number of distinguishing characteristics:
★ The Cold War dominated international relations between major global powers such as the US,
Britain,
France, the USSR and
China.
★ It was characterised by a number of flash-points around the globe which threatened to turn the Cold War hot. A few examples of these potentially explosive situations are the crises in Germany in general and Berlin in particular, the
Cuban Missile Crisis (
1962), and the wars in
Korea (
1950-
1953),
Vietnam War (
1964-
1975), and
Afghanistan (
1979-
1989).
★ There were also, however, periods when tension was reduced as both sides sought
détente.
★ Although many "hot" wars were fought over the period in question, the superpowers never fought one another directly. They did, however, support opposite sides in various conflicts, thus opposing each other indirectly.
★ The main
deterrent to a direct military confrontation (and, consequently, a Third World War) was the severe threat posed by the respective
nuclear arsenals of the two sides. They were very large and offered the very real possibility of
mutual assured destruction.
★ It was an
ideological struggle between Western, democratic, capitalist states and the Eastern bloc of communist, autocratic nations. Both sides attempted to win other countries (particularly in
Asia and
Africa) over in support of their respective ideologies.
★ Being a multi-faceted conflict, the Cold War also comprised
propaganda, psychology, rival military coalitions,
espionage; military, industrial and technological developments (including the
space race); costly defense spending; a massive conventional and
nuclear arms race; financial, military and food aid to Third-World nations; confrontations within the UNO; and numerous
proxy wars.
There never was a direct military engagement between the US and the Soviet Union, but there was a half-century of military build-up, and political battles for support around the world, including significant involvement of allied and
satellite nations. Although the US and the Soviet Union had been allied against
Nazi Germany, the two sides differed on how to reconstruct the postwar world even before the end of the
World War II. Over the following decades, the Cold War spread outside
Europe to every region of the world as the US sought "
containment" of the spreading of
communism and forged numerous alliances to this end -- particularly in Western Europe, the
Middle East and
Southeast Asia.
The Cold War drew to a close in the late
1980s following the launching of Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev's reform programs, ''
perestroika'' and ''
glasnost''. The Soviet Union consequently ceded its power over Eastern Europe and was
dissolved in 1991.
Origins of the term
The term "Cold War" first used in a sense that referred to the tensions of the
Soviet Union and its neighbors was coined by
George Orwell in an essay titled "You and the Atomic Bomb." The essay was first published
October 19,
1945 in the
London Tribune. In an excerpt from this essay Orwell wrote:
The term "cold war" had been used before in political sense. On
March 26,
1938,
The Nation had a headline, "Hitler's Cold War". According to Luis Garcia Arias, in his work ''El Concepto de Guerra y la Denominada "Guerra Fria" ''(1956), the term was first used by a thirteenth-century Spanish writer named Don Juan Manuel, who used the term "guerra fria" ("cold war") to refer to the coexistence of
Islam and Christiandom in medieval
Spain.
[1]
The term "Cold War" was originally thought to have been coined by
Bernard Baruch. The ''Cassell Companion to Quotations'' cites a speech Baruch gave in
South Carolina,
April 16,
1947 in which he said, "Let us not be deceived: we are today in the midst of a cold war." The Cassell Companion notes: "The phrase was suggested to Baruch by his speechwriter, Herbert Bayard Swope, who had been using it privately since 1940. The columnist
Walter Lippmann gave the term wide currency and is sometimes mistakenly credited with coining it. Swope clearly coined it: Baruch gave it currency. "
''
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations'' lists a slight variation on Baruch's quote listing it as "We are in the midst of a cold war which is getting warmer", which Baruch used in a speech before the Senate Committee in 1948 (Bartlett's says he first used the term in 1947).
Even if Herbert Swope first used the term "cold war" in 1940, it could not have referred to what later became its more specific meaning. The geopolitical tensions between a dominant
Soviet Union and its allies versus the
United States and its allies did not emerge until after
World War II.
History
The challenge of Nazi Germany forced the Western
Allies and the Soviets into wartime cooperation. From the start, however, the alliance between the USSR, the world's first Communist state and the USA, the world's leading economic power, was marked by mutual distrust and ideological tension.
The ideological clash between
communism and
capitalism began in 1917 following the
Russian Revolution, when the USSR emerged as the first major communist power. This was the first event which made Russian-American relations a matter of major, long-term concern to the leaders in each country.
[John Lewis Gaddis, ''Russia, the Soviet Union, and the United States'' An Interpretive History''. 1990, p. 57] In
World War I, the USA, Britain and Russia had been allies for a few months from April 1917 until the
Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in November. In 1918, the Bolsheviks negotiated a separate peace with the
Central Powers at
Brest-Litovsk, and the Western Allies intervened in the
Russian Civil War against revolutionary forces.
Relations were never particularly good between the two nations in the inter-war period, with limited trade and diplomatic links being established in an atmosphere of extreme suspicion. Memories of US efforts to crush Bolshevism between 1918 and 1920, and Russia's efforts to spread communism beyond its own borders, further aggravated the tensions. The US refused to recognize the Soviet Union until 1933.
[Walter LaFeber, "Cold War." ''A Reader's Companion to American History'', Eric Foner and John A. Garrraty, eds. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1991.] After winning the civil war (''see''
Russian Civil War), the Bolsheviks proclaimed a worldwide challenge to
capitalism.
The period of pre-war diplomacy also left both sides wary of the other's intentions and motives in World War II. The threat posed by Germany and Japan made Russia an ally of the West, and military cooperation simply ''had'' to increase if the Allies were to win. The USA, the USSR and Britain met on several occasions during the war to discuss strategy and make plans for a post-war Europe. Even during these summits, suspicions ran deep. Russian and the US both feared that the other might pull out of the war effort and make a separate settlement with Germany.
Moscow recalled the Western appeasement of
Adolf Hitler after signing the
Munich Pact in 1938 and US failure to pass on Nuclear Bomb secrets. Russia's motives in Eastern Europe were called into question as Stalin demanded the right to annex certain nations. US President
Franklin D. Roosevelt feared that his Russian counterpart,
Joseph Stalin, would once more agree to a settlement with Germany, as he had done in August 1939 under the
German-Soviet Non-aggression Pact.
From 1941 to 1945, the alliance was only a temporary aberration in the post-
nineteenth century relationship between Russia and America.
During the war, the Soviets were deeply suspicious of US military tactics and strategies. The Soviets believed at the time, and charged throughout the Cold War, that the British and Americans intentionally delayed the opening of a second front against Germany.
[2] As early as July 1941, Stalin had asked Britain to invade northern France, but that country was in no position to carry out such a request.
[3] The second front was ultimately constituted on June 6, 1944, or
D-Day. The Soviets strongly suspected that the Anglo-Americans had opted to let the Russians bear the brunt of the war effort, to intervene themselves only at the last minute so as to influence the peace settlement and dominate Europe.
[2] Historians such as
John Lewis Gaddis dispute this claim, citing other military and strategic calculations for the timing of the Normandy invasion.
[5] Nevertheless, Soviet perceptions (or misconceptions) of the West and ''vice versa'' left an strong undercurrent of tension and hostility between the Allied powers.
Both sides, moreover, held very dissimilar ideas regarding the establishment and maintenance of post-war security. The Americans tended to understand security in situational terms, assuming that, if US-style governments and markets were established as widely as possible, countries could resolve their differences peacefully, through
international organizations.
[6] The key to the US vision of security was a post-war world shaped according to the principles laid out in the 1941
Atlantic Charter -- in other words, a liberal international system based on free trade and open markets. This vision would require a rebuilt capitalist Europe, with a healthy Germany at its center, to serve once more serve as a hub in global affairs.
This would also require US economic and political leadership of the postwar world. Europe needed the USA's assistance if it was to rebuild its domestic production and finance its international trade. The USA was the only world power not economically devastated by the fighting. By the end of the war, she was producing around fifty percent of the world's industrial goods.
Soviet leaders, however, tended to understand security in terms of space.
[7] This reasoning was conditioned by Russia's historical experiences, given the frequency with which the country had been invaded over the last 150 years.
[8] The Second World War experience was particularly dramatic for the Russians: the Soviet Union suffered unprecedented devastation as a result of the Nazi onslaught, and over 20,000,000 Soviet citizens died during the war; tens of thousands of Soviet cities, towns, and villages were leveled; and 30,100 Soviet factories were destroyed.
[David F. Schmitz, "Cold War (1945–91): Causes" ''The Oxford Companion to American Military History''. John Whiteclay Chambers II, ed., Oxford University Press 1999.] In order to prevent a similar assault in the future, Stalin was determined to use the
Red Army to gain control of
Poland, to dominate the Balkans and to destroy utterly Germany's capacity to engage in another war. The problem was that Stalin's strategy risked confrontation with the equally powerful United States, who viewed Stalin's actions as a flagrant violation of the Yalta agreement.
As the war came to an end, it seemed highly likely, inevitable even, that cooperation between the Western powers and the USSR would give way to intense rivalry, conflict even. This was due primarily to the starkly contrasting economic ideologies of the two superpowers, now quite easily the strongest in the world. Whereas the USA was a liberal, multi-party democracy with an advanced capitalist economy, based on free enterprise and profit-making, the USSR was a one-party Communist dictatorship with a state-controlled economy where private wealth and initiative was all but outlawed. It seemed obvious that, while America would be wholly in favour of a return to democracy for post-war Europe, providing it with allies and important trading partners, Russia (especially under Stalin's rule) would attempt to take advantage of the chaos and spread communism.
At the
Yalta Conference in February 1945, the Allies attempted to define the framework for a post-war settlement in Europe. The Allies could not reach firm agreements on the crucial questions (being the occupation of Germany, post-war reparations from Germany, and loans). No final consensus was reached on Germany, other than to agree to a Soviet request for reparations totalling $10-billion, "as a basis for negotiations."
[9] Debates over the composition of Poland's post-war government were similarly acrimonious.
[10]
Following the Allied victory in May, the Soviets effectively occupied Eastern Europe, while the US had much of Western Europe. In occupied Germany, the US and the Soviet Union established zones of occupation and a loose framework for four-power control with the ailing French and British.
At the
Potsdam Conference, starting in late July, serious differences emerged over the future development of Germany and Eastern Europe.
[Peter Byrd, "Cold War" ''The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics''. Ed. Iain McLean and Alistair McMillan. Oxford University Press, 2003.] At Potsdam, the US was represented by a new president,
Harry S. Truman, who on
April 12 acceded to the office upon Roosevelt's death. Truman was unaware of Roosevelt's plans for post-war engagement with the Soviet Union, and more generally uni
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