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[[Image:Reagan and Gorbachev hold discussions.jpg|thumb|[[United States]] [[President of the United States|President]] [[Ronald Reagan]] (left) and [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] [[General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|General Secretary]] [[Mikhail Gorbachev]] meet in 1985 at [[Geneva]], Switzerland]]
{{History Of The Cold War}}
The '''Cold War''' ({{lang-ru|холо́дная война́, ''kholodnaya voĭna''}}) (approx. 1945-1991) was a continuing state of political conflict, military tension, [[Proxy War|proxy wars]], and economic competition between the powers of the [[Western world#The Cold War|Western world]], led by the [[United States]] and its [[NATO|NATO allies]], and the [[communist world]], led by the [[Soviet Union]], its [[satellite state]]s and allies. The Cold War began after the success of their temporary wartime alliance against [[Nazi Germany]], as the USSR and the US saw each other as mutual superpowers with profound economic and political differences. The Soviet Union created the [[Eastern Bloc]] with the eastern European countries it occupied, maintaining these as [[Soviet satellite states|satellite states]]. The post-war recovery of Western Europe was facilitated by the United States' [[Marshall Plan]], while the Soviet Union, wary of the conditions attached, declined to participate and prompted its satellite states to do likewise. An alternative, [[COMECON]], was set up by the Soviets instead. The United States forged [[NATO]], a military alliance using [[containment]] of [[communism]] as a main strategy through the [[Truman Doctrine]], in 1949, while the Soviet bloc formed the [[Warsaw Pact]] in 1955. Some countries aligned with either of the two powers, whilst others chose to remain neutral with the [[Non-Aligned Movement]]. Elsewhere, the US and USSR fought proxy wars of various types: in [[Latin America]] and [[Southeast Asia]], the USSR assisted and helped foster [[communist revolution]]s, opposed by several Western countries and their regional allies; some they attempted to [[rollback|roll back]] through subversion and warfare, with mixed results.

The Cold War was so named as it never featured direct military action, but periods of relative calm were followed by periods of high tension. The most tense involved the [[Berlin Blockade]] (1948–1949), the [[Korean War]] (1950–1953), the [[Berlin Crisis of 1961]], the [[Vietnam War]] (1959–1975), the [[Cuban Missile Crisis]] (1962), the [[Soviet war in Afghanistan]] (1979–1989), and the [[Able Archer 83]] NATO exercises in November 1983. Both sides possessed [[nuclear weapons]], and because their use would probably guarantee their [[mutual assured destruction]] the chief military forces never engaged in a major battle with each other. The conflict was expressed through military coalitions, strategic conventional force deployments, extensive aid to states deemed vulnerable, proxy wars, espionage, propaganda, conventional and nuclear [[arms race]]s, appeals to neutral nations, rivalry at sports events, and technological competitions such as the [[Space Race]]. The antagonistic behaviour that both sides displayed towards their enemy resulted in many crises which risked mutual annihilation in a nuclear exchange. To alleviate the risk of nuclear war exacerbated by accident or mistake, both sides sought [[détente]] to relieve political tensions and deter direct military attack.

In the 1980s, under the [[Reagan Doctrine]], the United States increased diplomatic, military, and economic pressures on the Soviet Union, at a time when the nation was already suffering [[Era of Stagnation|economic stagnation]]. In the late 1980s, Soviet President [[Mikhail Gorbachev]] introduced the liberalizing reforms of ''[[perestroika]]'' ("reconstruction", "reorganization", 1987) and ''[[glasnost]]'' ("openness", ca. 1985). The Cold War ended after [[Dissolution of the Soviet Union|the Soviet Union collapsed]] in 1991, leaving the United States as the dominant military power. The Cold War and its events have had a significant impact on the world today, and it is often referred to in popular culture, especially in [[Mass media|media]] featuring themes of [[espionage]] and the threat of [[nuclear warfare]].

{{TOC left}}

==Origins of the term==
At the end of [[World War II]], English author and journalist [[George Orwell]] used ''[[cold war (general term)|cold war]]'', as a general term, in his essay “You and the Atomic Bomb”, published October 19, 1945, in the British newspaper ''[[Tribune (magazine)|Tribune]]''. Contemplating a world living in the shadow of the threat of [[nuclear warfare]], Orwell wrote:

:"For forty or fifty years past, Mr. [[H. G. Wells]] and others have been warning us that man is in danger of destroying himself with his own weapons, leaving the ants or some other gregarious species to take over. Anyone who has seen the ruined cities of Germany will find this notion at least thinkable. Nevertheless, looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery. We may be heading not for general breakdown but for an epoch as horribly stable as the slave empires of antiquity. [[James Burnham]]'s theory has been much discussed, but few people have yet considered 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 once unconquerable and in a permanent state of "cold war" with its neighbors."<ref> Orwell, "[http://tmh.floonet.net/articles/abombs.html You and the Atomic Bomb]", ''Tribune'' 19 October 1945</ref>

In ''The Observer'' of March 10, 1946, Orwell wrote that “[a]fter the Moscow conference last December, Russia began to make a ‘cold war’ on Britain and the [[British Empire]].”<ref>Orwell, George, ''The Observer'', March 10, 1946</ref>

The first use of the term to describe the post–World War II [[Geopolitics|geopolitical]] tensions between the USSR and its satellites and the United States and its western European allies is attributed to [[Bernard Baruch]], an American financier and presidential advisor.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=54}}</ref> In [[South Carolina]], on April 16, 1947, he delivered a speech (by journalist [[Herbert Bayard Swope]])<ref>{{cite news|first=William|last=Safire|url=http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/01/news/edsafire.php|title=Islamofascism Anyone?|work=[[The New York Times]]|publisher=[[The New York Times Company]]|date=October 1, 2006|accessdate=December 25, 2008}}</ref> saying, “Let us not be deceived: we are today in the midst of a cold war.”<ref>'[http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/bernard-baruch-coins-the-term-cold-war Bernard Baruch coins the term "Cold War"]', history.com, April 16, 1947. Retrieved on July 2, 2008.</ref> Newspaper reporter-columnist [[Walter Lippmann]] gave the term wide currency, with the book ''The Cold War''; when asked in 1947 about the source of the term, he referred it to a French term from the 1930s, ''la guerre froide''.<ref>[[Strobe Talbott]]: ''The Great Experiment: The Story of Ancient Empires, Modern States, and the Quest for a Global Nation'' (2009) p.441 n.3; Lippmann's own book is {{cite book|url=http://books.google.com/?id=Ydc3AAAAIAAJ&q=walter+lippmann+cold+war&dq=walter+lippmann+cold+war|author=Lippmann, Walter|title=The Cold War|accessdate=2008-09-02|publisher=Harper|year=1947}}</ref>

==Background==
{{Main|Origins of the Cold War}}
{{See|Red Scare}}
[[Image:American troops in Vladivostok 1918 HD-SN-99-02013.JPEG|thumb|right|American troops in [[Vladivostok]], August 1918, during the [[Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War|Allied intervention]] in the [[Russian Civil War]].]]
There is disagreement among historians regarding the starting point of the Cold War. While most historians trace its origins to the period immediately following World War II, others argue that it began towards the end of [[World War I]], although tensions between the [[Russian Empire]], other European countries and the United States date back to the middle of the 19th century.<ref name="Gaddis"/>

As a result of the 1917 [[October Revolution|Bolshevik Revolution]] in Russia (followed by its withdrawal from [[World War I]]), Soviet Russia found itself isolated in international diplomacy.<ref name="lee">{{Harvnb|Lee|1999|p=57}}</ref> Leader [[Vladimir Lenin]] stated that the Soviet Union was surrounded by a "hostile capitalist encirclement", and he viewed diplomacy as a weapon to keep Soviet enemies divided, beginning with the establishment of the Soviet [[Comintern]], which called for revolutionary upheavals abroad.<ref name="Palmieri34">{{Harvnb|Palmieri|1989|p=62}}</ref>

Subsequent leader [[Joseph Stalin]], who viewed the Soviet Union as a "socialist island", stated that the Soviet Union must see that "the present capitalist encirclement is replaced by a socialist encirclement."<ref name="tucker46">{{Harvnb|Tucker|1992|p=46}}</ref> As early as 1925, Stalin stated that he viewed international politics as a bipolar world in which the Soviet Union would attract countries gravitating to socialism and capitalist countries would attract states gravitating toward capitalism, while the world was in a period of "temporary stabilization of capitalism" preceding its eventual collapse.<ref name="tucker47">{{Harvnb|Tucker|1992|pp=47–8}}</ref>

Various events before the Second World War demonstrated the mutual distrust and suspicion between the Western powers and the Soviet Union, apart from the general philosophical challenge the [[Bolshevik]]s made towards capitalism.<ref name = "Halliday">{{Harvnb|Halliday|2001|p=2e}}</ref> There was Western support of the anti-Bolshevik [[White movement]] in the [[Russian Civil War]],<ref name = "Gaddis">{{Harvnb|Gaddis|1990|p=57}}</ref> the 1926 Soviet funding of a British general workers strike causing Britain to break relations with the Soviet Union,<ref name="tucker74">{{Harvnb|Tucker|1992|p=74}}</ref> Stalin's 1927 declaration of peaceful coexistence with capitalist countries "receding into the past,"<ref name="tucker75">{{Harvnb|Tucker|1992|p=75}}</ref> conspiratorial allegations during the 1928 [[Shakhty Trial|Shakhty show trial]] of a planned British- and French-led [[coup d'état]],<ref name="tucker98">{{Harvnb|Tucker|1992|p=98}}</ref> the American refusal to recognize the Soviet Union until 1933<ref name = "LaFeber 1991">{{Harvnb|LaFeber|1991|pp=194–197}}</ref> and the [[Stalinism|Stalinist]] [[Moscow Trials]] of the [[Great Purge]], with allegations of British, French, Japanese and Nazi German espionage.<ref>{{cite book |author=Tim Tzouliadis| title=The Forsaken |publisher=The Penguin Press |isbn=978-1-59420-168-4}}</ref>

When the German Army invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Allies took advantage of a new front and decided to help the Soviet Union. Britain signed a formal alliance and the United States made an informal agreement. In wartime, the United States supplied both Britain and the Soviets through its [[Lend-Lease]] Program.<ref>George C. Herring Jr., ''Aid to Russia, 1941–1946: Strategy, Diplomacy, the Origins of the Cold War'' (Columbia University Press, 1973).</ref>

However, Stalin remained highly suspicious and believed that the British and the Americans had conspired to ensure the Soviets bore the brunt of the fighting against Nazi Germany. According to this view, the Western Allies had deliberately delayed opening a second anti-German front in order to step in at the last moment and shape the peace settlement. Thus, Soviet perceptions of the West left a strong undercurrent of tension and hostility between the Allied powers.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|1990|pp=151–153}}</ref>

==End of World War II and post-war (1945–47)==
===Wartime conferences regarding post-war Europe===
[[Image:Yalta summit 1945 with Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin.jpg|thumb|right|The "[[Allies of World War II|Big Three]]" at the Yalta Conference: [[Winston Churchill]], [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] and [[Joseph Stalin]], 1945.]]
{{See|Tehran Conference|Yalta Conference}}
The Allies disagreed about how the European map should look, and how borders would be drawn, following the war.<ref name="Gaddis13-23">{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|pp=13–23}}</ref> Each side held dissimilar ideas regarding the establishment and maintenance of post-war security.<ref name="Gaddis13-23" /> The western Allies desired a security system in which democratic governments were established as widely as possible, permitting countries to peacefully resolve differences through [[international organization]]s.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|1990|p=156}}</ref>

Given the Russian historical experiences of frequent invasions<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=7}}</ref> and the immense death toll (estimated at 27&nbsp;million) and the destruction the Soviet Union sustained during World War II,<ref>"[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4530565.stm Leaders mourn Soviet wartime dead]", BBC News, May 9, 2005. Retrieved on July 2, 2008.</ref> the Soviet Union sought to increase security by dominating the internal affairs of countries that bordered it.<ref name="Gaddis13-23" /><ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|1990|p=176}}</ref>

The Western Allies were themselves deeply divided in their vision of the new post-war world. Roosevelt's goals – military victory in both [[Europe]] and [[Asia]], the achievement of global American economic supremacy over the [[British Empire]], and the creation of a world peace organization – were more global than Churchill's, which were mainly centered on securing control over the [[Mediterranean Sea|Mediterranean]], ensuring the survival of the British Empire, and the independence of Eastern European countries as a [[Buffer state|buffer]] between the Soviets and the United Kingdom.<ref Name=Plokhy>{{Harvnb|Plokhy|2010|p=}}</ref>

In the American view, Stalin seemed a potential ally in accomplishing their goals, whereas in the British approach Stalin appeared as the greatest threat to the fulfillment of their agenda. With the Soviets already occupying most of Eastern Europe, Stalin was at an advantage and the two western leaders vied for his favors. The differences between Roosevelt and Churchill led to several separate deals with the Soviets. In October 1944, Churchill traveled to Moscow and agreed to divide the [[Balkans]] into respective spheres of influence, and at Yalta Roosevelt signed a separate deal with Stalin in regard of Asia and refused to support Churchill on the issues of Poland and the Reparations.<ref Name=Plokhy/>

[[File:Map-Germany-1945.svg|thumb|Post-war [[Allied occupation zones in Germany]].]]
Further Allied negotiations concerning the post-war balance took place at the [[Yalta Conference]] in February 1945, albeit this conference also failed to reach a firm consensus on the framework for a post-war settlement in Europe.<ref name="Gaddis21">{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=21}}</ref> In April 1945, both Churchill and new United States President [[Harry S. Truman]] opposed, among other things, the Soviets' decision to prop up the [[Polish Committee of National Liberation|Lublin government]], the Soviet-controlled rival to the [[Polish government-in-exile]], whose relations with the Soviets were severed.<ref>{{Harvnb|Zubok|1996|p=94}}</ref>

Following the [[End of World War II in Europe|Allies' May 1945 victory]], the Soviets effectively occupied Eastern Europe,<ref name="Gaddis21" /> while strong US and Western allied forces remained in Western Europe. In [[Allied-occupied Germany]], the Soviet Union, United States, Britain and France established [[Allied-occupied Germany|zones of occupation]] and a loose framework for four-power control.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=22}}</ref>

The [[United Nations Conference on International Organization|1945 Allied conference in San Francisco]] established the multi-national [[United Nations]] (UN) for the maintenance of world peace, but the enforcement capacity of its [[United Nations Security Council|Security Council]] was effectively paralyzed by individual members' ability to use [[United Nations Security Council veto power|veto power]].<ref>{{Harvnb|Bourantonis|1996|p=130}}</ref> Accordingly, the UN was essentially converted into an inactive forum for exchanging polemical rhetoric, and the Soviets regarded it almost exclusively as a propaganda tribune.<ref>{{Harvnb|Garthoff|1994|p=401}}</ref>

===Potsdam Conference and defeat of Japan===
[[Image:Potsdam conference 1945-6.jpg|thumb|[[Winston Churchill]], [[Harry S. Truman]] and [[Joseph Stalin]] at the [[Potsdam Conference]], 1945.]]
{{See|Potsdam Conference|Surrender of Japan}}
At the [[Potsdam Conference]], which started in late July after Germany's surrender, serious differences emerged over the future development of Germany and eastern Europe.<ref name = "Byrd">{{cite encyclopedia|author=Byrd, Peter|editor=McLean, Iain; McMillan, Alistair|encyclopedia=The concise Oxford dictionary of politics|title=Cold War (entire chapter)|url=http://books.google.com/?id=xLbEHQAACAAJ|accessdate=2008-06-16|year=2003|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=0192802763|ref=harv}}</ref> Moreover, the participants' mounting antipathy and bellicose language served to confirm their suspicions about each others' hostile intentions and entrench their positions.<ref>Alan Wood, p. 62</ref> At this conference Truman informed Stalin that the United States possessed a powerful new weapon.<ref name="Gaddis25" />

Stalin was aware that the Americans were working on the atomic bomb and, given that the Soviets' own rival program was in place, he reacted to the news calmly. The Soviet leader said he was pleased by the news and expressed the hope that the weapon would be used against Japan.<ref name="Gaddis25">{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|pp=25–26}}</ref> One week after the end of the Potsdam Conference, the US [[atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki|bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki]]. Shortly after the attacks, Stalin protested to US officials when Truman offered the Soviets little real influence in [[occupation of Japan|occupied Japan]].<ref>{{Harvnb|LaFeber|2002|p=28}}</ref>

===Beginnings of the Eastern Bloc===
{{See|Eastern Bloc}}
[[File:EasternBloc BorderChange38-48.svg|right|thumb|Post-war territorial changes in Eastern Europe and the formation of the Eastern Bloc, the so-called 'Iron Curtain'.]]
During the final stages of World War II, the Soviet Union laid the foundation for the [[Eastern Bloc]] by directly annexing several countries as [[Soviet Socialist Republics]] that were initially (and effectively) ceded to it by Nazi Germany in the [[Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact]]. These included eastern [[Poland]] (incorporated into [[Territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union|two different SSRs]]),<ref name="stalinswars43">{{Harvnb|Roberts|2006|p=43}}</ref> [[Latvia]] (which became the [[Latvian SSR]]),<ref name="wettig20">{{Harvnb|Wettig|2008|p=21}}</ref><ref name="senn">Senn, Alfred Erich, ''Lithuania 1940 : revolution from above'', Amsterdam, New York, Rodopi, 2007 ISBN 978-90-420-2225-6</ref> [[Estonia]] (which became the [[Estonian SSR]]),<ref name="wettig20"/><ref name="senn"/> [[Lithuania]] (which became the [[Lithuanian SSR]]),<ref name="wettig20"/><ref name="senn"/> part of eastern [[Finland]] (which became the [[Karelo-Finnish SSR]]) and eastern [[Romania]] (which became the [[Moldavian SSR]]).<ref name="stalinswars55">{{Harvnb|Roberts|2006|p=55}}</ref><ref name="shirer794">{{Harvnb|Shirer|1990|p=794}}</ref>

The Eastern European territories liberated from the Nazis and occupied by the Soviet armed forces were added to the [[Eastern Bloc]] by converting them into [[satellite state]]s,<ref name = "Schmitz" /> such as [[East Germany]],<ref name="wettig96">{{Harvnb|Wettig|2008|pp=96–100}}</ref> the [[People's Republic of Poland]], the [[People's Republic of Bulgaria]], the [[People's Republic of Hungary]],<ref name="dijk">van Dijk, Ruud, ''Encyclopedia of the Cold War, Volume 1'', p. 200. Taylor & Francis, 2008. ISBN 0-415-97515-8</ref> the [[Czechoslovak Socialist Republic]],<ref>{{Harvnb|Grenville|2005|pp=370–71}}</ref> the [[People's Republic of Romania]] and the [[People's Republic of Albania]].<ref name="cook17">{{Harvnb|Cook|2001|p=17}}</ref>

The Soviet-style regimes that arose in the Bloc not only reproduced Soviet [[command economy|command economies]], but also adopted the brutal methods employed by [[Joseph Stalin]] and Soviet secret police to suppress real and potential opposition.<ref name="roht83">{{Harvnb|Roht-Arriaza|1995|p=83}}</ref> In Asia, the Red Army had overrun [[Manchuria]] in the last month of the war, and went on to occupy the large swathe of Korean territory located north of the 38th parallel.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=40}}</ref>

As part of consolidating Stalin's control over the Eastern Bloc, the [[NKVD]], led by [[Lavrentiy Beria]], supervised the establishment of Soviet-style secret police systems in the Bloc that were supposed to crush anti-communist resistance.<ref name="Gaddis 2005, p. 34"/> When the slightest stirrings of independence emerged in the Bloc, Stalin's strategy matched that of dealing with domestic pre-war rivals: they were removed from power, put on trial, imprisoned, and in several instances, executed.<ref name="Gaddis 2005, p. 100">{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=100}}</ref>

British Prime Minister [[Winston Churchill]] was concerned that, given the enormous size of Soviet forces deployed in Europe at the end of the war, and the perception that Soviet leader [[Joseph Stalin]] was unreliable, there existed a Soviet threat to Western Europe.<ref name="Telegraph">Fenton, Ben. "[http://web.archive.org/web/20080528222149/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml?html=/archive/1998/10/01/nwar101.html The secret strategy to launch attack on Red Army]", telegraph.co.uk, October 1, 1998. Retrieved on July 23, 2008.</ref>
In April–May 1945, the [[Churchill War Ministry|British War Cabinet]]'s Joint Planning Staff Committee developed [[Operation Unthinkable]], a plan "to impose upon Russia the will of the United States and the British Empire".<ref>{{cite web | last = British War Cabinet, Joint Planning Staff, Public Record Office, CAB 120/691/109040 / 002 | date = 1945-08-11 | url = http://www.history.neu.edu/PRO2/ | title = Operation Unthinkable: 'Russia: Threat to Western Civilization' | format = online photocopy | publisher = Department of History, Northeastern University | accessdate = 2008-06-28}}{{dead link|date=November 2011}}</ref> The plan, however, was rejected by the British [[Chiefs of Staff Committee]] as militarily unfeasible.<ref name="Telegraph" />

===Tensions build===
{{See|Long Telegram|Iron Curtain|Restatement of Policy on Germany}}
In February 1946, [[George F. Kennan]]'s "[[X Article|Long Telegram]]" from Moscow helped to articulate the US government's increasingly hard line against the Soviets, and became the basis for US strategy toward the Soviet Union for the duration of the Cold War.<ref>{{Harvnb|Schecter|2003|pp=152–154}}</ref> That September, the Soviet side produced the [[Nikolai Vasilevich Novikov|Novikov]] telegram, sent by the Soviet ambassador to the US but commissioned and "co-authored" by [[Vyacheslav Molotov]]; it portrayed the US as being in the grip of monopoly capitalists who were building up military capability "to prepare the conditions for winning world supremacy in a new war".<ref>{{Harvnb|Kydd|2005|p=107}}</ref>

On September 6, 1946, [[James F. Byrnes]] delivered a [[Restatement of Policy on Germany|speech]] in Germany repudiating the [[Morgenthau Plan]] (a proposal to partition and de-industrialize post-war Germany) and warning the Soviets that the US intended to maintain a military presence in Europe indefinitely.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=30}}</ref> As Byrnes admitted a month later, "The nub of our program was to win the German people&nbsp;[...] it was a battle between us and Russia over minds&nbsp;[...]"<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.daz.org/enJamesFByrnes.html|title=Southern Partnership: James F. Byrnes, Lucius D. Clay and Germany, 1945-1947|first=Curtis F|last=Morgan|accessdate=2008-06-09|publisher=James F. Byrnes Institute}}</ref>

A few weeks after the release of this "Long Telegram", former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivered his famous "[[Iron Curtain]]" speech in [[Fulton, Missouri]].<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=94}}</ref> The speech called for an Anglo-American alliance against the Soviets, whom he accused of establishing an "iron curtain" from "[[Szczecin|Stettin]] in the [[Baltic Sea|Baltic]] to [[Trieste]] in the [[Adriatic Sea|Adriatic]]".<ref name = "Schmitz">{{cite encyclopedia|author=Schmitz, David F.|editor=Whiteclay Chambers, John|encyclopedia=The Oxford Companion to American Military History|title=Cold War (1945–91): Causes [entire chapter]|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=xtMKHgAACAAJ&dq=The+Oxford+Companion+to+American+Military+History|accessdate=2008-06-16|year=1999|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=0195071980|ref=harv}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=711|archiveurl=http://web.archive.org/web/20071015163941/http://winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=711|archivedate=2007-10-15|title=Churchill and...Politics: The True Meaning of the Iron Curtain Speech|author=Harriman, Pamela C.|accessdate=2008-06-22|publisher=Winston Churchill Centre|date=Winter 1987–1988}}</ref>

In 1952, Stalin [[Stalin Note|repeatedly proposed a plan to unify East and West Germany under a single government]] chosen in elections supervised by the [[United Nations]] if the new Germany were to stay out of Western military alliances, but this proposal was turned down by the Western powers.

==Containment through the Korean War (1947–53)==
{{Main|Cold War (1947–1953)}}

===Cominform and the Tito–Stalin split===
{{See|Cominform|Tito–Stalin split}}

In September 1947, the Soviets created [[Cominform]], the purpose of which was to enforce orthodoxy within the international communist movement and tighten political control over Soviet [[Satellite state|satellites]] through coordination of communist parties in the [[Eastern Bloc]].<ref name="Gaddis32" /> Cominform faced an embarrassing setback the following June, when the [[Tito–Stalin split]] obliged its members to expel Yugoslavia, which remained Communist but adopted a [[Non-Aligned Movement|non-aligned]] position.<ref>{{Harvnb|Carabott|Sfikas|2004|p=66}}</ref>

===Containment and the Truman Doctrine===
[[Image:Cold war europe military alliances map en.png|thumb|European military alliances.]]
{{Main|Containment|Truman Doctrine}}
By 1947, US president Harry S. Truman's advisers urged him to take immediate steps to counter the Soviet Union's influence, citing Stalin's efforts (amid post-war confusion and collapse) to undermine the US by encouraging rivalries among capitalists that could precipitate another war.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=27}}</ref> In February 1947, the British government announced that it could no longer afford to finance the Greek monarchical military regime in [[Greek Civil War|its civil war]] against communist-led insurgents.

The American government's response to this announcement was the adoption of [[containment]],<ref name="Gaddis28">{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|pp=28–29}}</ref> the goal of which was to stop the spread of communism. Truman delivered a speech that called for the allocation of $400 million to intervene in the war and unveiled the [[Truman Doctrine]], which framed the conflict as a contest between free peoples and totalitarian regimes.<ref name="Gaddis28" /> Even though the insurgents were helped by [[Josip Broz Tito]]'s [[Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia|Yugoslavia]],<ref name="LaFeber 1991" /> US policymakers accused the Soviet Union of conspiring against the Greek royalists in an effort to [[Domino theory|expand]] Soviet influence.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=38}}</ref>

Enunciation of the Truman Doctrine marked the beginning of a US bipartisan defense and foreign policy consensus between [[Republican Party (United States)|Republicans]] and [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democrats]] focused on containment and [[Deterrence theory|deterrence]] that weakened during and after the [[Vietnam War]], but ultimately held steady.<ref>{{Harvnb|Hahn|1993|p=6}}</ref><ref>{{Harvnb|Higgs|2006|p=137}}</ref> Moderate and conservative parties in Europe, as well as social democrats, gave virtually unconditional support to the Western alliance,<ref>{{Harvnb|Moschonas|Elliott|2002|p=21}}</ref> while European and American Communists, paid by the [[KGB]] and involved in its intelligence operations,<ref>{{cite book| last=Andrew| first =Christopher| coauthors=Mitrokhin, Vasili| title= The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB|publisher= Basic Books| year =2000|page =276}}</ref> adhered to Moscow's line, although dissent began to appear after 1956. Other critiques of consensus politics came from [[Opposition to the Vietnam War|anti-Vietnam War activists]], the [[CND]] and the [[nuclear freeze]] movement.<ref>{{Harvnb|Crocker|Hampson|Aall|2007|p=55}}</ref>

===Marshall Plan and Czechoslovak coup d'état===
[[Image:Marshall Plan.png|right|thumb|Map of Cold-War era Europe and the Near East showing countries that received [[Marshall Plan]] aid. The red columns show the relative amount of total aid received per nation.]]
[[Image:Cold war europe economic alliances map en.png|thumb|European economic alliances]]
{{Main|Marshall Plan|Czechoslovak coup d'état of 1948}}
In early 1947, Britain, France and the United States unsuccessfully attempted to reach an agreement with the Soviet Union for a plan envisioning an economically self-sufficient Germany, including a detailed accounting of the industrial plants, goods and infrastructure already removed by the Soviets.<ref name="miller16">{{Harvnb|Miller|2000|p=16}}</ref> In June 1947, in accordance with the [[Truman Doctrine]], the United States enacted the [[Marshall Plan]], a pledge of economic assistance for all European countries willing to participate, including the Soviet Union.<ref name="miller16"/>

The plan's aim was to rebuild the democratic and economic systems of Europe and to counter perceived threats to Europe's balance of power, such as communist parties seizing control through revolutions or elections.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|1990|p=186}}</ref> The plan also stated that European prosperity was contingent upon German economic recovery.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,887417,00.html|title=Pas de Pagaille!|work=[[Time (magazine)|Time]]|date=July 28, 1947|accessdate=2008-05-28}}</ref> One month later, Truman signed the [[National Security Act of 1947]], creating a unified [[United States Department of Defense|Department of Defense]], the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] (CIA), and the [[United States National Security Council|National Security Council]]. These would become the main bureaucracies for US policy in the Cold War.<ref name="Karabell" >{{Harvnb|Karabell|1999|p=916}}</ref>

Stalin believed that economic integration with the West would allow [[Eastern Bloc]] countries to escape Soviet control, and that the US was trying to buy a pro-US re-alignment of Europe.<ref name="Gaddis32">{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=32}}</ref> Stalin therefore prevented Eastern Bloc nations from receiving Marshall Plan aid.<ref name="Gaddis32" /> The Soviet Union's alternative to the Marshall plan, which was purported to involve Soviet subsidies and trade with eastern Europe, became known as the [[Molotov Plan]] (later institutionalized in January 1949 as the [[Comecon]]).<ref name = "LaFeber 1991" /> Stalin was also fearful of a reconstituted Germany; his vision of a post-war Germany did not include the ability to rearm or pose any kind of threat to the Soviet Union.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|pp=105–106}}</ref>

In early 1948, following reports of strengthening "reactionary elements", Soviet operatives executed a [[Czechoslovak coup d'état of 1948|coup d'état]] in [[Czechoslovakia]], the only Eastern Bloc state that the Soviets had permitted to retain democratic structures.<ref name="wettig86">{{Harvnb|Wettig|2008|p=86}}</ref><ref>{{Harvnb|Patterson|1997|p=132}}</ref> The public brutality of the coup shocked Western powers more than any event up to that point, set in a motion a brief scare that war would occur and swept away the last vestiges of opposition to the Marshall Plan in the United States Congress.<ref name="miller19">{{Harvnb|Miller|2000|p=19}}</ref>

The twin policies of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan led to billions in economic and military aid for Western Europe, Greece, and Turkey. With US assistance, the Greek military won its civil war.<ref name = "Karabell" /> The Italian [[Christian Democracy (Italy)|Christian Democrats]] defeated the powerful [[Italian Communist Party|Communist]]-[[Italian Socialist Party|Socialist]] alliance in the [[Italian general election, 1948|elections of 1948]].<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=162}}</ref> At the same time there was increased intelligence and espionage activity, [[Eastern Bloc emigration and defection|Eastern Bloc defections]] and diplomatic expulsions.<ref>{{Harvnb|Cowley|1996|p=157}}</ref>

===Berlin Blockade and airlift===
[[Image:C-47s at Tempelhof Airport Berlin 1948.jpg|thumb|C-47s unloading at [[Tempelhof International Airport|Tempelhof Airport]] in Berlin during the Berlin Blockade.]]
{{Main|Berlin Blockade}}
The United States and Britain merged their western German occupation zones into [[Bizone|"Bizonia"]] (1 January 1947, later "Trizonia" with the addition of France's zone, April 1949).<ref name="miller13">{{Harvnb|Miller|2000|p=13}}</ref> As part of the economic rebuilding of Germany, in early 1948, representatives of a number of Western European governments and the United States announced an agreement for a merger of western German areas into a federal governmental system.<ref name="miller18">{{Harvnb|Miller|2000|p=18}}</ref> In addition, in accordance with the [[Marshall Plan]], they began to re-industrialize and rebuild the German economy, including the introduction of a new [[Deutsche Mark]] currency to replace the old [[Reichsmark]] currency that the Soviets had debased.<ref name="miller31">{{Harvnb|Miller|2000|p=31}}</ref>

Shortly thereafter, Stalin instituted the [[Berlin Blockade]] (24 June 1948 – 12 May 1949), one of the first major crises of the Cold War, preventing food, materials and supplies from arriving in [[West Berlin]].<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=33}}</ref> The United States, Britain, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and several other countries began the massive "Berlin airlift", supplying West Berlin with food and other provisions.<ref>{{Harvnb|Miller|2000|pp=65–70}}</ref>

The Soviets mounted a public relations campaign against the policy change. Once again the East Berlin communists attempted to disrupt the [[Berlin Blockade#December elections|Berlin municipal elections]] (as they had done in the 1946 elections),<ref name="miller13"/> which were held on December 5, 1948 and produced a turnout of 86.3% and an overwhelming victory for the non-Communist parties.<ref>Turner, Henry Ashby, ''The Two Germanies Since 1945: East and West'', Yale University Press, 1987, ISBN 0-300-03865-8, page 29</ref> The results effectively divided the city into East and West versions of its former self. 300,000 Berliners demonstrated and urged the international airlift to continue,<ref>Fritsch-Bournazel, Renata, ''Confronting the German Question: Germans on the East-West Divide'', Berg Publishers, 1990, ISBN 0-85496-684-6, page 143</ref> and the US accidentally created "[[Operation Vittles]]", which supplied candy to German children.<ref name="miller26">{{Harvnb|Miller|2000|p=26}}</ref> In May 1949, Stalin backed down and lifted the blockade.<ref name="Gaddis 2005, p. 34">{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=34}}</ref><ref>{{Harvnb|Miller|2000|pp=180–81}}</ref>

===NATO beginnings and Radio Free Europe===
{{Main|NATO|Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty|Eastern Bloc information dissemination}}
[[Image:Truman signing National Security Act Amendment of 1949.jpg|right|thumb|President Truman signs the [[National Security Act of 1947|National Security Act Amendment of 1949]] with guests in the Oval Office.]]
Britain, France, the United States, Canada and eight other western European countries signed the [[North Atlantic Treaty]] of April 1949, establishing the [[NATO|North Atlantic Treaty Organization]] (NATO).<ref name="Gaddis 2005, p. 34"/> That August, the first Soviet atomic device was detonated in [[Semipalatinsk]], [[Kazakh SSR]].<ref name = "LaFeber 1991" /> Following Soviet refusals to participate in a German rebuilding effort set forth by western European countries in 1948,<ref name="miller18"/><ref name="turner23">{{Harvnb|Turner|1987|p=23}}</ref> the US, Britain and France spearheaded the establishment of West Germany from the [[Bizone|three Western zones of occupation]] in April 1949.<ref name = "Byrd" /><ref>{{cite web|title=Trizonia|publisher=Encyclopædia Britannica|year=2011|accessdate=7 May 2011|url=http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/606151/Trizonia}}</ref> The Soviet Union proclaimed its zone of occupation in Germany the [[East Germany|German Democratic Republic]] that October.<ref name = "Byrd" />

Media in the [[Eastern Bloc]] was an [[Eastern Bloc information dissemination|organ of the state, completely reliant on and subservient to the communist party]], with radio and television organizations being state-owned, while print media was usually owned by political organizations, mostly by the local communist party.<ref name="oneil15">{{cite book|last=O'Neil|first=Patrick|title=Post-communism and the Media in Eastern Europe|publisher=Routledge|year=1997|isbn=0714647659|pages=15–25}}</ref> Soviet propaganda used Marxist philosophy to attack capitalism, claiming labor exploitation and war-mongering imperialism were inherent in the system.<ref>James Wood, p. 111</ref>

Along with the broadcasts of the [[British Broadcasting Corporation]] and the [[Voice of America]] to Eastern Europe,<ref>{{Harvnb|Puddington|2003|p=131}}</ref> a major propaganda effort begun in 1949 was [[Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty]], dedicated to bringing about the peaceful demise of the Communist system in the Eastern Bloc.<ref name="Puddington9" /> Radio Free Europe attempted to achieve these goals by serving as a surrogate home radio station, an alternative to the controlled and party-dominated domestic press.<ref name="Puddington9">{{Harvnb|Puddington|2003|p=9}}</ref> Radio Free Europe was a product of some of the most prominent architects of America's early Cold War strategy, especially those who believed that the Cold War would eventually be fought by political rather than military means, such as George F. Kennan.<ref name="Puddington7">{{Harvnb|Puddington|2003|p=7}}</ref>

American policymakers, including Kennan and [[John Foster Dulles]], acknowledged that the Cold War was in its essence a war of ideas.<ref name=Puddington7 /> The United States, acting through the CIA, funded a long list of projects to counter the Communist appeal among intellectuals in Europe and the developing world.<ref>{{Harvnb|Puddington|2003|p=10}}</ref>

In the early 1950s, the US worked for the rearmament of West Germany and, in 1955, secured its full membership of NATO.<ref name = "Byrd" /> In May 1953, Beria, by then in a government post, had made an unsuccessful proposal to allow the reunification of a neutral Germany to prevent West Germany's incorporation into NATO.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=105}}</ref>

===Chinese Civil War and SEATO===
{{See|Chinese Civil War|Southeast Asia Treaty Organization}}
In 1949, [[Mao Zedong]]'s People's Liberation Army defeated [[Chiang Kai-shek]]'s United States-backed [[Kuomintang]] (KMT) Nationalist Government in China, and the Soviet Union promptly created an alliance with the newly formed [[People's Republic of China]].<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=39}}</ref> Chiang and his KMT government retreated to the island of [[Taiwan]]. Confronted with the [[Chinese Revolution (1949)|communist revolution in China]] and [[Soviet atomic bomb project|the end of the American atomic monopoly in 1949]], the Truman administration quickly moved to escalate and expand the [[containment]] policy.<ref name = "LaFeber 1991" /> In [[NSC-68]], a secret 1950 document,<ref name="Gaddis 2005, p. 164">{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=164}}</ref> the National Security Council proposed to reinforce pro-Western alliance systems and quadruple spending on defense.<ref name = "LaFeber 1991" />

United States officials moved thereafter to expand containment into Asia, Africa, and Latin America, in order to counter revolutionary nationalist movements, often led by communist parties financed by the USSR, fighting against the restoration of Europe's colonial empires in South-East Asia and elsewhere.<ref name="Gaddis 2005, p. 212">{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p= 212}}</ref> In the early 1950s (a period sometimes known as the "[[Pactomania]]"), the US formalized a series of alliances with Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand and the Philippines (notably [[ANZUS]] in 1951 and [[Southeast Asia Treaty Organization|SEATO]] in 1954), thereby guaranteeing the United States a number of long-term military bases.<ref name = "Byrd" />

===Korean War===
{{Main|Korean War}}
One of the more significant impacts of containment was the outbreak of the [[Korean War]]. In June 1950, [[Kim Il-Sung]]'s [[Korean People's Army|North Korean People's Army]] invaded South Korea.<ref name="Stokesbury1990">{{cite book |title= A Short History of the Korean War|last=Stokesbury |first= James L|year= 1990|publisher=Harper Perennial |location= New York|isbn= 0688095135|page=14}}</ref> To Joseph Stalin's surprise,<ref name = "LaFeber 1991" /> the UN Security Council backed the defense of South Korea, though the Soviets were then boycotting meetings in protest that [[Republic of China|Taiwan]] and not [[People's Republic of China|Communist China]] held a permanent seat on the Council.<ref>{{Harvnb|Malkasian|2001|p=16}}</ref> A UN force of personnel from [[South Korea]], the [[United States]], the [[United Kingdom]], [[Turkey]], [[Canada]], [[Australia]], [[France]], [[South Africa]], the [[Philippines]], the [[Netherlands]], [[Belgium]], [[New Zealand]] and other countries joined to stop the invasion.<ref>Fehrenbach, T. R., ''This Kind of War: The Classic Korean War History'', Brasseys, 2001, ISBN 1-57488-334-8, page 305</ref>
[[Image:IncheonLandingMcArthur.jpg|thumb|left|General [[Douglas MacArthur]], UN Command CiC (seated), observes the naval shelling of [[Incheon]] from the [[USS Mount McKinley (AGC-7)|USS ''Mt. McKinley'']], 15 September 1950.]]

Among other effects, the Korean War galvanised [[NATO]] to develop a military structure.<ref>{{Harvnb|Isby|Kamps|1985|pp=13–14}}</ref> Public opinion in countries involved, such as Great Britain, was divided for and against the war. Many feared an escalation into a general war with Communist China, and even nuclear war. The strong opposition to the war often strained Anglo-American relations. For these reasons British officials sought a speedy end to the conflict, hoping to unite Korea under United Nations auspices and withdrawal of all foreign forces.<ref>{{Cite book
| last = Cotton
| first = James
| authorlink =
| coauthors =
| title = The Korean war in history
| publisher = Manchester University Press ND
| year = 1989
| location =
| page = 100
| url =
| doi =
| id =
| isbn = 0719029848}}</ref>

Even though the Chinese and North Koreans were exhausted by the war and were prepared to end it by late 1952, Stalin insisted that they continue fighting, and the [[s:Korean Armistice Agreement|Armistice]] was approved only in July 1953, after Stalin's death.<ref name = "Byrd" /> North Korean leader Kim Il Sung created a highly centralized and brutal [[dictatorship]], according himself unlimited power and generating a formidable [[cult of personality]].<ref>Oberdorfer, Don, ''The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History'', Basic Books, 2001, ISBN 0-465-05162-6, page 10-11</ref><ref>No, Kum-Sok and J. Roger Osterholm, ''A MiG-15 to Freedom: Memoir of the Wartime North Korean Defector who First Delivered the Secret Fighter Jet to the Americans in 1953'', McFarland, 1996, ISBN 0-7864-0210-5</ref> In the South, the [[corruption|corrupt]] American-backed [[Strongman (politics)|strongman]] [[Syngman Rhee]] pursued a comparable system of [[totalitarianism|totalitarian]] rule.<ref>{{Cite book | last = Hastings | first = Max | title = The Korean War | publisher = Simon & Schuster | year = 1988 | location = New York | pages = 89–90 | url = http://books.google.com/books?id=wvOMegzEi3AC | doi = | id = | isbn = 067166834X}}</ref> Albeit Rhee was overthrown after popular protests against his rigged re-election victory in 1960, South Korea subsequently fell under a period of military rule that lasted until the re-establishment of a multi-party system in 1987.

==Crisis and escalation (1953–62)==
{{Main|Cold War (1953–1962)}}

===Khrushchev, Eisenhower and De-Stalinization===
In 1953, changes in political leadership on both sides shifted the dynamic of the Cold War.<ref name="Karabell" >Karabell, p. 916</ref> [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]] was inaugurated president that January. During the last 18&nbsp;months of the Truman administration, the American defense budget had quadrupled, and Eisenhower moved to reduce military spending by a third while continuing to fight the Cold War effectively.<ref name = "LaFeber 1991" />

After the death of [[Joseph Stalin]], [[Nikita Khrushchev]] became the Soviet leader following the deposition and execution of [[Lavrentiy Beria]] and the pushing aside of rivals [[Georgy Malenkov]] and [[Vyacheslav Molotov]]. On February 25, 1956, Khrushchev shocked delegates to the 20th Congress of the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union|Soviet Communist Party]] by [[On the Personality Cult and its Consequences|cataloguing and denouncing Stalin's crimes]].<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=107}}</ref> As part of a campaign of [[de-Stalinization]], he declared that the only way to reform and move away from Stalin's policies would be to acknowledge errors made in the past.<ref name = "Karabell" />

On November 18, 1956, while addressing Western ambassadors at a reception at the Polish embassy in Moscow, Khrushchev used his famous "Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you" expression, shocking everyone present.<ref>"[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,867329,00.html We Will Bury You!]", ''[[Time (magazine)|Time magazine]]'', November 26, 1956. Retrieved on June 26, 2008.</ref> He later claimed that he had not been talking about nuclear war, but rather about the historically determined victory of communism over capitalism.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=84}}</ref> In 1961, Khrushchev declared that even if the USSR was behind the West, within a decade its housing shortage would disappear, consumer goods would be abundant, and within two decades, the "construction of a communist society" in the USSR would be completed "in the main".<ref>{{Harvnb|Tompson|1997|pp=237–239}}</ref>

Eisenhower's secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, initiated a "[[New Look (policy)|New Look]]" for the [[containment]] strategy, calling for a greater reliance on nuclear weapons against US enemies in wartime.<ref name = "Karabell" /> Dulles also enunciated the doctrine of "massive retaliation", threatening a severe US response to any Soviet aggression. Possessing nuclear superiority, for example, allowed Eisenhower to face down Soviet threats to intervene in the Middle East during the 1956 [[Suez Crisis]].<ref name = "LaFeber 1991" />

===Warsaw Pact and Hungarian Revolution===
{{Main|Warsaw Pact|Hungarian Revolution of 1956}}
[[Image:Map of Warsaw Pact countries.png|thumb|right|300px|Map of the [[Warsaw Pact]] countries]]
While [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]]'s death in 1953 slightly relaxed tensions, the situation in Europe remained an uneasy armed truce.<ref name = "Palmowski">{{Harvnb|Palmowski|year=2004}}</ref> The Soviets, who had already created a network of mutual assistance treaties in the [[Eastern Bloc]] by 1949,<ref>Feldbrugge, p. 818</ref> established a formal alliance therein, the [[Warsaw Pact]], in 1955.<ref name = "Byrd" />

The [[Hungarian Revolution of 1956]] occurred shortly after Khrushchev arranged the removal of Hungary's Stalinist leader [[Mátyás Rákosi]].<ref>{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/4/newsid_2739000/2739039.stm|title=Soviet troops overrun Hungary|publisher=BBC News|date=November 4, 1956|accessdate=2008-06-11}}</ref> In response to a popular uprising,<ref>'''Video''': Revolt in Hungary {{[http://files.osa.ceu.hu/holdings/selection/rip/4/av/1956-44.html]{{dead link|date=November 2011}} Narrator: [[Walter Cronkite]], producer: CBS (1956) - Fonds 306, Audiovisual Materials Relating to the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, OSA Archivum, Budapest, Hungary ID number: HU OSA 306-0-1:40}}</ref> the new regime formally disbanded the [[ÁVH|secret police]], declared its intention to withdraw from the [[Warsaw Pact]] and pledged to re-establish free elections. The [[Soviet army]] invaded.<ref name=troops>UN General Assembly ''Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary'' (1957) {{PDF|[http://mek.oszk.hu/01200/01274/01274.pdf Chapter IV. E (Logistical deployment of new Soviet troops), para 181 (p. 56)]|1.47&nbsp;MB}}</ref> Thousands of Hungarians were arrested, imprisoned and deported to the Soviet Union,<ref>{{cite web | title = Report by Soviet Deputy Interior Minister M. N. Holodkov to Interior Minister N. P. Dudorov (15 November 1956) | work = The 1956 Hungarian Revolution, A History in Documents | publisher = George Washington University: The National Security Archive | date = 4 November 2002 | url = http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB76/doc8.pdf | format = PDF | accessdate = 2006-09-02}}</ref> and approximately 200,000 Hungarians fled Hungary in the chaos.<ref name="Cseresneyes">{{cite journal| last = Cseresnyés| first = Ferenc | title = The '56 Exodus to Austria| journal = The Hungarian Quarterly| volume = XL| issue = 154 | pages = 86–101| publisher = Society of the Hungarian Quarterly | url = http://www.hungarianquarterly.com/no154/086.html | date = Summer 1999 | accessdate = 2006-10-09| ref = harv| postscript = . }}</ref> Hungarian leader [[Imre Nagy]] and others were executed following secret trials.<ref name="BBCJune16">[http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/16/ "On This Day 16 June 1989: Hungary reburies fallen hero Imre Nagy"] British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reports on Nagy reburial with full honors. . Retrieved 13 October 2006.</ref>

From 1957 through 1961, Khrushchev openly and repeatedly threatened the West with nuclear annihilation. He claimed that Soviet missile capabilities were far superior to those of the United States, capable of wiping out any American or European city. However, Khrushchev rejected Stalin's belief in the inevitability of war, and declared his new goal was to be "peaceful coexistence".<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=70}}</ref> This formulation modified the Stalin-era Soviet stance, where international [[class struggle]] meant the two opposing camps were on an inevitable collision course where Communism would triumph through global war; now, peace would allow capitalism to collapse on its own,<ref>{{Harvnb|Perlmutter|1997|p=145}}</ref> as well as giving the Soviets time to boost their military capabilities,<ref>{{Harvnb|Njolstad|2004|p=136}}</ref> which remained for decades until Gorbachev's later "new thinking" envisioning peaceful coexistence as an end in itself rather than a form of class struggle.<ref>Breslauer, p. 72</ref>

The events in Hungary produced ideological fractures within the Communist parties of the world, particularly in Western Europe, with great decline in membership as many in both western and communist countries felt disillusioned by the brutal Soviet response.<ref name=Lendvai196>{{Cite book
| last = Lendvai
| first = Paul
| authorlink =
| coauthors =
| title = One day that shook the Communist world: the 1956 Hungarian uprising and its legacy
| publisher = Princeton University Press
| year = 2008
| location =
| page = 196
| url =
| doi =
| id =
| isbn = 0691132828}}</ref> The communist parties in the west would never recover from the effect the Hungarian Revolution had on their membership, a fact that was immediately recognized by some, such as the Yugoslavian politician [[Milovan Djilas]] who shortly after the revolution was crushed said that "The wound which the Hungarian Revolution inflicted on communism can never be completely healed".<ref name=Lendvai196/>

America's pronouncements concentrated on American strength abroad and the success of liberal capitalism.<ref>Joshel, p. 128</ref> However, by the late 1960s, the "battle for men's minds" between two systems of social organization that Kennedy spoke of in 1961 was largely over, with tensions henceforth based primarily on clashing geopolitical objectives rather than ideology.<ref>Rycroft, p. 7</ref>

===Berlin Ultimatum and European integration===
{{Main|Berlin Crisis of 1961 # Berlin Ultimatum}}
[[File:Soviet empire 1960.png|thumb|The maximum territorial extent of countries in the world under Soviet [[Sphere of influence|influence]], after the [[Cuban Revolution]] of 1959 and before the official [[Sino-Soviet split]] of 1961]]
During November 1958, Khrushchev made an unsuccessful attempt to turn all of Berlin into an independent, demilitarized "free city", giving the United States, Great Britain, and France a six-month ultimatum to withdraw their troops from the sectors they still occupied in West Berlin, or he would transfer control of Western access rights to the East Germans. Khrushchev earlier explained to [[Mao Zedong]] that "Berlin is the testicles of the West. Every time I want to make the West scream, I squeeze on Berlin."<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=71}}</ref> NATO formally rejected the ultimatum in mid-December and Khrushchev withdrew it in return for a Geneva conference on the German question.<ref>Glees, pp. 126–27</ref>

More broadly, one hallmark of the 1950s was the beginning of [[European integration]]—a fundamental by-product of the Cold War that Truman and Eisenhower promoted politically, economically, and militarily, but which later administrations viewed ambivalently, fearful that an independent Europe would forge a separate détente with the Soviet Union, which would use this to exacerbate Western disunity.<ref>Cameron‏, p. 156</ref>

===Worldwide competition===
{{Main|1953 Iranian coup d'état|1954 Guatemalan coup d'état|Congo Crisis|Decolonization|Wars of national liberation}}
[[Image:USSR-1961-stamps-СНА.jpg|thumb|170px|right|1961 Soviet [[postage stamp]] demanding freedom for African nations.]]
[[File:USSR stamp P.Lumumba 1961 2k.jpg|thumb|upright|1961 Soviet stamp commemorating [[Patrice Lumumba]], prime minister of the [[Republic of the Congo (Léopoldville)|Republic of the Congo]].]]
Nationalist movements in some countries and regions, notably [[Guatemala]], [[Indonesia]] and [[Indochina]] were often allied with communist groups, or perceived in the West to be allied with communists.<ref name = "Karabell" /> In this context, the United States and the Soviet Union increasingly competed for influence by proxy in the Third World as [[decolonization]] gained momentum in the 1950s and early 1960s;<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|pp=121–124}}</ref> additionally, the Soviets saw continuing losses by imperial powers as presaging the eventual victory of their ideology.<ref>Edelheit, p. 382</ref> Both sides were selling armaments to gain influence.<ref> {{cite book | last1 = Towle | first1 = Philip | title = The Oxford History of Modern War | chapter = Cold War | editors = Charles Townshend | publisher = Oxford University Press | year = 2000 | location = New York, USA | page = 160 | accessdate = 2011-08-12 | isbn = 0192853732}}</ref>

The United States made use of the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] (CIA) to do away with a string of unfriendly Third World governments and to support allied ones.<ref name = "Karabell" /> In 1953, President Eisenhower's Central Intelligence Agency implemented [[Operation Ajax]], a covert operation aimed at the overthrow of the Iranian prime minister, [[Mohammad Mosaddegh]]. The popularly-elected and non-aligned Mosaddegh had been a Middle Eastern nemesis of Britain since nationalizing the British-owned [[Anglo-Iranian Oil Company]] in 1951. Churchill told the United States that Mosaddegh was "increasingly turning towards communism" and was moving Iran towards the Soviet sphere.<ref>Mark J. Gasiorowski and Malcolm Byrne ''Mohammad Mosaddegh and the 1953 Coup in Iran'', Syracuse University Press, May 2004. ISBN 0-8156-3018-2, p. 125.</ref><ref>{{Cite document
|url=http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB126/iran521120.pdf
|format=PDF
|title=United States policy regarding the current situation in Iran
|publisher=George Washington University
|date=20 November 1952
|author=James S. Lay, Jr.
|accessdate=2007-11-07
|ref=harv}} Statement of policy proposed by the National Security Council</ref><ref>{{Cite document
|url=http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB126/iran530320.pdf
|format=PDF
|title=First Progress Report on Paragraph 5-1 of NSC 136/1, "U.S. Policy Regarding the Current Situation in Iran"
|publisher=George Washington University
|author=Walter B. Smith, Undersecretary
|date=20 March 1953
|accessdate=2007-11-07
|ref=harv}}</ref><ref>{{Cite document
|url=http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB126/iran530300.pdf
|publisher=George Washington University
|title=Measures which the United States Government Might Take in Support of a Successor Government to Mosaddegh
|month=March
|year=1953
|format=PDF
|accessdate=2007-11-07
|ref=harv}}</ref> The pro-Western [[shah]], [[Mohammad Reza Pahlavi]], assumed control as an [[autocratic]] [[monarch]].<ref>{{Cite book | last = Watson | first = Cynthia A. | title = U.S. National Security: A Reference Handbook | publisher = ABL-CLIO | year = 2002 | location = Santa Barbara, California | page = 118 | url = http://books.google.com/books?id=Nj2monE0y4cC | doi = | id = | isbn = 9781576075982}}</ref> The shah's policies included the banning of the communist [[Tudeh Party]] and general suppression of political dissent by [[SAVAK]], the shah's domestic security and intelligence agency.

In Guatemala, a [[1954 Guatemalan coup d'état|CIA-backed military coup]] ousted the left-wing President [[Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán]] in 1954.<ref>Stone, ''The Atlantic and Its Enemies'' (2010) pp 199, 256</ref> The post-Arbenz government, a [[military junta]] headed by [[Carlos Castillo Armas]], returned nationalized American property, set up a [[National Committee of Defense Against Communism]], and decreed a [[Preventive Penal Law Against Communism]] at the request of the United States.<ref>{{Cite book | last = Bulmer-Thomas | first = V. | title = The Political Economy of Central America since 1920 | publisher = Cambridge University Press | year = 1987 | location = Cambridge | page = 142 | url = http://books.google.com/books?id=zHE5AAAAIAAJ | doi =| isbn = 9780521342841}}</ref>

In the [[Republic of the Congo (Léopoldville)|Republic of the Congo]], newly independent from [[Belgium]] since June 1960, the CIA-cultivated President [[Joseph Kasa-Vubu]] ordered the dismissal of the democratically-elected Prime Minister [[Patrice Lumumba]] and the Lumumba cabinet in September; Lumumba called for Kasa-Vubu's dismissal instead.<ref name = "Schraeder 1994, 57">{{Cite book | last = Schraeder | first = Peter J. | title = United States Foreign Policy Toward Africa: Incrementalism, Crisis, and Change | publisher = Cambridge University Press | year = 1994 | location = Cambridge | page = 57 | url = http://books.google.com/books?id=goKxyUia-7UC | doi = | id = | isbn = 9780521466776}}</ref> In the ensuing [[Congo Crisis]], the CIA-backed Colonel [[Mobutu]] quickly mobilized his forces to seize power through a military coup d'état.<ref name = "Schraeder 1994, 57"/>

In [[British Guiana]], the leftist [[People's Progressive Party (Guyana)|People's Progressive Party]] (PPP) candidate [[Cheddi Jagan]] won the position of chief minister in a colonially-administered election in 1953, but was quickly forced to resign from power after Britain's suspension of the still-dependent nation's constitution.<ref name = "Rose 2002, 167">{{Cite book | last = Rose | first = Euclid A. | title = Dependency and Socialism in the Modern Caribbean: Superpower Intervention in Guyana, Jamaica, and Grenada, 1970-1985 | publisher = Lexington Books | year = 2002 | location = Lanham | page = 57 | url = http://books.google.com/books?id=KkPb3-krfQgC | doi = | id = | isbn = 9780739104484}}</ref> Embarrassed by the landslide electoral victory of Jagan's allegedly Marxist party, the British imprisoned the PPP's leadership and maneuvered the organization into a divisive rupture in 1955, engineering a split between Jagan and his PPP colleagues.<ref name = "Mars & Young 2004, xviii">Mars, Perry & Alma H. Young (2004). [http://books.google.com/books?id=F4lJBFU-k1wC ''Caribbean Labor and Politics: Legacies of Cheddi Jagan and Michael Manley'']. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. p. xviii. ISBN 978-0-8143-3211-5.</ref> Jagan again won the colonial elections in 1957 and 1961; despite Britain's shift to a reconsideration of its view of the left-wing Jagan as a Soviet-style communist at this time, the United States pressured the British to withhold [[Guyana]]'s independence until an alternative to Jagan could be identified, supported, and brought into office.<ref>{{Cite book | last = Palmer | first = Colin A. | title = Cheddi Jagan and the Politics of Power: British Guiana's Struggle for Independence | publisher = University of North Carolina Press | year = 2010 | location = Chapel Hill | pages = 247–248 | url = http://books.google.com/books?id=NHd1sxVg4XwC | doi = | id = | isbn = 9780807834169}}</ref>

Worn down by the [[First Indochina War|communist guerrilla war for Vietnamese independence]] and handed a watershed defeat by communist [[Vietminh]] rebels at the 1954 [[Battle of Điện Biên Phủ]], the French accepted a negotiated abandonment of their colonial stake in [[Vietnam]]. [[Geneva Conference (1954)|Peace accords signed in Geneva]] left Vietnam divided between a pro-Soviet administration in [[North Vietnam]] and a pro-Western administration in [[South Vietnam]] at the [[17th parallel north]]. Between 1954 and 1961, Eisenhower's United States sent economic aid and military advisers to strengthen South Vietnam's pro-Western regime against communist efforts to destabilize it.<ref name = "LaFeber 1991"/>

Many emerging nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America rejected the pressure to choose sides in the East-West competition. In 1955, at the [[Asian-African Conference|Bandung Conference]] in Indonesia, dozens of Third World governments resolved to stay out of the Cold War.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=126}}</ref> The consensus reached at Bandung culminated with the creation of the [[Belgrade]]-headquartered [[Non-Aligned Movement]] in 1961.<ref name = "Karabell" /> Meanwhile, Khrushchev broadened Moscow's policy to establish ties with [[India]] and other key neutral states. Independence movements in the Third World transformed the post-war order into a more pluralistic world of decolonized African and Middle Eastern nations and of rising nationalism in Asia and Latin America.<ref name = "LaFeber 1991" />

===Sino-Soviet split, space race, ICBMs===
[[Image:Space Race 1957-1975 black text.png|thumb|right|Charting the progress of the [[Space Race]] in 1957-1975.]]
{{Main|Sino-Soviet split|Space Race}}
The period after 1956 was marked by serious setbacks for the Soviet Union, most notably the breakdown of the Sino-Soviet alliance, beginning the [[Sino-Soviet split]]. Mao had defended Stalin when Khrushchev attacked him after his death in 1956, and treated the new Soviet leader as a superficial upstart, accusing him of having lost his revolutionary edge.<ref name="Gaddis142" /> For his part, Khrushchev, disturbed by Mao’s glib attitude toward nuclear war, referred to the Chinese leader as a "lunatic on a throne".<ref>{{cite book|last=Kempe|first=Frederick|title=Berlin 1961|year=2011|publisher=Penguin Group (USA)|isbn=0399157298|page=42}}</ref>

After this, Khrushchev made many desperate attempts to reconstitute the Sino-Soviet alliance, but Mao considered it useless and denied any proposal.<ref name="Gaddis142">{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=142}}</ref> The Chinese-Soviet animosity spilled out in an intra-communist propaganda war.<ref>Lüthi, pp. 273-276</ref> Further on, the Soviets focused on a bitter rivalry with Mao's China for leadership of the global communist movement.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|pp=140–142}}</ref>

On the [[nuclear weapon]]s front, the United States and the USSR pursued nuclear rearmament and developed long-range weapons with which they could strike the territory of the other.<ref name = "Byrd" /> In August 1957, the Soviets successfully launched the world's first [[intercontinental ballistic missile]] (ICBM)<ref>Lackey, p. 49</ref> and in October, launched the first Earth satellite, [[Sputnik program|Sputnik]].<ref>{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/4/newsid_2685000/2685115.stm|title=Sputnik satellite blasts into space|publisher=BBC News|date=October 4, 1957|accessdate=2008-06-11}}</ref> The launch of Sputnik inaugurated the [[Space Race]]. This culminated in the [[Apollo program|Apollo Moon landings]], which astronaut [[Frank Borman]] later described as "just a battle in the Cold War."<ref>{{cite web| title = To Boldly Go|author=Klesius, Michael| publisher = ''Air & Space''| url = http://www.airspacemag.com/space-exploration/To-Boldly-Go.html|accessdate=2009-01-07|date=2008-12-19}}</ref>

===Cuban Revolution and the Bay of Pigs Invasion===
{{Main|Cuban Revolution|Bay of Pigs Invasion}}
[[Image:M-26-7.svg|thumb|right|Flag of the [[26th July Movement]].]]

In [[Cuba]], the [[26th of July Movement]] seized power in January 1959, toppling President [[Fulgencio Batista]], whose unpopular regime had been denied arms by the Eisenhower administration.<ref>{{Cite book | last = Blumberg | first = Arnold | title = Great Leaders, Great Tyrants?: Contemporary Views of World Rulers Who Made History | publisher = Greenwood Press | year = 1995 | location = Westport, Connecticut | url = http://books.google.com/books?id=nofUu5tvJ18C | doi = | id = | isbn = 9780313287510 | pages = 23–24}}</ref>

Diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States continued for some time after Batista's fall, but President Eisenhower deliberately left the capital to avoid meeting Cuba's young revolutionary leader [[Fidel Castro]] during the latter's trip to [[Washington, D.C.|Washington]] in April, leaving [[Vice President of the United States|Vice President]] [[Richard Nixon]] to conduct the meeting in his place.<ref>{{Cite book | last = Lechuga Hevia | first = Carlos | title = Cuba and the Missile Crisis | publisher = Ocean Press | year = 2001 | location = Melbourne, Australia | page = 142 | url = http://books.google.com/books?id=aKLrYxcDg2wC | doi = | id = | isbn = 9781876175344}}</ref> Eisenhower's officials were not sure as to whether Castro was a communist, but hostile toward the Cubans' efforts to decrease their economic reliance on the United States.<ref name = "Smith 1998, 95">{{Cite book | last = Smith | first = Joseph | title = The Cold War 1945-1991 | publisher = Blackwell | year = 1998 | location = Oxford | page = 95 | url = http://books.google.com/books?id=FnnF9NKMJdkC | doi = | id = | isbn = 9780631191384}}</ref>

In January 1961, just prior to leaving office, Eisenhower formally severed relations with the Cuban government. In April 1961, the administration of newly-elected American President [[John F. Kennedy]] mounted an unsuccessful CIA-organized ship-borne invasion of the island at Playa Girón and Playa Larga in [[Las Villas Province]]{{mdash}}a failure that publicly humiliated the United States.<ref name = "Smith 1998, 95"/> Castro responded by embracing [[Marxism-Leninism]], and the Soviet Union pledged to provide support.<ref name = "Smith 1998, 95"/>

===Berlin Crisis of 1961===
[[Image:Checkpoint Charlie 1961-10-27.jpg|thumb|[[Soviet Union|Soviet]] tanks face US tanks at [[Checkpoint Charlie]], on October 27, during the Berlin Crisis of 1961]]
{{Main|Berlin Crisis of 1961|Berlin Wall|Eastern Bloc emigration and defection}}
The [[Berlin Crisis of 1961]] was the last major incident in the Cold War regarding the status of Berlin and [[History of Germany since 1945|post–World War II Germany]]. By the early 1950s, the [[Eastern Bloc emigration and defection|Soviet approach to restricting emigration movement]] was emulated by most of the rest of the [[Eastern Bloc]].<ref name="dowty114">{{Harvnb|Dowty|1989|p=114}}</ref> However, hundreds of thousands of [[East Germany|East Germans]] annually emigrated to [[West Germany]] through a "loophole" in the system that existed between East and West [[Berlin]], where the four occupying World War II powers governed movement.<ref name="harrison99">{{Harvnb|Harrison|2003|p=99}}</ref>

The emigration resulted in a massive "[[brain drain]]" from East Germany to West Germany of younger educated professionals, such that nearly 20% of East Germany's population had migrated to West Germany by 1961.<ref name="dowty122">{{Harvnb|Dowty|1989|p=122}}</ref> That June, the [[Soviet Union]] issued a new [[ultimatum]] demanding the withdrawal of [[Allies of World War II|Allied]] forces from [[West Berlin]].<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=114}}</ref> The request was rebuffed, and on August 13, East Germany erected a barbed-wire barrier that would eventually be expanded through construction into the [[Berlin Wall]], effectively closing the loophole.<ref name="pearson75">{{Harvnb|Pearson|1998|p=75}}</ref>

===Cuban Missile Crisis and Khrushchev ouster===
{{Main|Cuban Project|Cuban Missile Crisis}}
[[File:P-2H Neptune over Soviet ship Oct 1962.jpg|thumb|A [[U.S. Navy]] [[P-2 Neptune|P-2]] of VP-18 flying over a Soviet freighter during the Cuban Missile Crisis.]]

Continuing to seek ways to oust Castro following the Bay of Pigs Invasion, Kennedy and his administration experimented with various ways of covertly facilitating the overthrow of the Cuban government. Significant hopes were pinned on a covert program named the [[Cuban Project]], devised under the Kennedy administration in 1961.

In February 1962, Khrushchev learned of the American plans regarding Cuba: a "Cuban project"{{mdash}}approved by the CIA and stipulating the overthrow of the Cuban government in October, possibly involving the American military{{mdash}}and yet one more Kennedy-ordered operation to assassinate Castro.<ref name = "Zubok 1994, 158-159">Zubok, Vladislav M. (1994). "Unwrapping the Enigma: What Was Behind the Soviet Challenge in the 1960s?". In Diane B. Kunz (Ed.), ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=SiVTA31wrzEC The Diplomacy of the Crucial Decade: American Foreign Relations During the 1960s]''. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 158-159. ISBN 978-0-231-08177-1.</ref> Preparations to install Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba were undertaken in response.<ref name = "Zubok 1994, 158-159"/>

Alarmed, Kennedy considered various reactions, and ultimately responded to the installation of nuclear missiles in Cuba with a naval blockade and presented an ultimatum to the Soviets. Khrushchev backed down from a confrontation, and the Soviet Union removed the missiles in return for an American pledge not to invade Cuba again.<ref>{{Cite book | last = Jones | first = Howard | title = Crucible of Power: A History of American Foreign Relations from 1945 | publisher = Rowman & Littlefield | year = 2009 | location = Lanham | page = 122 | url = http://books.google.com/books?id=WwEu5Yv9KiUC | doi = | id = | isbn = 9780742564541}}</ref>

The [[Cuban Missile Crisis]] (October–November 1962) brought the world closer to nuclear war than ever before.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=82}}</ref> It further demonstrated the concept of [[mutual assured destruction|mutually assured destruction]], that neither nuclear power was prepared to use nuclear weapons fearing total destruction via nuclear retaliation.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=80}}</ref> The aftermath of the crisis led to the first efforts in the [[nuclear arms race]] at nuclear disarmament and improving relations,<ref name = "Palmowski" /> although the Cold War's first arms control agreement, the [[Antarctic Treaty System|Antarctic Treaty]], had come into force in 1961.<ref>National Research Council Committee on Antarctic Policy and Science, p. 33</ref>

In 1964, Khrushchev's Kremlin colleagues managed to [[Nikita Khrushchev#Removal|oust]] him, but allowed him a peaceful retirement.<ref name="Gaddis119">{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|pp=119–120}}</ref> Accused of rudeness and incompetence, he was also credited with ruining Soviet agriculture and bringing the world to the [[Brinkmanship (Cold War)|brink of nuclear war]].<ref name="Gaddis119" /> Khrushchev had become an international embarrassment when he authorized construction of the Berlin Wall, a public humiliation for Marxism-Leninism.<ref name="Gaddis119" />

==Confrontation through détente (1962–79)==
{{Main|Cold War (1962–1979)}}
[[File:Aldrin Apollo 11 original.jpg|right|thumb|The United States [[Apollo 11|reached the moon]] in 1969—a milestone in the [[space race]].]]
[[Image:F-4B VF-151 CV-41 TU-95.jpg|right|thumb|United States Navy [[F-4 Phantom II]] intercepts a Soviet [[Tupolev Tu-95]] D aircraft in the early 1970s]]
In the course of the 1960s and 1970s, Cold War participants struggled to adjust to a new, more complicated pattern of international relations in which the world was no longer divided into two clearly opposed blocs.<ref name = "Karabell" /> From the beginning of the post-war period, Western Europe and Japan rapidly recovered from the destruction of World War II and sustained strong economic growth through the 1950s and 1960s, with [[per capita]] [[GDP]]s approaching those of the United States, while [[Eastern Bloc economies|Eastern Bloc economies stagnated]].<ref name="Karabell" /><ref name="hardt16">{{Harvnb|Hardt|Kaufman|1995|p=16}}</ref>

As a result of the [[1973 oil crisis]], combined with the growing influence of Third World alignments such as the [[OPEC|Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries]] (OPEC) and the [[Non-Aligned Movement]], less-powerful countries had more room to assert their independence and often showed themselves resistant to pressure from either superpower.<ref name="Gaddis 2005, p. 212"/> Meanwhile, Moscow was forced to turn its attention inward to deal with the Soviet Union's deep-seated domestic economic problems.<ref name="Karabell" /> During this period, Soviet leaders such as [[Leonid Brezhnev]] and [[Alexei Kosygin]] embraced the notion of [[détente]].<ref name = "Karabell" />

===French NATO withdrawal===
{{Main|NATO#French withdrawal from NATO command}}
The unity of NATO was breached early in its history, with a crisis occurring during [[Charles de Gaulle]]'s presidency of France from 1958 onwards. De Gaulle protested at the United States' strong role in the organization and what he perceived as a [[Special Relationship|special relationship]] between the United States and the United Kingdom. In a memorandum sent to President [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]] and Prime Minister [[Harold Macmillan]] on 17 September 1958, he argued for the creation of a tripartite directorate that would put France on an equal footing with the United States and the United Kingdom, and also for the expansion of NATO's coverage to include geographical areas of interest to France, most notably [[French Algeria]], where France was waging a counter-insurgency and sought NATO assistance.<ref name=deGuaulle>{{Cite book
| last = Menon‏
| first = Anand
| authorlink =
| coauthors =
| title = France, NATO, and the limits of independence, 1981-97: the politics of ambivalence
| publisher = Palgrave Macmillan
| year = 2000
| location =
| page = 11
| url =
| doi =
| id =
| isbn = 0312229313}}</ref>

Considering the response given to be unsatisfactory, de Gaulle began the development of an [[Strike Force (France)|independent French nuclear deterrent]] and in 1966 withdrew from NATO's military structures and expelled NATO troops from French soil.<ref>Crawley p.431</ref>

===Czechoslovakia invasion===
{{Main|Prague Spring|Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia}}
In 1968, a period of political liberalization in [[Czechoslovakia]] called the [[Prague Spring]] took place that included "[[Action Programme (1968)|Action Program]]" of liberalizations, which described increasing [[freedom of the press]], freedom of speech and freedom of movement, along with an economic emphasis on [[consumer goods]], the possibility of a multiparty government, limiting the power of the secret police<ref>Ello (ed.), Paul (April 1968). Control Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, "Action Plan of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (Prague, April 1968)" in ''Dubcek’s Blueprint for Freedom: His original documents leading to the invasion of Czechoslovakia.'' William Kimber & Co. 1968, pp 32, 54</ref><ref>{{cite web | last = Von Geldern | first = James | last2 = Siegelbaum | first2 = Lewis| publisher = Soviethistory.org| title = The Soviet-led Intervention in Czechoslovakia| url = http://soviethistory.org/index.php?action=L2&SubjectID=1968czechoslovakia&Year=1968| accessdate = 2008-03-07 }}</ref> and potentially withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact.<ref name="Gaddis 2005, p. 150">{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=150}}</ref>

In answer to the Prague Spring, the [[Soviet army]], together with most of their Warsaw Pact allies, [[Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia|invaded Czechoslovakia]].<ref>{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/21/newsid_2781000/2781867.stm|title=Russia brings winter to Prague Spring|publisher=BBC News|date=August 21, 1968|accessdate=2008-06-10}}</ref> The invasion was followed by a wave of emigration, including an estimated 70,000 Czechs initially fleeing, with the total eventually reaching 300,000.<ref>{{cite web | last = Čulík| first = Jan| title = Den, kdy tanky zlikvidovaly české sny Pražského jara| url = http://www.britskelisty.cz/9808/19980821h.html| publisher = Britské Listy| accessdate = 2008-01-23 }}</ref> The invasion sparked intense protests from Yugoslavia, Romania and China, and from Western European communist parties.<ref name="Gaddis 2005, p. 154">{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=154}}</ref>

===Brezhnev Doctrine===
[[Image:Leonid Brezhnev and Richard Nixon talks in 1973.png|left|thumb|[[Leonid Brezhnev]] and [[Richard Nixon]] during Brezhnev's June 1973 visit to Washington; this was a high-water mark in détente between the United States and the Soviet Union.]]
{{Main|Brezhnev Doctrine}}
In September 1968, during a speech at the Fifth Congress of the [[Polish United Workers' Party]] one month after the [[Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia|invasion of Czechoslovakia]], Brezhnev outlined the [[Brezhnev Doctrine]], in which he claimed the right to violate the sovereignty of any country attempting to replace Marxism-Leninism with capitalism. During the speech, Brezhnev stated:<ref name="Gaddis 2005, p. 150"/>
{{quote|When forces that are hostile to socialism try to turn the development of some socialist country towards capitalism, it becomes not only a problem of the country concerned, but a common problem and concern of all socialist countries.}}
The doctrine found its origins in the failures of Marxism-Leninism in states like Poland, Hungary and East Germany, which were facing a declining standard of living contrasting with the prosperity of West Germany and the rest of Western Europe.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=153}}</ref>

===Third World escalations===
{{See also|United States occupation of the Dominican Republic (1965–1966)|Indonesian killings of 1965–1966|Vietnam War|1973 Chilean coup d'état|Operation Condor|Six Day War|War of Attrition|Yom Kippur War|Ogaden War|Angolan Civil War|Indonesian invasion of East Timor}}
[[File:Glassboro-meeting1967.jpg|thumb|right|[[Alexei Kosygin]] (left) next to U.S. President [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] (right) during the [[Glassboro Summit Conference]]]]
In late April 1965, President [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] landed some 22,000 troops in the [[Dominican Republic]] for a one-year occupation of the republic in an invasion codenamed [[United States occupation of the Dominican Republic (1965–1966)|Operation Power Pack]], citing the threat of the emergence of a Cuban-style revolution in Latin America.<ref name = "LaFeber 1991" /> Presidential elections held in 1966, during the occupation, handed victory to the conservative [[Joaquín Balaguer]]. Although Balaguer enjoyed a real base of support from sectors of the elites as well as peasants, his formally running [[Dominican Revolutionary Party]] (PRD) opponent, former President [[Juan Bosch]], did not actively campaign.<ref name = "Itzigsohn 2000, 41-42">{{Cite book | last = Itzigsohn | first = José | title = Developing Poverty: The State, Labor Market Deregulation, and the Informal Economy in Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic | publisher = Penn State University Press | year = 2000 | location = University Park, Pennsylvania | pages = 41–42 | url = http://books.google.com/books?id=b7Jo9GtxMEcC | doi = | id = | isbn = 9780271020280}}</ref> The PRD's activists were violently harassed by the Dominican police and armed forces.<ref name = "Itzigsohn 2000, 41-42"/>

In [[Indonesia]], the hardline anti-communist [[General Suharto]] wrested control of the state from his predecessor [[Sukarno]] [[Transition to the New Order|in an attempt to establish a "New Order"]]. From 1965 to 1966, the military [[Indonesian killings of 1965–1966|orchestrated the mass killing]] of an estimated half-million members and sympathizers of the [[Indonesian Communist Party]] and other leftist organizations.<ref name = "Farid 2007">Farid, Hilmar (2007). "Mass Killings and Capitalist Expansion, 1965-1966". In Kuan-Hsing Chen & Chua Beng Huat (Ed.), ''[The Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Reader]''. London: Routledge. pp. 207-222. ISBN 0-415-43134-4.</ref>

Escalating the scale of American intervention in the ongoing conflict between [[Ngô Đình Diệm]]'s [[South Vietnam]]ese government and the communist [[Viet Cong|National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam]] (NLF) insurgents opposing it, Johnson stationed some 575,000 troops in Southeast Asia to defeat the NLF and their North Vietnamese allies in the [[Vietnam War]], 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 the world's most powerful superpower at the hands of one of the world's poorest nations.<ref name = "LaFeber 1991" />

In [[Chile]], the [[Socialist Party of Chile|Socialist Party]] candidate [[Salvador Allende]] won the presidential election of 1970, becoming the first democratically elected [[Marxist]] to become president of a country in the [[Americas]].<ref name="BBC Allende Profile 2003">{{cite news | last = | first = | title = Profile of Salvador Allende | date = 8 September 2003 | work = bbc.co.uk | agency = [[BBC]] | url = http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3089846.stm | accessdate = 25 January 2011 }}</ref> Backed by the CIA, General [[Augusto Pinochet]] carried out a violent [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|coup against the government on September 11, 1973]] and quickly consolidated all political power as a military dictator. Allende's reforms of the economy were rolled back and leftist opponents were killed or detained in internment camps under the [[Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional]] (DINA).

Additionally, the continent-wide South American [[Operation Condor]]{{mdash}}employed by dictators in [[Argentina]], [[Brazil]], [[Bolivia]], Chile, [[Uruguay]], and [[Paraguay]] to suppress leftist dissent{{mdash}}was backed by the United States, which (sometimes accurately) perceived Soviet or Cuban support behind these opposition movements.<ref>McSherry, p. 13</ref>

Displeasing the United States, [[Jamaica]] began pursuing closer relations with the Cuban government as a result of [[Michael Manley]]'s election in 1972.<ref name = "Mars & Young 2004, xvi">Mars, Perry & Alma H. Young (2004). [http://books.google.com/books?id=F4lJBFU-k1wC ''Caribbean Labor and Politics: Legacies of Cheddi Jagan and Michael Manley'']. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. p. xvi. ISBN 978-0-8143-3211-5.</ref> The United States' covert response included financing Manley's political opponents, the instigation of mutiny in the [[Jamaican army]], and the fitting out of a private mercernary army against the Manley government.<ref name="Mars & Young 2004, xviii"/> [[Michael Manley#Violence|Violence ensued]].

Moreover, the Middle East continued to be a source of contention. Egypt, which received the bulk of its arms and economic assistance from the USSR, was a troublesome client, with a reluctant Soviet Union feeling obliged to assist in both the 1967 [[Six-Day War]] (with advisers and technicians) and the [[War of Attrition]] (with pilots and aircraft) against pro-Western Israel.<ref>Stone, p. 230</ref> Despite the beginning of an Egyptian shift from a pro-Soviet to a pro-American orientation in 1972 (under Egypt's new leader [[Anwar El Sadat]]),<ref name = "Grenville & Wasserstein 1987, 701">Grenville, J.A.S. & Bernard Wasserstein (1987). ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=RYyyAAAAIAAJ Treaties of the Twentieth Century: A History and Guide with Texts]'', Volume 2. London and New York: Methuen. ISBN 978-0-416-38080-4.</ref> rumors of imminent Soviet intervention on the Egyptians' behalf during the 1973 [[Yom Kippur War]] brought about a massive American mobilization that threatened to wreck détente.<ref>Kumaraswamy, p. 127</ref> Although pre-Sadat Egypt had been the largest recipient of Soviet aid in the Middle East, the Soviets were also successful in establishing close relations with communist [[South Yemen]], as well as the nationalist governments of [[Algeria]] and [[Iraq]].<ref name = "Grenville & Wasserstein 1987, 701"/> Indirect Soviet assistance to the Palestinian side of the [[Israeli–Palestinian conflict]] included support for [[Yasser Arafat]]'s [[Palestine Liberation Organization]] (PLO).<ref>Friedman, p. 330</ref>

In Africa, [[Somalia|Somali]] army officers led by [[Mohamed Siad Barre]] carried out a bloodless coup in 1969, creating the socialist [[Somali Democratic Republic]]. The Soviet Union vowed to support Somalia. Four years later, the pro-American Ethiopian Emperor [[Haile Selassie]] was overthrown in a 1974 coup by the [[Derg]], a radical group of Ethiopian army officers led by the pro-Soviet [[Mengistu Haile Mariam]], who built up relations with the Cubans and Soviets.<ref name = "Erlich 2008, 84-86">{{Cite book | last = Erlich | first = Reese | title = Dateline Havana: The Real Story of U.S. Policy and the Future of Cuba | publisher = PoliPoint Press | year = 2008 | location = Sausalito, California | pages = 84–86 | url = http://books.google.com/books?id=7q3ibcq_vxQC | doi = | id = | isbn = 9780981576978}}</ref> When fighting between the Somalis and Ethiopians broke out in the 1977-1978 Somali-Ethiopian [[Ogaden War]], Barre lost his Soviet support and allied with the United States. Cuban troops took part in the war on the side of the Ethiopians.<ref name = "Erlich 2008, 84-86"/>

The 1974 [[Portugal|Portuguese]] [[Carnation Revolution]] against the authoritarian ''[[Estado Novo (Portugal)|Estado Novo]]'' returned Portugal to a multi-party system and facilitated the independence of the Portuguese colonies [[Angola]] and [[East Timor]]. In Africa, where Angolan rebels had waged a [[Angolan War of Independence|multi-faction independence war against Portuguese rule since 1961]], a [[Angolan Civil War|two-decade civil war]] replaced the anti-colonial struggle as fighting erupted between the communist [[People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola]] (MPLA), backed by the Cubans and Soviets, and the [[National Liberation Front of Angola]] (FNLA), backed by the United States, the People's Republic of China, and Mobutu's government in [[Zaire]]. The United States, the [[South Africa under apartheid|apartheid government of South Africa]], and several other African governments also supported a third faction, the [[National Union for the Total Independence of Angola]] (UNITA). Without bothering to consult the Soviets in advance, the Cuban government sent its troops to fight alongside the MPLA.<ref name = "Erlich 2008, 84-86"/> Apartheid South Africa sent troops to support the UNITA, but the MPLA, bolstered by Cuban personnel and Soviet assistance, eventually gained the upper hand.<ref name = "ref name = "Erlich 2008, 84-86"/>

In southeast Asia, the colony of [[East Timor]] [[Unilateral declaration of independence|unilaterally declared independence]] under the left-wing [[Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor]] (Fretilin) in November 1975. Supported by [[Australia]] and the United States, Suharto's Indonesia [[Indonesian invasion of East Timor|invaded]] in December{{mdash}}the beginning of [[Indonesian occupation of East Timor|an occupation that would last a quarter-century]].<ref>{{Cite book | last = Doyle | first = Randall Jordan | title = America and China: Asia-Pacific Rim Hegemony in the Twenty-First Century | publisher = Lexington Books | year = 2007 | location = Lanham | page = 119 | url = http://books.google.com/books?id=Z_W7u44IjK8C | doi = | id = | isbn = 9780739117026}}</ref>

===Sino-American rapproachment===
{{Main|1972 Nixon visit to China}}
[[Image:Nixon Mao 1972-02-29.png|thumb|[[Richard Nixon]] meets with [[Mao Zedong]] in 1972.]]
As a result of the [[Sino–Soviet split]], tensions along the Chinese–Soviet border [[Sino–Soviet border conflict|reached their peak]] in 1969, and United States President [[Richard Nixon]] decided to use the conflict to shift the balance of power towards the West in the Cold War.<ref>Dallek, Robert (2007), p. 144.</ref> The Chinese had sought improved relations with the Americans in order to gain advantage over the Soviets as well.

In February 1972, Nixon announced a stunning rapprochement with Mao's China<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|pp=149–152}}</ref> by traveling to Beijing and meeting with [[Mao Zedong]] and [[Zhou Enlai]]. At this time, the USSR achieved rough nuclear parity with the United States; meanwhile, the [[Vietnam War]] both weakened America's influence in the Third World and cooled relations with Western Europe.<ref>Buchanan, pp. 168–169</ref> Although indirect conflict between Cold War powers continued through the late 1960s and early 1970s, tensions were beginning to ease.<ref name = "Palmowski" />

===Nixon, Brezhnev, and détente===
[[Image:Carter Brezhnev sign SALT II.jpg|thumb|right|[[Leonid Brezhnev]] and [[Jimmy Carter]] sign SALT II treaty, June 18, 1979, in [[Vienna]]]]
{{Main|Strategic Arms Limitation Talks|Helsinki Accords|Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe}}

Following his China visit, Nixon met with Soviet leaders, including Brezhnev in Moscow.<ref name="bbc-nb">{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/22/newsid_4373000/4373149.stm|title=President Nixon arrives in Moscow|publisher=BBC News|date=May 22, 1972|accessdate=2008-06-10}}</ref> These [[Strategic Arms Limitation Talks]] resulted in two landmark arms control treaties: [[SALT I]], the first comprehensive limitation pact signed by the two superpowers,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.nixonlibrary.gov/thelife/apolitician/thepresident/index.php|title=The President|accessdate=2009-03-27|publisher=Richard Nixon Presidential Library}}</ref> and the [[Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty]], which banned the development of systems designed to intercept incoming missiles. These aimed to limit the development of costly anti-ballistic missiles and nuclear missiles.<ref name = "Karabell" />

Nixon and Brezhnev proclaimed a new era of "peaceful coexistence" and established the groundbreaking new policy of ''[[détente]]'' (or cooperation) between the two superpowers. Meanwhile, Brezhnev attempted to revive the Soviet economy, which was declining in part because of heavy military expenditures.<ref name = "LaFeber 1991" />
Between 1972 and 1974, the two sides also agreed to strengthen their economic ties,<ref name = "LaFeber 1991" /> including agreements for increased trade. As a result of their meetings, ''détente'' would replace the hostility of the Cold War and the two countries would live mutually.<ref name="bbc-nb"/>

Meanwhile, these developments coincided with the "[[Ostpolitik]]" of West German Chancellor [[Willy Brandt]].<ref name="Gaddis 2005, p. 154"/> Other agreements were concluded to stabilize the situation in Europe, culminating in the [[Helsinki Accords]] signed at the [[Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe|Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe]] in 1975.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=188}}</ref>

===Late 1970s deterioration of relations===
In the 1970s, the [[KGB]], led by [[Yuri Andropov]], continued to persecute distinguished Soviet personalities such as [[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]] and [[Andrei Sakharov]], who were criticising the Soviet leadership in harsh terms.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=186}}</ref> Indirect conflict between the superpowers continued through this period of détente in the Third World, particularly during political crises in the Middle East, Chile, Ethiopia, and Angola.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=178}}</ref>

Although President [[Jimmy Carter]] tried to place another limit on the arms race with a [[Strategic Arms Limitation Talks|SALT II]] agreement in 1979,<ref>{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/18/newsid_4508000/4508409.stm|title=Leaders agree arms reduction treaty|publisher=BBC News|date=June 18, 2008|accessdate=2008-06-10}}</ref> his efforts were undermined by the other events that year, including the [[Iranian Revolution]] and the [[Nicaraguan Revolution]], which both ousted pro-US regimes, and his retaliation against Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in December.<ref name = "LaFeber 1991" />

==Second Cold War (1979–85)==
{{Main|Cold War (1979–1985)}}
The term ''second Cold War'' has been used by some historians to refer to the period of intensive reawakening of Cold War tensions and conflicts in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Tensions greatly increased between the major powers with both sides becoming more militaristic.<ref name = "Halliday" />

===Soviet war in Afghanistan===
{{Main|Soviet war in Afghanistan}}
During December 1979, approximately 75,000 Soviet troops [[Soviet war in Afghanistan|invaded]] Afghanistan in order to support the Marxist government formed by ex-Prime-minister [[Nur Muhammad Taraki]], assassinated that September by one of his party rivals.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=210}}</ref>

In a post-Afghan War interview conducted by French weekly newsmagazine ''[[Le Nouvel Observateur]]'', President [[Jimmy Carter]]'s [[National Security Advisor (United States)|National Security Advisor]] [[Zbigniew Brzezinski]] stated that the president had already signed a directive to provide aid to the anti-communist [[mujahideen]] insurgency against the pro-Soviet [[People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan|PDPA]] government of Afghanistan in July, some six months prior to the Soviet military intervention.<ref name = "Maley 2002, 78">Maley, William (2002). ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=jzX12vtRhckC The Afghanistan Wars]''. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 78. ISBN 978-0-333-80290-8.</ref> Asked by the interviewer if he had regrets, given that "the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan" and that "people didn't believe them," Brzezinski responded: <blockquote>{{cquote|Regret what? The secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: we now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam...<ref name = "Hafez 2010, 176">Hafez, Kai (2010). ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=MkIxwQocXacC Radicalism and Political Reform in the Islamic and Western Worlds]''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 176. ISBN 978-0-521-13711-9.</ref>}}</blockquote>

Carter responded to the Soviet intervention by withdrawing the [[Strategic Arms Limitation Talks|SALT II]] treaty from the [[United States Senate|Senate]], imposing embargoes on grain and technology shipments to the USSR, and demanding a significant increase in military spending, and further announced that the United States would boycott the [[1980 Summer Olympics|1980 Moscow Summer Olympics]]. He described the Soviet incursion as "the most serious threat to the peace since the Second World War".<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=211}}</ref>

===Reagan and Thatcher===
{{See|Reagan Doctrine}}
[[File:Reagan-Thatcher cabinet talks.jpg|thumb|right|alt=Thatcher is the only woman in a room, where a dozen men in suits sit around an oval table. Regan and Thatcher sit opposite each other in the middle of the long axis of the table. The room is which is decorated in white, with drapes, a gold chandelier and a portrait of Lincoln.|Thatcher's Ministry meets with Reagan's Cabinet at the [[White House]], 1981]]

In January 1977, four years prior to becoming president, [[Ronald Reagan]] bluntly stated, in a conversation with [[Richard V. Allen]], his basic expectation in relation to the Cold War. "My idea of American policy toward the Soviet Union is simple, and some would say simplistic," he said. "It is this: We win and they lose. What do you think of that?"<ref>{{cite web|last=Allen |first=Richard V. |url=http://www.hoover.org/publications/hoover-digest/article/7398 |title=The Man Who Won the Cold War |publisher=Hoover.org |date= |accessdate=2011-11-03}}</ref> In 1980, [[Ronald Reagan]] defeated Jimmy Carter in the [[United States presidential election, 1980|1980 presidential election]], vowing to increase military spending and confront the Soviets everywhere.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=189}}</ref> Both Reagan and new British Prime Minister [[Margaret Thatcher]] denounced the Soviet Union and its [[ideology]]. Reagan labeled the Soviet Union an "[[evil empire]]" and predicted that Communism would be left on the "[[ash heap of history]]".<ref name="Gaddis 2005, p. 197">{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=197}}</ref>

Despite anti-American sentiment in Iran as a result of the 1979 [[Iranian Revolution]] against the pro-American shah and an accompanying breakdown in relations with the new [[Ayatollah Khomeini]] government over the [[Iran hostage crisis]], the Reagan administration reached out to the anti-communist Khomeini in an effort to recruit the theocracy into the American camp in the early 1980s. Then-CIA director [[William J. Casey|William Casey]] described the Khomeini government as "faltering and [possibly] moving toward a moment of truth... The U.S. has almost no cards to play; the USSR has many."<ref name = "Fawaz 1999, 72">Gerges, Fawaz A. (1999). [http://books.google.com/books?id=w-l6M4pOnUkC America and Political Islam: Clash of Cultures or Clash of Interests?]''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 72. ISBN 978-0-521-63957-6.</ref> One mode of American support for the Iranians consisted of secret arms sales. In 1983, the CIA passed an extensive list of Iranian communists and other leftists secretly working in the Iranian government to Khomeini's administration.<ref name = "Beinin & Stork 1997, 11-12">Beinin, Joel & Joe Stork (1997). "On the Modernity, Historical Specificity, and International Context of Political Islam". In Joel Beinin & Joe Stork (Eds.), ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=6H7tYLVwVFkC Political Islam: Essays from the Middle East Report]''. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 11. ISBN 978-0-520-20448-5.</ref> A [[Tower Commission]] report later observed that the list was utilized to take "measures, including mass executions, that virtually eliminated the pro-Soviet infrastructure in Iran."<ref name = "Beinin & Stork 1997, 11-12"/>

By early 1985, Reagan's anti-communist position had developed into a stance known as the new [[Reagan Doctrine]]{{mdash}}which, in addition to containment, formulated an additional right to subvert existing communist governments.<ref name = "Graebner, Burns & Siracusa 2008, 76">Graebner Norman A., Richard Dean Burns & Joseph M. Siracusa (2008). ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=r71u_AgE7iYC Reagan, Bush, Gorbachev: Revisiting the End of the Cold War].'' Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. p. 76. ISBN 978-0-313-35241-6.</ref> Besides continuing Carters' policy of supporting the Islamic opponents of the Soviet Union and the Soviet-backed [[People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan|PDPA]] government in Afghanistan, the CIA also sought to weaken the Soviet Union itself by promoting [[political Islam]] in the majority-Muslim [[Soviet Central Asia|Central Asian Soviet Union]].<ref name = "Singh 1995, 130">Singh, Bilveer (1995). "Jemaah Islamiyah". In Wilson John & Swati Parashar (Eds.) ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=cAE-bxSXayMC Terrorism in Southeast Asia: Implications for South Asia]''. Singapore and Delhi: ORF-Pearson-Longman. p. 130. ISBN 978-81-297-0998-1.</ref> Additionally, the CIA encouraged anti-communist Pakistan's [[Inter-Services Intelligence]] (ISI) agency to train Muslims from around the world to participate in the [[jihad]] against the Soviet Union.<ref name = "Singh 1995, 130"/>

===Polish Solidarity movement and martial law===
{{Main|Solidarity (Polish trade union)|Martial law in Poland}}
{{See|Soviet reaction to the Polish crisis of 1980–1981}}
[[Pope John Paul II]] provided a moral focus for [[anti-communism]]; a visit to his native Poland in 1979 stimulated a religious and [[nationalism|nationalist]] resurgence centered on the [[Solidarity (Polish trade union)|Solidarity movement]] that galvanized opposition and may have led to his [[Pope John Paul II assassination attempt|attempted assassination]] two years later.<ref>Henze‏, p. 171</ref>

In December 1981, Poland's [[Wojciech Jaruzelski]] reacted to the crisis by imposing [[Martial law in Poland|a period of martial law]]. Reagan imposed economic sanctions on Poland in response.<ref name="Gaddis219" /> [[Mikhail Suslov]], the Kremlin's top ideologist, advised Soviet leaders not to intervene if Poland fell under the control of Solidarity, for fear it might lead to heavy economic sanctions, representing a catastrophe for the Soviet economy.<ref name="Gaddis219">{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|pp=219–222}}</ref>

===Soviet and US military and economic issues===
{{See|Brezhnev stagnation|Strategic Defense Initiative|RSD-10 Pioneer|MGM-31 Pershing}}
[[Image:US and USSR nuclear stockpiles.svg|thumb|right|US and USSR/Russian nuclear weapons stockpiles, 1945–2006]]
[[Image:SDIO Delta Star.jpg|thumb|upright|Delta 183 launch vehicle lifts off, carrying the [[Strategic Defense Initiative]] sensor experiment "Delta Star".]]
Moscow had built up a military that consumed as much as 25&nbsp;percent of the Soviet Union's gross national product at the expense of [[consumer goods in the Soviet Union|consumer goods]] and investment in civilian sectors.<ref name="LaFeber 2002, p. 332">{{Harvnb|LaFeber|2002|p=332}}</ref> Soviet spending on the [[arms race]] and other Cold War commitments both caused and exacerbated deep-seated structural problems in the Soviet system,<ref> {{cite book | last1 = Towle | first1 = Philip | title = The Oxford History of Modern War | page = 159}}</ref> which saw at least [[Era of Stagnation|a decade of economic stagnation]] during the late Brezhnev years.

Soviet investment in the defense sector was not driven by military necessity, but in large part by the interests of [[nomenklatura|massive party and state bureaucracies]] dependent on the sector for their own power and privileges.<ref>{{Harvnb|LaFeber|2002|p=335}}</ref> The [[Soviet Armed Forces]] became the largest in the world in terms of the numbers and types of weapons they possessed, in the number of troops in their ranks, and in the sheer size of their [[military-industrial complex|military–industrial base]].<ref name = "Odom">{{Harvnb|Odom|2000|p=1}}</ref> However, the quantitative advantages held by the Soviet military often concealed areas{{Which?|date=May 2011}} where the Eastern Bloc dramatically lagged behind the West.<ref>{{Harvnb|LaFeber|2002|p=340}}</ref>

[[Image:USSR stamp S.Smith 1985 5k.jpg|thumb|upright|After ten year old American [[Samantha Smith]] wrote a letter to [[Yuri Andropov]] expressing her fear of nuclear war, Andropov invited Smith to the Soviet Union.]]
By the early 1980s, the USSR had built up a military arsenal and army surpassing that of the United States. Soon after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, president Carter began massively building up the United States military. This buildup was accelerated by the Reagan administration, which increased the military spending from 5.3 percent of GNP in 1981 to 6.5 percent in 1986,<ref>{{Cite book
| last = Carliner‏
| first = Geoffrey
| authorlink =
| coauthors = Alberto Alesina‏
| title = Politics and economics in the eighties: edited by Alberto Alesina and Geoffrey Carliner
| publisher = University of Chicago Press
| year = 1991
| location =
| page = 6
| url =
| doi =
| id =
| isbn = 0226012816}}</ref> the largest peacetime defense buildup in United States history.<ref>{{cite news|work=The Boston Globe|publisher=Encyclopedia.com|accessdate=2008-06-21|date=March 29, 2006|title=Caspar W. Weinberger, 88; Architect of Massive Pentagon Buildup|url=http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P2-7946374.html|author=Feeney, Mark}}</ref>

Tensions continued intensifying in the early 1980s when Reagan revived the [[B-1 Lancer]] program that was canceled by the Carter administration, produced [[LGM-118 Peacekeeper]]s,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/icbm/lgm-118.htm|title=LGM-118A Peacekeeper|accessdate=2007-04-10|date=August 15, 2000|publisher=Federation of American Scientists}}</ref> installed US cruise missiles in Europe, and announced his experimental [[Strategic Defense Initiative]], dubbed "Star Wars" by the media, a defense program to shoot down missiles in mid-flight.<ref name="ShieldSpace?">Lakoff, p. 263</ref>

With the background of a buildup in tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States, and the deployment of Soviet [[RSD-10 Pioneer]] [[ballistic missile]]s targeting Western Europe, NATO decided, under the impetus of the Carter presidency, to deploy [[MGM-31 Pershing]] and cruise missiles in Europe, primarily West Germany.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=202}}</ref> This deployment would have placed missiles just 10&nbsp;minutes' striking distance from Moscow.<ref>Garthoff, p. 88</ref>

After Reagan's military buildup, the Soviet Union did not respond by further building its military<ref>{{cite news|url= http://www.theatlantic.com/past/politics/foreign/reagrus.htm|title=Reagan and the Russians|date=February, 1994|work=The Atlantic|author=Lebow, Richard Ned and Janice Gross Stein|accessdate=2010-05-28}}</ref> because the enormous military expenses, along with inefficient [[Planned economy|planned manufacturing]] and [[collectivization in the Soviet Union|collectivized agriculture]], were already a heavy burden for the [[Economy of the Soviet Union|Soviet economy]].<ref name="Gaidar, Yegor"/> At the same time, [[Saudi Arabia]] increased oil production,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.iet.ru/files/persona/gaidar/un_en.htm|title=Public Expectations and Trust towards the Government: Post-Revolution Stabilization and its Discontents|accessdate=2008-03-15|author=Gaidar, Yegor|publisher=The Institute for the Economy in Transition}}</ref> even as other non-OPEC nations were increasing production.<ref name="EIA">"[http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/contents.html Official Energy Statistics of the US Government]", EIA&nbsp;— International Energy Data and Analysis. Retrieved on July 4, 2008.</ref> These developments contributed to the [[1980s oil glut]], which affected the Soviet Union, as oil was the main source of Soviet export revenues.<ref name="LaFeber 2002, p. 332"/><ref name="Gaidar, Yegor"/> Issues with [[command economy|command economics]],<ref name="hardt1">{{Harvnb|Hardt|Kaufman|1995|p=1}}</ref> oil prices decreases and large military expenditures gradually brought the Soviet economy to stagnation.<ref name="Gaidar, Yegor">Gaidar 2007 pp. 190–205</ref>

On September 1, 1983, the Soviet Union shot down [[Korean Air Lines Flight 007]], a [[Boeing 747]] with 269 people aboard, including sitting Congressman [[Larry McDonald]], when it violated Soviet airspace just past the west coast of [[Sakhalin|Sakhalin Island]] near [[Moneron Island]]&nbsp;—an act which Reagan characterized as a "massacre". This act increased support for military deployment, overseen by Reagan, which stood in place until the later accords between Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev.<ref name="DoernerFive">{{cite news|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,926169-5,00.html|title=Atrocity in the skies|work=Time|date=September 12, 1983|accessdate=2008-06-08 | first1=Strobe | last1=Talbott | first2=Jerry | last2=Hannifin | first3=Ed | last3=Magnuson | first4=William R. | last4=Doerner | first5=Joseph J. | last5=Kane}}</ref> The [[Able Archer 83]] exercise in November 1983, a realistic simulation of a coordinated NATO nuclear release, has been called most dangerous moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis, as the Soviet leadership keeping a close watch on it considered a nuclear attack to be imminent.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=228}}</ref>

US domestic public concerns about intervening in foreign conflicts persisted from the end of the Vietnam War.<ref name="LaFeber323">{{Harvnb|LaFeber|2002|p=323}}</ref> The Reagan administration emphasized the use of quick, low-cost [[counter-insurgency]] tactics to intervene in foreign conflicts.<ref name="LaFeber323" /> In 1983, the Reagan administration intervened in the multisided [[Lebanese Civil War]], invaded [[Grenada]], bombed [[Libya]] and backed the Central American [[Contras]], anti-communist paramilitaries seeking to overthrow the Soviet-aligned [[Sandinista National Liberation Front|Sandinista]] government in Nicaragua.<ref name="Gaddis 2005, p. 212"/> While Reagan's interventions against Grenada and Libya were popular in the United States, his backing of the Contra rebels was [[Iran-Contra affair|mired in controversy]].<ref name = "Reagan">{{cite book|author=Reagan, Ronald|editor=Foner, Eric; Garraty, John Arthur|title=The Reader's companion to American history|url=http://books.google.com/?id=KrWDw-_devcC|accessdate=2008-06-16|year=1991|publisher=Houghton Mifflin Books|isbn=0395513723}}</ref>

Meanwhile, the Soviets incurred high costs for their own foreign interventions. Although Brezhnev was convinced in 1979 that the [[Soviet war in Afghanistan]] would be brief, Muslim guerrillas, aided by the US and other countries, waged a fierce resistance against the invasion.<ref name="LaFeber314">{{Harvnb|LaFeber|2002|p=314}}</ref> The Kremlin sent nearly 100,000 troops to support its puppet regime in Afghanistan, leading many outside observers to dub the war "the Soviets' Vietnam".<ref name="LaFeber314" /> However, Moscow's quagmire in Afghanistan was far more disastrous for the Soviets than Vietnam had been for the Americans because the conflict coincided with a period of internal decay and domestic crisis in the Soviet system.

A senior [[United States Department of State|US State Department]] official predicted such an outcome as early as 1980, positing that the invasion resulted in part from a "domestic crisis within the Soviet {{nowrap|system. ... It}} may be that the thermodynamic law of [[entropy]] {{nowrap|has ... caught}} up with the Soviet system, which now seems to expend more energy on simply maintaining its equilibrium than on improving itself. We could be seeing a period of foreign movement at a time of internal decay".<ref name=" Dobrynin">{{Harvnb|Dobrynin|2001|pp=438–439}}</ref><ref>{{Harvnb|Maynes|1980|pp=1–2}}</ref> The Soviets were not helped by their aged and sclerotic leadership either: Brezhnev, virtually incapacitated in his last years, was succeeded by Andropov and Chernenko, neither of whom lasted long. After Chernenko's death, Reagan was asked why he had not negotiated with Soviet leaders. Reagan quipped, "They keep dying on me".<ref>Karaagac, p. 67</ref>

==Final years (1985–91)==
{{Main|Cold War (1985–1991)}}
{{See|Reagan Doctrine}}
[[Image:Reagan and Gorbachev signing.jpg|thumb|right|Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan sign the [[Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty|INF Treaty]] at the White House, 1987]]
[[Image:Evstafiev-afghan-apc-passes-russian.jpg|thumb|Soviet withdrawal from [[Afghanistan]] in 1988.]]

===Gorbachev reforms===
{{See|Mikhail Gorbachev|perestroika|glasnost}}
By the time the comparatively youthful [[Mikhail Gorbachev]] became [[General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|General Secretary]] in 1985,<ref name="Gaddis 2005, p. 197"/> the Soviet economy was stagnant and faced a sharp fall in foreign currency earnings as a result of the downward slide in oil prices in the 1980s.<ref name="LaFeber331" /> These issues prompted Gorbachev to investigate measures to revive the ailing state.<ref name="LaFeber331">{{Harvnb|LaFeber|2002|pp=331–333}}</ref>

An ineffectual start led to the conclusion that deeper structural changes were necessary and in June 1987 Gorbachev announced an agenda of economic reform called ''[[perestroika]]'', or restructuring.<ref name="Gaddis231">{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|pp=231–233}}</ref> Perestroika relaxed the [[production quota]] system, allowed private ownership of businesses and paved the way for foreign investment. These measures were intended to redirect the country's resources from costly Cold War military commitments to more productive areas in the civilian sector.<ref name="Gaddis231" />

Despite initial skepticism in the West, the new Soviet leader proved to be committed to reversing the Soviet Union's deteriorating economic condition instead of continuing the arms race with the West.<ref name="Palmowski" /><ref name="LaFeber2002">{{Harvnb|LaFeber|2002|pp=300–340}}</ref> Partly as a way to fight off internal opposition from party cliques to his reforms, Gorbachev simultaneously introduced ''[[glasnost]]'', or openness, which increased freedom of the press and the transparency of state institutions.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gibbs|1999|p=7}}</ref> ''Glasnost'' was intended to reduce the corruption at the top of the [[Communist party|Communist Party]] and moderate the abuse of power in the [[Central Committee]].<ref>{{Harvnb|Gibbs|1999|p=33}}</ref> Glasnost also enabled increased contact between Soviet citizens and the western world, particularly with the United States, contributing to the accelerating [[détente]] between the two nations.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gibbs|1999|p=61}}</ref>

===Thaw in relations===
{{See|Reykjavík Summit|Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty|START I|Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany}}
In response to the Kremlin's military and political concessions, Reagan agreed to renew talks on economic issues and the scaling-back of the arms race.<ref name="Gaddis229">{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|pp=229–230}}</ref> The first was held in November 1985 in [[Geneva|Geneva, Switzerland]].<ref name="Gaddis229" /> At one stage the two men, accompanied only by an interpreter, agreed in principle to reduce each country's nuclear arsenal by 50&nbsp;percent.<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/21/newsid_2549000/2549897.stm 1985: "Superpowers aim for 'safer world'"], BBC News, November 21, 1985. Retrieved on July 4, 2008.</ref> A second [[Reykjavík Summit]] was held in [[Iceland]]. Talks went well until the focus shifted to Reagan's proposed Strategic Defense Initiative, which Gorbachev wanted eliminated: Reagan refused.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE0DA1F3BF93AA15756C0A96E948260|title=Toward the Summit; Previous Reagan-Gorbachev Summits|work=The New York Times|accessdate=2008-06-21|date=May 29, 1988}}</ref> The negotiations failed, but the third summit in 1987 led to a breakthrough with the signing of the [[Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty]] (INF). The INF treaty eliminated all nuclear-armed, ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500&nbsp;kilometers (300 to 3,400&nbsp;miles) and their infrastructure.<ref name="fas">{{cite web|url=http://www.fas.org/nuke/control/inf/index.html|title=Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces|accessdate=2008-06-21|publisher=Federation of American Scientists}}</ref>

East–West tensions rapidly subsided through the mid-to-late 1980s, culminating with the final summit in Moscow in 1989, when Gorbachev and [[George H. W. Bush]] signed the [[START I]] arms control treaty.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=255}}</ref> During the following year it became apparent to the Soviets that oil and gas subsidies, along with the cost of maintaining massive troops levels, represented a substantial economic drain.<ref name="Shearman76"/> In addition, the security advantage of a buffer zone was recognised as irrelevant and the Soviets [[Sinatra Doctrine|officially declared]] that they would no longer intervene in the affairs of allied states in Eastern Europe.<ref name="Gaddis248">{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=248}}</ref>

In 1989, Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan<ref name="Gaddis 2005, pp. 235–236">{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|pp=235–236}}</ref> and by 1990 Gorbachev [[Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany|consented]] to [[German reunification]],<ref name="Shearman76">{{Harvnb|Shearman|1995|p=76}}</ref> the only alternative being a [[Tiananmen Square protests of 1989|Tiananmen]] scenario.<ref>{{Harvnb|Shearman|1995|p=74}}</ref> When the Berlin Wall came down, Gorbachev's "[[Common European Home]]" concept began to take shape.<ref>{{cite web| url=http://www.ena.lu/?doc=11160| title=Address given by Mikhail Gorbachev to the Council of Europe| publisher=[[European NAvigator|Centre Virtuel de la Connaissance sur l'Europe]]| date=1989-07-06| accessdate=2007-02-11}}{{dead link|date=November 2011}}</ref>

On December 3, 1989, Gorbachev and Reagan's successor, [[George H. W. Bush]], declared the Cold War over at the [[Malta Summit]];<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/december/3/newsid_4119000/4119950.stm Malta summit ends Cold War], BBC News, December 3, 1989. Retrieved on June 11, 2008.</ref> a year later, the two former rivals were partners in the [[Gulf War]] against [[Iraq]].<ref>Goodby, p. 26</ref>

===Faltering Soviet system===
{{See|Economy of the Soviet Union|Revolutions of 1989|Baltic Way}}
[[Image:Thefalloftheberlinwall1989.JPG|thumb|right|The fall of the [[Berlin Wall]] in 1989.]]
By 1989, the Soviet alliance system was on the brink of collapse, and, deprived of Soviet military support, the Communist leaders of the [[Warsaw Pact]] states were losing power.<ref name="Gaddis 2005, pp. 235–236"/> In the USSR itself, ''glasnost'' weakened the bonds that held the Soviet Union together<ref name="Gaddis248" /> and by February 1990, with the dissolution of the USSR looming, the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union|Communist Party]] was forced to surrender its 73-year-old monopoly on state power.<ref>{{Harvnb|Sakwa|1999|p=460}}</ref>

At the same time freedom of press and dissent allowed by ''glasnost'' and the festering "nationalities question" increasingly led the Union's component republics to declare their autonomy from Moscow, with the [[Baltic states]] withdrawing from the Union entirely.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=253}}</ref> The [[Revolutions of 1989|1989 revolutionary wave]] that swept across Central and Eastern Europe overthrew the Soviet-style communist states, such as Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria,<ref>{{Harvnb|Lefeber|Fitzmaurice|Vierdag|1991|p=221}}</ref> Romania being the only Eastern-bloc country to topple its communist regime violently and execute its head of state.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=247}}</ref>

===Soviet dissolution===
{{See|January 1991 events in Latvia|1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt|History of the Soviet Union (1982–1991)|Dissolution of the Soviet Union}}
[[File:CIS-Map 2.png|right|thumb|[[Commonwealth of Independent States]], the official end of the [[Soviet Union]]]]
Gorbachev's permissive attitude toward Eastern Europe did not initially extend to Soviet territory; even Bush, who strove to maintain friendly relations, condemned the January 1991 killings in [[January 1991 events in Latvia|Latvia]] and [[January Events|Lithuania]], privately warning that economic ties would be frozen if the violence continued.<ref>Goldgeier, p. 27</ref> The USSR was fatally weakened by a [[1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt|failed coup]] and a growing number of [[Republics of the Soviet Union|Soviet republics]], particularly [[Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic|Russia]], who threatened to secede from the USSR. The [[Commonwealth of Independent States]], created on December 21, 1991, is viewed as a successor entity to the [[Soviet Union]] but, according to Russia's leaders, its purpose was to "allow a civilized divorce" between the [[Republics of the Soviet Union|Soviet Republics]] and is comparable to a loose [[confederation]].<ref>[http://rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/12/14b6b499-9eb2-4dee-b96c-784ec918969a.html Soviet Leaders Recall ‘Inevitable’ Breakup Of Soviet Union], [[Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty]], December 8, 2006. Retrieved on May 20, 2008.</ref> The USSR was declared officially dissolved on December 25, 1991.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|pp=256–257}}</ref>

==Aftermath==
{{Main|Effects of the Cold War}}

[[Image:NATO CSTO.PNG|thumb|right|600px|[[NATO]]/[[CSTO]]]]
[[File:North Atlantic Treaty Organization (orthographic projection).svg|thumb|right|[[NATO]] has [[Enlargement of NATO|expanded eastwards]] into the former Warsaw Pact and parts of the former Soviet Union since the end of the Cold War.]]

Following the Cold War, Russia cut military spending dramatically, creating a wrenching adjustment as the military-industrial sector had previously employed one of every five Soviet adults,<ref name = "Aslund">Åslund, p. 49</ref> meaning its dismantling left millions throughout the former Soviet Union unemployed.<ref name="Aslund" /> After Russia embarked on capitalist economic reforms in the 1990s, it suffered [[1998 Russian financial crisis|a financial crisis]] and a recession more severe than the US and Germany had experienced during the [[Great Depression]].<ref name = "Nolan">Nolan, pp. 17–18</ref> Russian living standards have worsened overall in the post–Cold War years, although the economy has resumed growth since 1999.<ref name="Nolan" />

The aftermath of the Cold War continues to influence world affairs.<ref name = "Halliday" /> After the dissolution of the [[Soviet Union]], the post–Cold War world is widely considered as [[Unipolarity|unipolar]], with the United States the sole remaining superpower.<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/country_profiles/1217752.stm Country profile: United States of America]. [[BBC News]]. Retrieved on March 11, 2007</ref><ref>Nye, p. 157</ref><ref>{{Harvnb|Blum|2006|p=87}}</ref> The Cold War defined the political role of the United States in the post–World War II world: by 1989 the US held military alliances with 50&nbsp;countries, and had 526,000<ref name=Frontline>{{cite web
| last =
| first =
| authorlink =
| coauthors =
| title = U.S. Military Deployment 1969 to the present
| work =
| publisher = http://www.pbs.org
| date = 26 October 2004
| url = http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/pentagon/maps/5.html
| doi =
| accessdate = 30 November 2010 }}</ref> troops posted abroad in dozens of countries, with 326,000 in Europe (two-thirds of which in west Germany)<ref>{{Cite book
| last = Duke
| first = Simón
| authorlink =
| coauthors =
| title = United States military forces and installations in Europe
| publisher = Oxford University Press
| year = 1989
| location =
| page = 175
| url =
| doi =
| id =
| isbn = 0198291329}}</ref> and about 130,000 in Asia (mainly Japan and South Korea).<ref name=Frontline/> The Cold War also marked the apex of peacetime [[military-industrial complex]]es, especially in the USA, and large-scale [[military funding of science]].<ref name = "Calhoun">{{cite encyclopedia|author=Calhoun, Craig|encyclopedia=Dictionary of the Social Sciences|title=Cold War (entire chapter)|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=SvSZHgAACAAJ&dq=Dictionary+of+the+Social+Sciences|accessdate=2008-06-16|year=2002|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=0195123719|ref=harv}}</ref> These complexes, though their origins may be found as early as the 19th century, have grown considerably during the Cold War. The military-industrial complexes have great impact on their countries and help shape their society, policy and foreign relations.<ref>{{Cite book
| last = Pavelec
| first = Sterling Michael
| authorlink =
| coauthors =
| title = The Military-Industrial Complex and American Society
| publisher = ABC-CLIO
| year = 2009
| location =
| pages = xv-xvi
| url =
| doi =
| id =
| isbn = 1598841874}}</ref>

Military expenditures by the US during the Cold War years were estimated to have been $8&nbsp;trillion, while nearly 100,000&nbsp;Americans lost their lives in the [[Korean War]] and [[Vietnam War]].<ref>{{Harvnb|LaFeber|2002|p=1}}</ref> Although the loss of life among Soviet soldiers is difficult to estimate, as a share of their gross national product the financial cost for the Soviet Union was far higher than that incurred by the United States.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=213}}</ref>

In addition to the loss of life by uniformed soldiers, millions died in the superpowers' [[proxy war]]s around the globe, most notably in [[Southeast Asia]].<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=266}}</ref> Most of the proxy wars and subsidies for local conflicts ended along with the Cold War; interstate wars, ethnic wars, revolutionary wars, as well as refugee and displaced persons crises have declined sharply in the post–Cold War years.<ref name = "Marshall">[http://www.systemicpeace.org/PC2005.pdf Monty G. Marshall and Ted Gurr, ''Peace and Conflict 2005''] (PDF), Center for Systemic Peace (2006). Retrieved on June 14, 2008.</ref>

The aftermath of Cold War conflict, however, is not always easily erased, as many of the economic and social tensions that were exploited to fuel Cold War competition in parts of the Third World remain acute.<ref name="Halliday" /> The breakdown of state control in a number of areas formerly ruled by Communist governments has produced new civil and ethnic conflicts, particularly in the former Yugoslavia.<ref name = "Halliday" /> In Eastern Europe, the end of the Cold War has ushered in an era of economic growth and an increase in the number of [[liberal democracy|liberal democracies]], while in other parts of the world, such as Afghanistan, independence was accompanied by [[failed state|state failure]].<ref name = "Halliday" />

==Historiography==
{{Main|Historiography of the Cold War}}
As soon as the term "Cold War" was popularized to refer to post-war tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, interpreting the course and origins of the conflict has been a source of heated controversy among historians, political scientists, and journalists.<ref name = "Nashel">{{cite encyclopedia|author= Nashel, Jonathan|editor=Whiteclay Chambers, John|encyclopedia=The Oxford Companion to American Military History|title=Cold War (1945–91): Changing Interpretations (entire chapter)|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=xtMKHgAACAAJ&dq=The+Oxford+Companion+to+American+Military+History|accessdate=2008-06-16|year=1999|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=0195071980|ref= harv}}</ref> In particular, historians have sharply disagreed as to who was responsible 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.<ref name="Brinkley">Brinkley, pp. 798–799</ref> 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 and reaction between the two sides.<ref name = "Halliday" />

Although explanations of the origins of the conflict in academic discussions are complex and diverse, several general schools of thought on the subject can be identified. Historians commonly speak of three differing approaches to the study of the Cold War: "orthodox" accounts, "revisionism", and "post-revisionism".<ref name = "Calhoun" />

"Orthodox" accounts place responsibility for the Cold War on the Soviet Union and its expansion into Eastern Europe.<ref name = "Calhoun" /> "Revisionist" writers place more responsibility for the breakdown of post-war peace on the United States, citing a range of US efforts to isolate and confront the Soviet Union well before the end of World War II.<ref name = "Calhoun" /> "Post-revisionists" see the events of the Cold War as more nuanced, and attempt to be more balanced in determining what occurred during the Cold War.<ref name = "Calhoun" /> Much of the historiography on the Cold War weaves together two or even all three of these broad categories.<ref name = "Byrd" />

==See also==
{{Portal|Cold War}}
{{div col|colwidth=25em}}
* [[American imperialism]]
* [[Canada in the Cold War]]
* [[Cold war (general term)]]
* [[Culture during the Cold War]]
* [[Danube River Conference of 1948]]
* [[Index of Soviet Union-related articles]]
* [[List of Soviet Union–United States summits]]
* [[McCarthyism]]
* [[Post–World War II economic expansion]]
* [[Soviet Empire]]
* [[Timeline of events in the Cold War]]
* [[Unethical human experimentation in the United States]]
* [[World War III]]
* [[:Category:Cold War by period]] & [[:Category:Cold War by year]]
{{div col end}}

==Footnotes==
{{reflist|colwidth=30em}}

==References and further reading==
{{Main|List of primary and secondary sources on the Cold War}}
{{refbegin|colwidth=30em}}
* Davis, Simon, and Joseph Smith. ''The A to Z of the Cold War'' (Scarecrow, 2005), encyclopedia focused on military aspects
* {{cite book| last=Friedman| first = Norman| title= The Fifty-Year War: Conflict and Strategy in the Cold War|publisher= Naval Institute Press| year=2007| isbn=1591142873}}
* {{Cite book|title=Russia, the Soviet Union and the United States. An Interpretative History|last=Gaddis|first=John Lewis|year=1990|publisher=McGraw-Hill|isbn=0075572583|ref=harv|postscript=.}}
* {{cite book|title=We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History|author=[[John Lewis Gaddis|Gaddis, John Lewis]]|year=1997|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=0198780702}}
* {{Cite book|title=The Cold War: A New History|last=Gaddis|first=John Lewis|year=2005|publisher=Penguin Press|isbn=1594200629|ref=harv|postscript=.}}
* {{Cite book|last=Garthoff|first=Raymond|title=Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan|year=1994|publisher=Brookings Institution Press|isbn=0815730411|ref=harv|postscript=.}}
* Haslam, Jonathan. ''Russia's Cold War: From the October Revolution to the Fall of the Wall'' (Yale University Press; 2011) 512 pages
* Hoffman, David E. ''The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy'' (2010)
* Hopkins, Michael F. "Continuing Debate and New Approaches in Cold War History," ''Historical Journal,'' Dec 2007, Vol. 50 Issue 4, pp 913–934, historiography
* Johnston, Gordon. "Revisiting the cultural Cold War," ''Social History,'' Aug 2010, Vol. 35 Issue 3, pp 290–307
* {{cite book| last=Lüthi| first =Lorenz M| title= The Sino-Soviet split: Cold War in the communist world|publisher= Princeton University Press| year=2008|isbn=0691135908}}
* {{cite book|last=LaFeber| first=Walter|title= America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-2002|publisher= McGraw-Hill |year=2002|isbn=0072849037|ref=harv|postscript=.}}
* {{Cite book|last=Leffler| first = Melvyn| title= A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War|publisher= Stanford University Press| year=1992|isbn=0804722188|ref=harv|postscript=.}}
* Leffler, Melvyn P. and Odd Arne Westad, eds. ''The Cambridge History of the Cold War'' (3 vol, 2010) 2000pp; new essays by leading scholars
* {{Cite book|last=Lewkowicz| first = Nicolas| title= The German Question and the International Order, 1943-48|publisher= Palgrave Macmillan| year=2010|isbn=9780230248120|ref=harv|postscript=.}}
* {{cite book|author=[[Geir Lundestad|Lundestad, Geir]]|title=East, West, North, South: Major Developments in International Politics since 1945|year=2005|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=1412907489}}
* {{cite book|first=Robert|title=The Cold War: A Very Short Introduction|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=0192801783|year=2003|last=McMahon}}
* {{cite book| last=Lüthi| first =Lorenz M| title= The Sino-Soviet split: Cold War in the communist world|publisher= Princeton University Press| year=2008|isbn=0691135908}}
* {{Cite book|last=Malkasian|first=Carter| title= The Korean War: Essential Histories|publisher= Osprey Publishing| year=2001|isbn=1841762822|ref=harv|postscript=.}}
* Mastny, Vojtech. ''The Cold War and Soviet insecurity: the Stalin years'' (1996) [http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=acls;cc=acls;view=toc;idno=heb00281.0001.001 online edition]
* {{Cite book|title=Russian Image on the Western Screen: Trends, Stereotypes, Myths, Illusions|last=Fedorov|first=Alexander|year=2011|publisher=Lambert Academic Publishing, |isbn=978-3843393300}}
* {{Cite book|last=Miller|first=Roger Gene|title=To Save a City: The Berlin Airlift, 1948-1949|publisher=Texas A&M University Press|year=2000|isbn=0890969671|ref=harv|postscript=.}}
* {{Cite book|last=Njolstad|first=Olav| title= The Last Decade of the Cold War|publisher= Routledge| year=2004|isbn=071468371X|ref=harv|postscript=.}}
* {{cite book|last=Nolan|first=Peter|title=China's Rise, Russia's Fall|year=1995|publisher=St. Martin's Press|isbn=0312127146}}
* {{Cite book|last=Pearson|first=Raymond|title=The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire|publisher=Macmillan|year=1998|isbn=0312174071|ref=harv|postscript=.}}
* {{Cite book|last=Plokhy|first=S.M.|coauthors=|title=Yalta: The Price of Peace|publisher=Penguin?| year=2010|isbn=0670021415|ref=harv|postscript=.}}
* {{cite book| last=Porter| first = Bruce| coauthors=Karsh, Efraim| title= The USSR in Third World Conflicts: Soviet Arms and Diplomacy in Local Wars|publisher= Cambridge University Press| year=1984|isbn=0521310644}}
* {{Cite book|last=Puddington|first=Arch| title= Broadcasting Freedom: The Cold War Triumph of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty|publisher= University Press of Kentucky|year= 2003|isbn=0813190452|ref=harv|postscript=.}}
* {{Cite book|last=Roberts|first=Geoffrey |title=Stalin's Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939–1953 |publisher=Yale University Press |year=2006 |isbn=0300112041|ref=harv|postscript=.}}
* {{cite book|last=Stone|first=Norman|coauthors=|title= The Atlantic and Its Enemies: A History of the Cold War|publisher= Basic Books Press| year=2010|isbn=0465020437}}
* {{Cite book|last=Taubman|first=William|title=Khrushchev: The Man and His Era|year=2004|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|isbn=0393324842|ref=harv|postscript=.}}; Pulitzer Prize
* {{Cite book|last=Tompson‏|first=William J|title=Khrushchev: A Political Life|year=1997|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|isbn=0312163606|ref=harv|postscript=.}}
* Tucker, Spencer, ed. ''Encyclopedia of the Cold War: A Political, Social, and Military History'' (5 vol. 2008), world coverage
* Walker, Martin. ''The Cold War: A History'' (1995), British perspective
* {{Cite book|last=Wettig|first=Gerhard|title=Stalin and the Cold War in Europe|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield|year=2008|isbn=0742555429|ref=harv|postscript=.}}
* {{Cite book|last=Zubok| first = Vladislav| coauthors=Pleshakov, Constantine| title= Inside the Kremlin's Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev|publisher= Harvard University Press| year=1996|isbn=0674455312|ref=harv|postscript=.}}
* Zubok, Vladislav M. ''A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev'' (2008)

===Primary sources===
* {{cite book| author=[[Christopher Andrew (historian)|Andrew, Christopher]]| coauthors=[[Vasili Mitrokhin|Mitrokhin, Vasili]]| title= The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB|publisher= Basic Books| year=2000|isbn=0585418284}}
* {{Cite book|last=Dobrynin|first=Anatoly|title=In Confidence: Moscow's Ambassador to Six Cold War Presidents|publisher=University of Washington Press| year=2001|isbn=0295980818|ref=harv|postscript=.}}
* Hanhimaki, Jussi and Odd Arne Westad, eds. ''The Cold War: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts'' (Oxford University Press, 2003). ISBN 0-19-927280-8.
* {{cite book|author=Sakwa, Richard|title= The rise and fall of the Soviet Union, 1917-1991|publisher=Routledge|year=1999|isbn=0415122902|ref=harv|postscript=.}}
* {{cite book|author=Cardona, Luis|title= Cold War KFA|publisher=Routledge|year=2007|ref=harv|postscript=.|unused_data=Barcelona, Spain}}
{{refend}}

==External links==
{{Sister project links|Cold War}}
;Archives
* [http://www.osaarchivum.org/guide/ Open Society Archives, Budapest (Hungary), one of the biggest history of communism and cold war archives in the world]
* [http://www.cybertrn.demon.co.uk/ An archive of UK civil defence material]
* [http://cdm164001.cdmhost.com/krogh/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/p164001coll21&CISOPTR=64&CISOBOX=1&REC=4 Post-Cold War World Economy] from the [http://cdm164001.cdmhost.com/krogh/ Dean Peter Krogh Foreign Affairs Digital Archives]
* [http://www.conelrad.com/ CONELRAD Cold War Pop Culture Site]
* [http://archives.cbc.ca/IDD-1-71-274/conflict_war/cold_war/ CBC Digital Archives{{ndash}} Cold War Culture: The Nuclear Fear of the 1950s and 1960s]
* [http://www.wilsoncenter.org/program/cold-war-international-history-project The Cold War International History Project (CWIHP)]
* [http://coldwarfiles.org/ The Cold War Files]
* [http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/ CNN Cold War Knowledge Bank]{{dead link|date=November 2011}} comparison of articles on Cold War topics in the Western and the Soviet press between 1945 and 1991
* [http://community.theblackvault.com/articles/entry/The-CAESAR-POLO-and-ESAU-Papers- The CAESAR, POLO, and ESAU Papers]–This collection of declassified analytic monographs and reference aids, designated within the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Directorate of Intelligence (DI) as the CAESAR, ESAU, and POLO series, highlights the CIA's efforts from the 1950s through the mid-1970s to pursue in-depth research on Soviet and Chinese internal politics and Sino-Soviet relations. The documents reflect the views of seasoned analysts who had followed closely their special areas of research and whose views were shaped in often heated debate.

;Bibliographies
* [http://alsos.wlu.edu/qsearch.aspx?browse=issues/Arms+Race Annotated bibliography for the arms race from the Alsos Digital Library]

;News
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/themes/world_politics/cold_war/default.stm Video and audio news reports from during the cold war]

;Educational Resources
* [http://www.nps.gov/history/NR/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/128mimi/ ''Minuteman Missile National Historic Site: Protecting a Legacy of the Cold War ,'' a National Park Service Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) lesson plan]
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[[mwl:Guerra Frie]]
[[mn:Хүйтэн дайн]]
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[[no:Den kalde krigen]]
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[[nrm:Fraide Dgèrre]]
[[oc:Guèrra Freja]]
[[uz:Sovuq urush]]
[[pa:ਸ਼ੀਤ ਜੰਗ]]
[[pnb:سرد جنگ]]
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[[nds:Koolt Krieg]]
[[pl:Zimna wojna]]
[[pt:Guerra Fria]]
[[kaa:Salqın urıs]]
[[ro:Războiul Rece]]
[[rue:Холодна война]]
[[ru:Холодная война]]
[[stq:Koolde Kriech]]
[[scn:Guerra Fridda]]
[[simple:Cold War]]
[[sk:Studená vojna]]
[[sl:Hladna vojna]]
[[so:Dagaalkii qaboobaa]]
[[sr:Хладни рат]]
[[sh:Hladni rat]]
[[fi:Kylmä sota]]
[[sv:Kalla kriget]]
[[tl:Digmaang Malamig]]
[[ta:பனிப்போர்]]
[[th:สงครามเย็น]]
[[tg:Ҷанги Сард]]
[[tr:Soğuk Savaş]]
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[[uk:Холодна війна]]
[[ur:سرد جنگ]]
[[ug:سوغۇق ئۇرۇش]]
[[za:Lengx Can]]
[[vec:Guera Freda]]
[[vi:Chiến tranh Lạnh]]
[[fiu-vro:Külm sõda]]
[[war:Matugnaw nga Gera]]
[[yi:קאלטער קריג]]
[[zh-yue:冷戰]]
[[diq:Leco Serdın]]
[[bat-smg:Šaltuojė vaina]]
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Revision as of 00:34, 3 February 2012

United States President Ronald Reagan (left) and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev meet in 1985 at Geneva, Switzerland

The Cold War (Template:Lang-ru) (approx. 1945-1991) was a continuing state of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the powers of the Western world, led by the United States and its NATO allies, and the communist world, led by the Soviet Union, its satellite states and allies. The Cold War began after the success of their temporary wartime alliance against Nazi Germany, as the USSR and the US saw each other as mutual superpowers with profound economic and political differences. The Soviet Union created the Eastern Bloc with the eastern European countries it occupied, maintaining these as satellite states. The post-war recovery of Western Europe was facilitated by the United States' Marshall Plan, while the Soviet Union, wary of the conditions attached, declined to participate and prompted its satellite states to do likewise. An alternative, COMECON, was set up by the Soviets instead. The United States forged NATO, a military alliance using containment of communism as a main strategy through the Truman Doctrine, in 1949, while the Soviet bloc formed the Warsaw Pact in 1955. Some countries aligned with either of the two powers, whilst others chose to remain neutral with the Non-Aligned Movement. Elsewhere, the US and USSR fought proxy wars of various types: in Latin America and Southeast Asia, the USSR assisted and helped foster communist revolutions, opposed by several Western countries and their regional allies; some they attempted to roll back through subversion and warfare, with mixed results.

The Cold War was so named as it never featured direct military action, but periods of relative calm were followed by periods of high tension. The most tense involved the Berlin Blockade (1948–1949), the Korean War (1950–1953), the Berlin Crisis of 1961, the Vietnam War (1959–1975), the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), the Soviet war in Afghanistan (1979–1989), and the Able Archer 83 NATO exercises in November 1983. Both sides possessed nuclear weapons, and because their use would probably guarantee their mutual assured destruction the chief military forces never engaged in a major battle with each other. The conflict was expressed through military coalitions, strategic conventional force deployments, extensive aid to states deemed vulnerable, proxy wars, espionage, propaganda, conventional and nuclear arms races, appeals to neutral nations, rivalry at sports events, and technological competitions such as the Space Race. The antagonistic behaviour that both sides displayed towards their enemy resulted in many crises which risked mutual annihilation in a nuclear exchange. To alleviate the risk of nuclear war exacerbated by accident or mistake, both sides sought détente to relieve political tensions and deter direct military attack.

In the 1980s, under the Reagan Doctrine, the United States increased diplomatic, military, and economic pressures on the Soviet Union, at a time when the nation was already suffering economic stagnation. In the late 1980s, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the liberalizing reforms of perestroika ("reconstruction", "reorganization", 1987) and glasnost ("openness", ca. 1985). The Cold War ended after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, leaving the United States as the dominant military power. The Cold War and its events have had a significant impact on the world today, and it is often referred to in popular culture, especially in media featuring themes of espionage and the threat of nuclear warfare.

Origins of the term

At the end of World War II, English author and journalist George Orwell used cold war, as a general term, in his essay “You and the Atomic Bomb”, published October 19, 1945, in the British newspaper Tribune. Contemplating a world living in the shadow of the threat of nuclear warfare, Orwell wrote:

"For forty or fifty years past, Mr. H. G. Wells and others have been warning us that man is in danger of destroying himself with his own weapons, leaving the ants or some other gregarious species to take over. Anyone who has seen the ruined cities of Germany will find this notion at least thinkable. Nevertheless, looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery. We may be heading not for general breakdown but for an epoch as horribly stable as the slave empires of antiquity. James Burnham's theory has been much discussed, but few people have yet considered 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 once unconquerable and in a permanent state of "cold war" with its neighbors."[1]

In The Observer of March 10, 1946, Orwell wrote that “[a]fter the Moscow conference last December, Russia began to make a ‘cold war’ on Britain and the British Empire.”[2]

The first use of the term to describe the post–World War II geopolitical tensions between the USSR and its satellites and the United States and its western European allies is attributed to Bernard Baruch, an American financier and presidential advisor.[3] In South Carolina, on April 16, 1947, he delivered a speech (by journalist Herbert Bayard Swope)[4] saying, “Let us not be deceived: we are today in the midst of a cold war.”[5] Newspaper reporter-columnist Walter Lippmann gave the term wide currency, with the book The Cold War; when asked in 1947 about the source of the term, he referred it to a French term from the 1930s, la guerre froide.[6]

Background

American troops in Vladivostok, August 1918, during the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War.

There is disagreement among historians regarding the starting point of the Cold War. While most historians trace its origins to the period immediately following World War II, others argue that it began towards the end of World War I, although tensions between the Russian Empire, other European countries and the United States date back to the middle of the 19th century.[7]

As a result of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia (followed by its withdrawal from World War I), Soviet Russia found itself isolated in international diplomacy.[8] Leader Vladimir Lenin stated that the Soviet Union was surrounded by a "hostile capitalist encirclement", and he viewed diplomacy as a weapon to keep Soviet enemies divided, beginning with the establishment of the Soviet Comintern, which called for revolutionary upheavals abroad.[9]

Subsequent leader Joseph Stalin, who viewed the Soviet Union as a "socialist island", stated that the Soviet Union must see that "the present capitalist encirclement is replaced by a socialist encirclement."[10] As early as 1925, Stalin stated that he viewed international politics as a bipolar world in which the Soviet Union would attract countries gravitating to socialism and capitalist countries would attract states gravitating toward capitalism, while the world was in a period of "temporary stabilization of capitalism" preceding its eventual collapse.[11]

Various events before the Second World War demonstrated the mutual distrust and suspicion between the Western powers and the Soviet Union, apart from the general philosophical challenge the Bolsheviks made towards capitalism.[12] There was Western support of the anti-Bolshevik White movement in the Russian Civil War,[7] the 1926 Soviet funding of a British general workers strike causing Britain to break relations with the Soviet Union,[13] Stalin's 1927 declaration of peaceful coexistence with capitalist countries "receding into the past,"[14] conspiratorial allegations during the 1928 Shakhty show trial of a planned British- and French-led coup d'état,[15] the American refusal to recognize the Soviet Union until 1933[16] and the Stalinist Moscow Trials of the Great Purge, with allegations of British, French, Japanese and Nazi German espionage.[17]

When the German Army invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Allies took advantage of a new front and decided to help the Soviet Union. Britain signed a formal alliance and the United States made an informal agreement. In wartime, the United States supplied both Britain and the Soviets through its Lend-Lease Program.[18]

However, Stalin remained highly suspicious and believed that the British and the Americans had conspired to ensure the Soviets bore the brunt of the fighting against Nazi Germany. According to this view, the Western Allies had deliberately delayed opening a second anti-German front in order to step in at the last moment and shape the peace settlement. Thus, Soviet perceptions of the West left a strong undercurrent of tension and hostility between the Allied powers.[19]

End of World War II and post-war (1945–47)

Wartime conferences regarding post-war Europe

The "Big Three" at the Yalta Conference: Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin, 1945.

The Allies disagreed about how the European map should look, and how borders would be drawn, following the war.[20] Each side held dissimilar ideas regarding the establishment and maintenance of post-war security.[20] The western Allies desired a security system in which democratic governments were established as widely as possible, permitting countries to peacefully resolve differences through international organizations.[21]

Given the Russian historical experiences of frequent invasions[22] and the immense death toll (estimated at 27 million) and the destruction the Soviet Union sustained during World War II,[23] the Soviet Union sought to increase security by dominating the internal affairs of countries that bordered it.[20][24]

The Western Allies were themselves deeply divided in their vision of the new post-war world. Roosevelt's goals – military victory in both Europe and Asia, the achievement of global American economic supremacy over the British Empire, and the creation of a world peace organization – were more global than Churchill's, which were mainly centered on securing control over the Mediterranean, ensuring the survival of the British Empire, and the independence of Eastern European countries as a buffer between the Soviets and the United Kingdom.[25]

In the American view, Stalin seemed a potential ally in accomplishing their goals, whereas in the British approach Stalin appeared as the greatest threat to the fulfillment of their agenda. With the Soviets already occupying most of Eastern Europe, Stalin was at an advantage and the two western leaders vied for his favors. The differences between Roosevelt and Churchill led to several separate deals with the Soviets. In October 1944, Churchill traveled to Moscow and agreed to divide the Balkans into respective spheres of influence, and at Yalta Roosevelt signed a separate deal with Stalin in regard of Asia and refused to support Churchill on the issues of Poland and the Reparations.[25]

Post-war Allied occupation zones in Germany.

Further Allied negotiations concerning the post-war balance took place at the Yalta Conference in February 1945, albeit this conference also failed to reach a firm consensus on the framework for a post-war settlement in Europe.[26] In April 1945, both Churchill and new United States President Harry S. Truman opposed, among other things, the Soviets' decision to prop up the Lublin government, the Soviet-controlled rival to the Polish government-in-exile, whose relations with the Soviets were severed.[27]

Following the Allies' May 1945 victory, the Soviets effectively occupied Eastern Europe,[26] while strong US and Western allied forces remained in Western Europe. In Allied-occupied Germany, the Soviet Union, United States, Britain and France established zones of occupation and a loose framework for four-power control.[28]

The 1945 Allied conference in San Francisco established the multi-national United Nations (UN) for the maintenance of world peace, but the enforcement capacity of its Security Council was effectively paralyzed by individual members' ability to use veto power.[29] Accordingly, the UN was essentially converted into an inactive forum for exchanging polemical rhetoric, and the Soviets regarded it almost exclusively as a propaganda tribune.[30]

Potsdam Conference and defeat of Japan

Winston Churchill, Harry S. Truman and Joseph Stalin at the Potsdam Conference, 1945.

At the Potsdam Conference, which started in late July after Germany's surrender, serious differences emerged over the future development of Germany and eastern Europe.[31] Moreover, the participants' mounting antipathy and bellicose language served to confirm their suspicions about each others' hostile intentions and entrench their positions.[32] At this conference Truman informed Stalin that the United States possessed a powerful new weapon.[33]

Stalin was aware that the Americans were working on the atomic bomb and, given that the Soviets' own rival program was in place, he reacted to the news calmly. The Soviet leader said he was pleased by the news and expressed the hope that the weapon would be used against Japan.[33] One week after the end of the Potsdam Conference, the US bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Shortly after the attacks, Stalin protested to US officials when Truman offered the Soviets little real influence in occupied Japan.[34]

Beginnings of the Eastern Bloc

Post-war territorial changes in Eastern Europe and the formation of the Eastern Bloc, the so-called 'Iron Curtain'.

During the final stages of World War II, the Soviet Union laid the foundation for the Eastern Bloc by directly annexing several countries as Soviet Socialist Republics that were initially (and effectively) ceded to it by Nazi Germany in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. These included eastern Poland (incorporated into two different SSRs),[35] Latvia (which became the Latvian SSR),[36][37] Estonia (which became the Estonian SSR),[36][37] Lithuania (which became the Lithuanian SSR),[36][37] part of eastern Finland (which became the Karelo-Finnish SSR) and eastern Romania (which became the Moldavian SSR).[38][39]

The Eastern European territories liberated from the Nazis and occupied by the Soviet armed forces were added to the Eastern Bloc by converting them into satellite states,[40] such as East Germany,[41] the People's Republic of Poland, the People's Republic of Bulgaria, the People's Republic of Hungary,[42] the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic,[43] the People's Republic of Romania and the People's Republic of Albania.[44]

The Soviet-style regimes that arose in the Bloc not only reproduced Soviet command economies, but also adopted the brutal methods employed by Joseph Stalin and Soviet secret police to suppress real and potential opposition.[45] In Asia, the Red Army had overrun Manchuria in the last month of the war, and went on to occupy the large swathe of Korean territory located north of the 38th parallel.[46]

As part of consolidating Stalin's control over the Eastern Bloc, the NKVD, led by Lavrentiy Beria, supervised the establishment of Soviet-style secret police systems in the Bloc that were supposed to crush anti-communist resistance.[47] When the slightest stirrings of independence emerged in the Bloc, Stalin's strategy matched that of dealing with domestic pre-war rivals: they were removed from power, put on trial, imprisoned, and in several instances, executed.[48]

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was concerned that, given the enormous size of Soviet forces deployed in Europe at the end of the war, and the perception that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was unreliable, there existed a Soviet threat to Western Europe.[49] In April–May 1945, the British War Cabinet's Joint Planning Staff Committee developed Operation Unthinkable, a plan "to impose upon Russia the will of the United States and the British Empire".[50] The plan, however, was rejected by the British Chiefs of Staff Committee as militarily unfeasible.[49]

Tensions build

In February 1946, George F. Kennan's "Long Telegram" from Moscow helped to articulate the US government's increasingly hard line against the Soviets, and became the basis for US strategy toward the Soviet Union for the duration of the Cold War.[51] That September, the Soviet side produced the Novikov telegram, sent by the Soviet ambassador to the US but commissioned and "co-authored" by Vyacheslav Molotov; it portrayed the US as being in the grip of monopoly capitalists who were building up military capability "to prepare the conditions for winning world supremacy in a new war".[52]

On September 6, 1946, James F. Byrnes delivered a speech in Germany repudiating the Morgenthau Plan (a proposal to partition and de-industrialize post-war Germany) and warning the Soviets that the US intended to maintain a military presence in Europe indefinitely.[53] As Byrnes admitted a month later, "The nub of our program was to win the German people [...] it was a battle between us and Russia over minds [...]"[54]

A few weeks after the release of this "Long Telegram", former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivered his famous "Iron Curtain" speech in Fulton, Missouri.[55] The speech called for an Anglo-American alliance against the Soviets, whom he accused of establishing an "iron curtain" from "Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic".[40][56]

In 1952, Stalin repeatedly proposed a plan to unify East and West Germany under a single government chosen in elections supervised by the United Nations if the new Germany were to stay out of Western military alliances, but this proposal was turned down by the Western powers.

Containment through the Korean War (1947–53)

Cominform and the Tito–Stalin split

In September 1947, the Soviets created Cominform, the purpose of which was to enforce orthodoxy within the international communist movement and tighten political control over Soviet satellites through coordination of communist parties in the Eastern Bloc.[57] Cominform faced an embarrassing setback the following June, when the Tito–Stalin split obliged its members to expel Yugoslavia, which remained Communist but adopted a non-aligned position.[58]

Containment and the Truman Doctrine

European military alliances.

By 1947, US president Harry S. Truman's advisers urged him to take immediate steps to counter the Soviet Union's influence, citing Stalin's efforts (amid post-war confusion and collapse) to undermine the US by encouraging rivalries among capitalists that could precipitate another war.[59] In February 1947, the British government announced that it could no longer afford to finance the Greek monarchical military regime in its civil war against communist-led insurgents.

The American government's response to this announcement was the adoption of containment,[60] the goal of which was to stop the spread of communism. Truman delivered a speech that called for the allocation of $400 million to intervene in the war and unveiled the Truman Doctrine, which framed the conflict as a contest between free peoples and totalitarian regimes.[60] Even though the insurgents were helped by Josip Broz Tito's Yugoslavia,[16] US policymakers accused the Soviet Union of conspiring against the Greek royalists in an effort to expand Soviet influence.[61]

Enunciation of the Truman Doctrine marked the beginning of a US bipartisan defense and foreign policy consensus between Republicans and Democrats focused on containment and deterrence that weakened during and after the Vietnam War, but ultimately held steady.[62][63] Moderate and conservative parties in Europe, as well as social democrats, gave virtually unconditional support to the Western alliance,[64] while European and American Communists, paid by the KGB and involved in its intelligence operations,[65] adhered to Moscow's line, although dissent began to appear after 1956. Other critiques of consensus politics came from anti-Vietnam War activists, the CND and the nuclear freeze movement.[66]

Marshall Plan and Czechoslovak coup d'état

Map of Cold-War era Europe and the Near East showing countries that received Marshall Plan aid. The red columns show the relative amount of total aid received per nation.
European economic alliances

In early 1947, Britain, France and the United States unsuccessfully attempted to reach an agreement with the Soviet Union for a plan envisioning an economically self-sufficient Germany, including a detailed accounting of the industrial plants, goods and infrastructure already removed by the Soviets.[67] In June 1947, in accordance with the Truman Doctrine, the United States enacted the Marshall Plan, a pledge of economic assistance for all European countries willing to participate, including the Soviet Union.[67]

The plan's aim was to rebuild the democratic and economic systems of Europe and to counter perceived threats to Europe's balance of power, such as communist parties seizing control through revolutions or elections.[68] The plan also stated that European prosperity was contingent upon German economic recovery.[69] One month later, Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947, creating a unified Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the National Security Council. These would become the main bureaucracies for US policy in the Cold War.[70]

Stalin believed that economic integration with the West would allow Eastern Bloc countries to escape Soviet control, and that the US was trying to buy a pro-US re-alignment of Europe.[57] Stalin therefore prevented Eastern Bloc nations from receiving Marshall Plan aid.[57] The Soviet Union's alternative to the Marshall plan, which was purported to involve Soviet subsidies and trade with eastern Europe, became known as the Molotov Plan (later institutionalized in January 1949 as the Comecon).[16] Stalin was also fearful of a reconstituted Germany; his vision of a post-war Germany did not include the ability to rearm or pose any kind of threat to the Soviet Union.[71]

In early 1948, following reports of strengthening "reactionary elements", Soviet operatives executed a coup d'état in Czechoslovakia, the only Eastern Bloc state that the Soviets had permitted to retain democratic structures.[72][73] The public brutality of the coup shocked Western powers more than any event up to that point, set in a motion a brief scare that war would occur and swept away the last vestiges of opposition to the Marshall Plan in the United States Congress.[74]

The twin policies of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan led to billions in economic and military aid for Western Europe, Greece, and Turkey. With US assistance, the Greek military won its civil war.[70] The Italian Christian Democrats defeated the powerful Communist-Socialist alliance in the elections of 1948.[75] At the same time there was increased intelligence and espionage activity, Eastern Bloc defections and diplomatic expulsions.[76]

Berlin Blockade and airlift

C-47s unloading at Tempelhof Airport in Berlin during the Berlin Blockade.

The United States and Britain merged their western German occupation zones into "Bizonia" (1 January 1947, later "Trizonia" with the addition of France's zone, April 1949).[77] As part of the economic rebuilding of Germany, in early 1948, representatives of a number of Western European governments and the United States announced an agreement for a merger of western German areas into a federal governmental system.[78] In addition, in accordance with the Marshall Plan, they began to re-industrialize and rebuild the German economy, including the introduction of a new Deutsche Mark currency to replace the old Reichsmark currency that the Soviets had debased.[79]

Shortly thereafter, Stalin instituted the Berlin Blockade (24 June 1948 – 12 May 1949), one of the first major crises of the Cold War, preventing food, materials and supplies from arriving in West Berlin.[80] The United States, Britain, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and several other countries began the massive "Berlin airlift", supplying West Berlin with food and other provisions.[81]

The Soviets mounted a public relations campaign against the policy change. Once again the East Berlin communists attempted to disrupt the Berlin municipal elections (as they had done in the 1946 elections),[77] which were held on December 5, 1948 and produced a turnout of 86.3% and an overwhelming victory for the non-Communist parties.[82] The results effectively divided the city into East and West versions of its former self. 300,000 Berliners demonstrated and urged the international airlift to continue,[83] and the US accidentally created "Operation Vittles", which supplied candy to German children.[84] In May 1949, Stalin backed down and lifted the blockade.[47][85]

NATO beginnings and Radio Free Europe

President Truman signs the National Security Act Amendment of 1949 with guests in the Oval Office.

Britain, France, the United States, Canada and eight other western European countries signed the North Atlantic Treaty of April 1949, establishing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).[47] That August, the first Soviet atomic device was detonated in Semipalatinsk, Kazakh SSR.[16] Following Soviet refusals to participate in a German rebuilding effort set forth by western European countries in 1948,[78][86] the US, Britain and France spearheaded the establishment of West Germany from the three Western zones of occupation in April 1949.[31][87] The Soviet Union proclaimed its zone of occupation in Germany the German Democratic Republic that October.[31]

Media in the Eastern Bloc was an organ of the state, completely reliant on and subservient to the communist party, with radio and television organizations being state-owned, while print media was usually owned by political organizations, mostly by the local communist party.[88] Soviet propaganda used Marxist philosophy to attack capitalism, claiming labor exploitation and war-mongering imperialism were inherent in the system.[89]

Along with the broadcasts of the British Broadcasting Corporation and the Voice of America to Eastern Europe,[90] a major propaganda effort begun in 1949 was Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, dedicated to bringing about the peaceful demise of the Communist system in the Eastern Bloc.[91] Radio Free Europe attempted to achieve these goals by serving as a surrogate home radio station, an alternative to the controlled and party-dominated domestic press.[91] Radio Free Europe was a product of some of the most prominent architects of America's early Cold War strategy, especially those who believed that the Cold War would eventually be fought by political rather than military means, such as George F. Kennan.[92]

American policymakers, including Kennan and John Foster Dulles, acknowledged that the Cold War was in its essence a war of ideas.[92] The United States, acting through the CIA, funded a long list of projects to counter the Communist appeal among intellectuals in Europe and the developing world.[93]

In the early 1950s, the US worked for the rearmament of West Germany and, in 1955, secured its full membership of NATO.[31] In May 1953, Beria, by then in a government post, had made an unsuccessful proposal to allow the reunification of a neutral Germany to prevent West Germany's incorporation into NATO.[94]

Chinese Civil War and SEATO

In 1949, Mao Zedong's People's Liberation Army defeated Chiang Kai-shek's United States-backed Kuomintang (KMT) Nationalist Government in China, and the Soviet Union promptly created an alliance with the newly formed People's Republic of China.[95] Chiang and his KMT government retreated to the island of Taiwan. Confronted with the communist revolution in China and the end of the American atomic monopoly in 1949, the Truman administration quickly moved to escalate and expand the containment policy.[16] In NSC-68, a secret 1950 document,[96] the National Security Council proposed to reinforce pro-Western alliance systems and quadruple spending on defense.[16]

United States officials moved thereafter to expand containment into Asia, Africa, and Latin America, in order to counter revolutionary nationalist movements, often led by communist parties financed by the USSR, fighting against the restoration of Europe's colonial empires in South-East Asia and elsewhere.[97] In the early 1950s (a period sometimes known as the "Pactomania"), the US formalized a series of alliances with Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand and the Philippines (notably ANZUS in 1951 and SEATO in 1954), thereby guaranteeing the United States a number of long-term military bases.[31]

Korean War

One of the more significant impacts of containment was the outbreak of the Korean War. In June 1950, Kim Il-Sung's North Korean People's Army invaded South Korea.[98] To Joseph Stalin's surprise,[16] the UN Security Council backed the defense of South Korea, though the Soviets were then boycotting meetings in protest that Taiwan and not Communist China held a permanent seat on the Council.[99] A UN force of personnel from South Korea, the United States, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Canada, Australia, France, South Africa, the Philippines, the Netherlands, Belgium, New Zealand and other countries joined to stop the invasion.[100]

General Douglas MacArthur, UN Command CiC (seated), observes the naval shelling of Incheon from the USS Mt. McKinley, 15 September 1950.

Among other effects, the Korean War galvanised NATO to develop a military structure.[101] Public opinion in countries involved, such as Great Britain, was divided for and against the war. Many feared an escalation into a general war with Communist China, and even nuclear war. The strong opposition to the war often strained Anglo-American relations. For these reasons British officials sought a speedy end to the conflict, hoping to unite Korea under United Nations auspices and withdrawal of all foreign forces.[102]

Even though the Chinese and North Koreans were exhausted by the war and were prepared to end it by late 1952, Stalin insisted that they continue fighting, and the Armistice was approved only in July 1953, after Stalin's death.[31] North Korean leader Kim Il Sung created a highly centralized and brutal dictatorship, according himself unlimited power and generating a formidable cult of personality.[103][104] In the South, the corrupt American-backed strongman Syngman Rhee pursued a comparable system of totalitarian rule.[105] Albeit Rhee was overthrown after popular protests against his rigged re-election victory in 1960, South Korea subsequently fell under a period of military rule that lasted until the re-establishment of a multi-party system in 1987.

Crisis and escalation (1953–62)

Khrushchev, Eisenhower and De-Stalinization

In 1953, changes in political leadership on both sides shifted the dynamic of the Cold War.[70] Dwight D. Eisenhower was inaugurated president that January. During the last 18 months of the Truman administration, the American defense budget had quadrupled, and Eisenhower moved to reduce military spending by a third while continuing to fight the Cold War effectively.[16]

After the death of Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev became the Soviet leader following the deposition and execution of Lavrentiy Beria and the pushing aside of rivals Georgy Malenkov and Vyacheslav Molotov. On February 25, 1956, Khrushchev shocked delegates to the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party by cataloguing and denouncing Stalin's crimes.[106] As part of a campaign of de-Stalinization, he declared that the only way to reform and move away from Stalin's policies would be to acknowledge errors made in the past.[70]

On November 18, 1956, while addressing Western ambassadors at a reception at the Polish embassy in Moscow, Khrushchev used his famous "Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you" expression, shocking everyone present.[107] He later claimed that he had not been talking about nuclear war, but rather about the historically determined victory of communism over capitalism.[108] In 1961, Khrushchev declared that even if the USSR was behind the West, within a decade its housing shortage would disappear, consumer goods would be abundant, and within two decades, the "construction of a communist society" in the USSR would be completed "in the main".[109]

Eisenhower's secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, initiated a "New Look" for the containment strategy, calling for a greater reliance on nuclear weapons against US enemies in wartime.[70] Dulles also enunciated the doctrine of "massive retaliation", threatening a severe US response to any Soviet aggression. Possessing nuclear superiority, for example, allowed Eisenhower to face down Soviet threats to intervene in the Middle East during the 1956 Suez Crisis.[16]

Warsaw Pact and Hungarian Revolution

Map of the Warsaw Pact countries

While Stalin's death in 1953 slightly relaxed tensions, the situation in Europe remained an uneasy armed truce.[110] The Soviets, who had already created a network of mutual assistance treaties in the Eastern Bloc by 1949,[111] established a formal alliance therein, the Warsaw Pact, in 1955.[31]

The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 occurred shortly after Khrushchev arranged the removal of Hungary's Stalinist leader Mátyás Rákosi.[112] In response to a popular uprising,[113] the new regime formally disbanded the secret police, declared its intention to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact and pledged to re-establish free elections. The Soviet army invaded.[114] Thousands of Hungarians were arrested, imprisoned and deported to the Soviet Union,[115] and approximately 200,000 Hungarians fled Hungary in the chaos.[116] Hungarian leader Imre Nagy and others were executed following secret trials.[117]

From 1957 through 1961, Khrushchev openly and repeatedly threatened the West with nuclear annihilation. He claimed that Soviet missile capabilities were far superior to those of the United States, capable of wiping out any American or European city. However, Khrushchev rejected Stalin's belief in the inevitability of war, and declared his new goal was to be "peaceful coexistence".[118] This formulation modified the Stalin-era Soviet stance, where international class struggle meant the two opposing camps were on an inevitable collision course where Communism would triumph through global war; now, peace would allow capitalism to collapse on its own,[119] as well as giving the Soviets time to boost their military capabilities,[120] which remained for decades until Gorbachev's later "new thinking" envisioning peaceful coexistence as an end in itself rather than a form of class struggle.[121]

The events in Hungary produced ideological fractures within the Communist parties of the world, particularly in Western Europe, with great decline in membership as many in both western and communist countries felt disillusioned by the brutal Soviet response.[122] The communist parties in the west would never recover from the effect the Hungarian Revolution had on their membership, a fact that was immediately recognized by some, such as the Yugoslavian politician Milovan Djilas who shortly after the revolution was crushed said that "The wound which the Hungarian Revolution inflicted on communism can never be completely healed".[122]

America's pronouncements concentrated on American strength abroad and the success of liberal capitalism.[123] However, by the late 1960s, the "battle for men's minds" between two systems of social organization that Kennedy spoke of in 1961 was largely over, with tensions henceforth based primarily on clashing geopolitical objectives rather than ideology.[124]

Berlin Ultimatum and European integration

The maximum territorial extent of countries in the world under Soviet influence, after the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and before the official Sino-Soviet split of 1961

During November 1958, Khrushchev made an unsuccessful attempt to turn all of Berlin into an independent, demilitarized "free city", giving the United States, Great Britain, and France a six-month ultimatum to withdraw their troops from the sectors they still occupied in West Berlin, or he would transfer control of Western access rights to the East Germans. Khrushchev earlier explained to Mao Zedong that "Berlin is the testicles of the West. Every time I want to make the West scream, I squeeze on Berlin."[125] NATO formally rejected the ultimatum in mid-December and Khrushchev withdrew it in return for a Geneva conference on the German question.[126]

More broadly, one hallmark of the 1950s was the beginning of European integration—a fundamental by-product of the Cold War that Truman and Eisenhower promoted politically, economically, and militarily, but which later administrations viewed ambivalently, fearful that an independent Europe would forge a separate détente with the Soviet Union, which would use this to exacerbate Western disunity.[127]

Worldwide competition

1961 Soviet postage stamp demanding freedom for African nations.
1961 Soviet stamp commemorating Patrice Lumumba, prime minister of the Republic of the Congo.

Nationalist movements in some countries and regions, notably Guatemala, Indonesia and Indochina were often allied with communist groups, or perceived in the West to be allied with communists.[70] In this context, the United States and the Soviet Union increasingly competed for influence by proxy in the Third World as decolonization gained momentum in the 1950s and early 1960s;[128] additionally, the Soviets saw continuing losses by imperial powers as presaging the eventual victory of their ideology.[129] Both sides were selling armaments to gain influence.[130]

The United States made use of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to do away with a string of unfriendly Third World governments and to support allied ones.[70] In 1953, President Eisenhower's Central Intelligence Agency implemented Operation Ajax, a covert operation aimed at the overthrow of the Iranian prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh. The popularly-elected and non-aligned Mosaddegh had been a Middle Eastern nemesis of Britain since nationalizing the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951. Churchill told the United States that Mosaddegh was "increasingly turning towards communism" and was moving Iran towards the Soviet sphere.[131][132][133][134] The pro-Western shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, assumed control as an autocratic monarch.[135] The shah's policies included the banning of the communist Tudeh Party and general suppression of political dissent by SAVAK, the shah's domestic security and intelligence agency.

In Guatemala, a CIA-backed military coup ousted the left-wing President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in 1954.[136] The post-Arbenz government, a military junta headed by Carlos Castillo Armas, returned nationalized American property, set up a National Committee of Defense Against Communism, and decreed a Preventive Penal Law Against Communism at the request of the United States.[137]

In the Republic of the Congo, newly independent from Belgium since June 1960, the CIA-cultivated President Joseph Kasa-Vubu ordered the dismissal of the democratically-elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba and the Lumumba cabinet in September; Lumumba called for Kasa-Vubu's dismissal instead.[138] In the ensuing Congo Crisis, the CIA-backed Colonel Mobutu quickly mobilized his forces to seize power through a military coup d'état.[138]

In British Guiana, the leftist People's Progressive Party (PPP) candidate Cheddi Jagan won the position of chief minister in a colonially-administered election in 1953, but was quickly forced to resign from power after Britain's suspension of the still-dependent nation's constitution.[139] Embarrassed by the landslide electoral victory of Jagan's allegedly Marxist party, the British imprisoned the PPP's leadership and maneuvered the organization into a divisive rupture in 1955, engineering a split between Jagan and his PPP colleagues.[140] Jagan again won the colonial elections in 1957 and 1961; despite Britain's shift to a reconsideration of its view of the left-wing Jagan as a Soviet-style communist at this time, the United States pressured the British to withhold Guyana's independence until an alternative to Jagan could be identified, supported, and brought into office.[141]

Worn down by the communist guerrilla war for Vietnamese independence and handed a watershed defeat by communist Vietminh rebels at the 1954 Battle of Điện Biên Phủ, the French accepted a negotiated abandonment of their colonial stake in Vietnam. Peace accords signed in Geneva left Vietnam divided between a pro-Soviet administration in North Vietnam and a pro-Western administration in South Vietnam at the 17th parallel north. Between 1954 and 1961, Eisenhower's United States sent economic aid and military advisers to strengthen South Vietnam's pro-Western regime against communist efforts to destabilize it.[16]

Many emerging nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America rejected the pressure to choose sides in the East-West competition. In 1955, at the Bandung Conference in Indonesia, dozens of Third World governments resolved to stay out of the Cold War.[142] The consensus reached at Bandung culminated with the creation of the Belgrade-headquartered Non-Aligned Movement in 1961.[70] Meanwhile, Khrushchev broadened Moscow's policy to establish ties with India and other key neutral states. Independence movements in the Third World transformed the post-war order into a more pluralistic world of decolonized African and Middle Eastern nations and of rising nationalism in Asia and Latin America.[16]

Sino-Soviet split, space race, ICBMs

Charting the progress of the Space Race in 1957-1975.

The period after 1956 was marked by serious setbacks for the Soviet Union, most notably the breakdown of the Sino-Soviet alliance, beginning the Sino-Soviet split. Mao had defended Stalin when Khrushchev attacked him after his death in 1956, and treated the new Soviet leader as a superficial upstart, accusing him of having lost his revolutionary edge.[143] For his part, Khrushchev, disturbed by Mao’s glib attitude toward nuclear war, referred to the Chinese leader as a "lunatic on a throne".[144]

After this, Khrushchev made many desperate attempts to reconstitute the Sino-Soviet alliance, but Mao considered it useless and denied any proposal.[143] The Chinese-Soviet animosity spilled out in an intra-communist propaganda war.[145] Further on, the Soviets focused on a bitter rivalry with Mao's China for leadership of the global communist movement.[146]

On the nuclear weapons front, the United States and the USSR pursued nuclear rearmament and developed long-range weapons with which they could strike the territory of the other.[31] In August 1957, the Soviets successfully launched the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM)[147] and in October, launched the first Earth satellite, Sputnik.[148] The launch of Sputnik inaugurated the Space Race. This culminated in the Apollo Moon landings, which astronaut Frank Borman later described as "just a battle in the Cold War."[149]

Cuban Revolution and the Bay of Pigs Invasion

Flag of the 26th July Movement.

In Cuba, the 26th of July Movement seized power in January 1959, toppling President Fulgencio Batista, whose unpopular regime had been denied arms by the Eisenhower administration.[150]

Diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States continued for some time after Batista's fall, but President Eisenhower deliberately left the capital to avoid meeting Cuba's young revolutionary leader Fidel Castro during the latter's trip to Washington in April, leaving Vice President Richard Nixon to conduct the meeting in his place.[151] Eisenhower's officials were not sure as to whether Castro was a communist, but hostile toward the Cubans' efforts to decrease their economic reliance on the United States.[152]

In January 1961, just prior to leaving office, Eisenhower formally severed relations with the Cuban government. In April 1961, the administration of newly-elected American President John F. Kennedy mounted an unsuccessful CIA-organized ship-borne invasion of the island at Playa Girón and Playa Larga in Las Villas Province—a failure that publicly humiliated the United States.[152] Castro responded by embracing Marxism-Leninism, and the Soviet Union pledged to provide support.[152]

Berlin Crisis of 1961

Soviet tanks face US tanks at Checkpoint Charlie, on October 27, during the Berlin Crisis of 1961

The Berlin Crisis of 1961 was the last major incident in the Cold War regarding the status of Berlin and post–World War II Germany. By the early 1950s, the Soviet approach to restricting emigration movement was emulated by most of the rest of the Eastern Bloc.[153] However, hundreds of thousands of East Germans annually emigrated to West Germany through a "loophole" in the system that existed between East and West Berlin, where the four occupying World War II powers governed movement.[154]

The emigration resulted in a massive "brain drain" from East Germany to West Germany of younger educated professionals, such that nearly 20% of East Germany's population had migrated to West Germany by 1961.[155] That June, the Soviet Union issued a new ultimatum demanding the withdrawal of Allied forces from West Berlin.[156] The request was rebuffed, and on August 13, East Germany erected a barbed-wire barrier that would eventually be expanded through construction into the Berlin Wall, effectively closing the loophole.[157]

Cuban Missile Crisis and Khrushchev ouster

A U.S. Navy P-2 of VP-18 flying over a Soviet freighter during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Continuing to seek ways to oust Castro following the Bay of Pigs Invasion, Kennedy and his administration experimented with various ways of covertly facilitating the overthrow of the Cuban government. Significant hopes were pinned on a covert program named the Cuban Project, devised under the Kennedy administration in 1961.

In February 1962, Khrushchev learned of the American plans regarding Cuba: a "Cuban project"—approved by the CIA and stipulating the overthrow of the Cuban government in October, possibly involving the American military—and yet one more Kennedy-ordered operation to assassinate Castro.[158] Preparations to install Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba were undertaken in response.[158]

Alarmed, Kennedy considered various reactions, and ultimately responded to the installation of nuclear missiles in Cuba with a naval blockade and presented an ultimatum to the Soviets. Khrushchev backed down from a confrontation, and the Soviet Union removed the missiles in return for an American pledge not to invade Cuba again.[159]

The Cuban Missile Crisis (October–November 1962) brought the world closer to nuclear war than ever before.[160] It further demonstrated the concept of mutually assured destruction, that neither nuclear power was prepared to use nuclear weapons fearing total destruction via nuclear retaliation.[161] The aftermath of the crisis led to the first efforts in the nuclear arms race at nuclear disarmament and improving relations,[110] although the Cold War's first arms control agreement, the Antarctic Treaty, had come into force in 1961.[162]

In 1964, Khrushchev's Kremlin colleagues managed to oust him, but allowed him a peaceful retirement.[163] Accused of rudeness and incompetence, he was also credited with ruining Soviet agriculture and bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war.[163] Khrushchev had become an international embarrassment when he authorized construction of the Berlin Wall, a public humiliation for Marxism-Leninism.[163]

Confrontation through détente (1962–79)

The United States reached the moon in 1969—a milestone in the space race.
United States Navy F-4 Phantom II intercepts a Soviet Tupolev Tu-95 D aircraft in the early 1970s

In the course of the 1960s and 1970s, Cold War participants struggled to adjust to a new, more complicated pattern of international relations in which the world was no longer divided into two clearly opposed blocs.[70] From the beginning of the post-war period, Western Europe and Japan rapidly recovered from the destruction of World War II and sustained strong economic growth through the 1950s and 1960s, with per capita GDPs approaching those of the United States, while Eastern Bloc economies stagnated.[70][164]

As a result of the 1973 oil crisis, combined with the growing influence of Third World alignments such as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the Non-Aligned Movement, less-powerful countries had more room to assert their independence and often showed themselves resistant to pressure from either superpower.[97] Meanwhile, Moscow was forced to turn its attention inward to deal with the Soviet Union's deep-seated domestic economic problems.[70] During this period, Soviet leaders such as Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin embraced the notion of détente.[70]

French NATO withdrawal

The unity of NATO was breached early in its history, with a crisis occurring during Charles de Gaulle's presidency of France from 1958 onwards. De Gaulle protested at the United States' strong role in the organization and what he perceived as a special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom. In a memorandum sent to President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan on 17 September 1958, he argued for the creation of a tripartite directorate that would put France on an equal footing with the United States and the United Kingdom, and also for the expansion of NATO's coverage to include geographical areas of interest to France, most notably French Algeria, where France was waging a counter-insurgency and sought NATO assistance.[165]

Considering the response given to be unsatisfactory, de Gaulle began the development of an independent French nuclear deterrent and in 1966 withdrew from NATO's military structures and expelled NATO troops from French soil.[166]

Czechoslovakia invasion

In 1968, a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia called the Prague Spring took place that included "Action Program" of liberalizations, which described increasing freedom of the press, freedom of speech and freedom of movement, along with an economic emphasis on consumer goods, the possibility of a multiparty government, limiting the power of the secret police[167][168] and potentially withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact.[169]

In answer to the Prague Spring, the Soviet army, together with most of their Warsaw Pact allies, invaded Czechoslovakia.[170] The invasion was followed by a wave of emigration, including an estimated 70,000 Czechs initially fleeing, with the total eventually reaching 300,000.[171] The invasion sparked intense protests from Yugoslavia, Romania and China, and from Western European communist parties.[172]

Brezhnev Doctrine

Leonid Brezhnev and Richard Nixon during Brezhnev's June 1973 visit to Washington; this was a high-water mark in détente between the United States and the Soviet Union.

In September 1968, during a speech at the Fifth Congress of the Polish United Workers' Party one month after the invasion of Czechoslovakia, Brezhnev outlined the Brezhnev Doctrine, in which he claimed the right to violate the sovereignty of any country attempting to replace Marxism-Leninism with capitalism. During the speech, Brezhnev stated:[169]

When forces that are hostile to socialism try to turn the development of some socialist country towards capitalism, it becomes not only a problem of the country concerned, but a common problem and concern of all socialist countries.

The doctrine found its origins in the failures of Marxism-Leninism in states like Poland, Hungary and East Germany, which were facing a declining standard of living contrasting with the prosperity of West Germany and the rest of Western Europe.[173]

Third World escalations

Alexei Kosygin (left) next to U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson (right) during the Glassboro Summit Conference

In late April 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson landed some 22,000 troops in the Dominican Republic for a one-year occupation of the republic in an invasion codenamed Operation Power Pack, citing the threat of the emergence of a Cuban-style revolution in Latin America.[16] Presidential elections held in 1966, during the occupation, handed victory to the conservative Joaquín Balaguer. Although Balaguer enjoyed a real base of support from sectors of the elites as well as peasants, his formally running Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) opponent, former President Juan Bosch, did not actively campaign.[174] The PRD's activists were violently harassed by the Dominican police and armed forces.[174]

In Indonesia, the hardline anti-communist General Suharto wrested control of the state from his predecessor Sukarno in an attempt to establish a "New Order". From 1965 to 1966, the military orchestrated the mass killing of an estimated half-million members and sympathizers of the Indonesian Communist Party and other leftist organizations.[175]

Escalating the scale of American intervention in the ongoing conflict between Ngô Đình Diệm's South Vietnamese government and the communist National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF) insurgents opposing it, Johnson stationed some 575,000 troops in Southeast Asia to defeat the NLF and their North Vietnamese allies in the Vietnam War, 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 the world's most powerful superpower at the hands of one of the world's poorest nations.[16]

In Chile, the Socialist Party candidate Salvador Allende won the presidential election of 1970, becoming the first democratically elected Marxist to become president of a country in the Americas.[176] Backed by the CIA, General Augusto Pinochet carried out a violent coup against the government on September 11, 1973 and quickly consolidated all political power as a military dictator. Allende's reforms of the economy were rolled back and leftist opponents were killed or detained in internment camps under the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA).

Additionally, the continent-wide South American Operation Condor—employed by dictators in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Uruguay, and Paraguay to suppress leftist dissent—was backed by the United States, which (sometimes accurately) perceived Soviet or Cuban support behind these opposition movements.[177]

Displeasing the United States, Jamaica began pursuing closer relations with the Cuban government as a result of Michael Manley's election in 1972.[178] The United States' covert response included financing Manley's political opponents, the instigation of mutiny in the Jamaican army, and the fitting out of a private mercernary army against the Manley government.[140] Violence ensued.

Moreover, the Middle East continued to be a source of contention. Egypt, which received the bulk of its arms and economic assistance from the USSR, was a troublesome client, with a reluctant Soviet Union feeling obliged to assist in both the 1967 Six-Day War (with advisers and technicians) and the War of Attrition (with pilots and aircraft) against pro-Western Israel.[179] Despite the beginning of an Egyptian shift from a pro-Soviet to a pro-American orientation in 1972 (under Egypt's new leader Anwar El Sadat),[180] rumors of imminent Soviet intervention on the Egyptians' behalf during the 1973 Yom Kippur War brought about a massive American mobilization that threatened to wreck détente.[181] Although pre-Sadat Egypt had been the largest recipient of Soviet aid in the Middle East, the Soviets were also successful in establishing close relations with communist South Yemen, as well as the nationalist governments of Algeria and Iraq.[180] Indirect Soviet assistance to the Palestinian side of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict included support for Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).[182]

In Africa, Somali army officers led by Mohamed Siad Barre carried out a bloodless coup in 1969, creating the socialist Somali Democratic Republic. The Soviet Union vowed to support Somalia. Four years later, the pro-American Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie was overthrown in a 1974 coup by the Derg, a radical group of Ethiopian army officers led by the pro-Soviet Mengistu Haile Mariam, who built up relations with the Cubans and Soviets.[183] When fighting between the Somalis and Ethiopians broke out in the 1977-1978 Somali-Ethiopian Ogaden War, Barre lost his Soviet support and allied with the United States. Cuban troops took part in the war on the side of the Ethiopians.[183]

The 1974 Portuguese Carnation Revolution against the authoritarian Estado Novo returned Portugal to a multi-party system and facilitated the independence of the Portuguese colonies Angola and East Timor. In Africa, where Angolan rebels had waged a multi-faction independence war against Portuguese rule since 1961, a two-decade civil war replaced the anti-colonial struggle as fighting erupted between the communist People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), backed by the Cubans and Soviets, and the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA), backed by the United States, the People's Republic of China, and Mobutu's government in Zaire. The United States, the apartheid government of South Africa, and several other African governments also supported a third faction, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). Without bothering to consult the Soviets in advance, the Cuban government sent its troops to fight alongside the MPLA.[183] Apartheid South Africa sent troops to support the UNITA, but the MPLA, bolstered by Cuban personnel and Soviet assistance, eventually gained the upper hand.Cite error: The <ref> tag has too many names (see the help page).

In southeast Asia, the colony of East Timor unilaterally declared independence under the left-wing Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (Fretilin) in November 1975. Supported by Australia and the United States, Suharto's Indonesia invaded in December—the beginning of an occupation that would last a quarter-century.[184]

Sino-American rapproachment

File:Nixon Mao 1972-02-29.png
Richard Nixon meets with Mao Zedong in 1972.

As a result of the Sino–Soviet split, tensions along the Chinese–Soviet border reached their peak in 1969, and United States President Richard Nixon decided to use the conflict to shift the balance of power towards the West in the Cold War.[185] The Chinese had sought improved relations with the Americans in order to gain advantage over the Soviets as well.

In February 1972, Nixon announced a stunning rapprochement with Mao's China[186] by traveling to Beijing and meeting with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. At this time, the USSR achieved rough nuclear parity with the United States; meanwhile, the Vietnam War both weakened America's influence in the Third World and cooled relations with Western Europe.[187] Although indirect conflict between Cold War powers continued through the late 1960s and early 1970s, tensions were beginning to ease.[110]

Nixon, Brezhnev, and détente

Leonid Brezhnev and Jimmy Carter sign SALT II treaty, June 18, 1979, in Vienna

Following his China visit, Nixon met with Soviet leaders, including Brezhnev in Moscow.[188] These Strategic Arms Limitation Talks resulted in two landmark arms control treaties: SALT I, the first comprehensive limitation pact signed by the two superpowers,[189] and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which banned the development of systems designed to intercept incoming missiles. These aimed to limit the development of costly anti-ballistic missiles and nuclear missiles.[70]

Nixon and Brezhnev proclaimed a new era of "peaceful coexistence" and established the groundbreaking new policy of détente (or cooperation) between the two superpowers. Meanwhile, Brezhnev attempted to revive the Soviet economy, which was declining in part because of heavy military expenditures.[16] Between 1972 and 1974, the two sides also agreed to strengthen their economic ties,[16] including agreements for increased trade. As a result of their meetings, détente would replace the hostility of the Cold War and the two countries would live mutually.[188]

Meanwhile, these developments coincided with the "Ostpolitik" of West German Chancellor Willy Brandt.[172] Other agreements were concluded to stabilize the situation in Europe, culminating in the Helsinki Accords signed at the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe in 1975.[190]

Late 1970s deterioration of relations

In the 1970s, the KGB, led by Yuri Andropov, continued to persecute distinguished Soviet personalities such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov, who were criticising the Soviet leadership in harsh terms.[191] Indirect conflict between the superpowers continued through this period of détente in the Third World, particularly during political crises in the Middle East, Chile, Ethiopia, and Angola.[192]

Although President Jimmy Carter tried to place another limit on the arms race with a SALT II agreement in 1979,[193] his efforts were undermined by the other events that year, including the Iranian Revolution and the Nicaraguan Revolution, which both ousted pro-US regimes, and his retaliation against Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in December.[16]

Second Cold War (1979–85)

The term second Cold War has been used by some historians to refer to the period of intensive reawakening of Cold War tensions and conflicts in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Tensions greatly increased between the major powers with both sides becoming more militaristic.[12]

Soviet war in Afghanistan

During December 1979, approximately 75,000 Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan in order to support the Marxist government formed by ex-Prime-minister Nur Muhammad Taraki, assassinated that September by one of his party rivals.[194]

In a post-Afghan War interview conducted by French weekly newsmagazine Le Nouvel Observateur, President Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski stated that the president had already signed a directive to provide aid to the anti-communist mujahideen insurgency against the pro-Soviet PDPA government of Afghanistan in July, some six months prior to the Soviet military intervention.[195] Asked by the interviewer if he had regrets, given that "the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan" and that "people didn't believe them," Brzezinski responded:

Regret what? The secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: we now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam...[196]

Carter responded to the Soviet intervention by withdrawing the SALT II treaty from the Senate, imposing embargoes on grain and technology shipments to the USSR, and demanding a significant increase in military spending, and further announced that the United States would boycott the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics. He described the Soviet incursion as "the most serious threat to the peace since the Second World War".[197]

Reagan and Thatcher

Thatcher is the only woman in a room, where a dozen men in suits sit around an oval table. Regan and Thatcher sit opposite each other in the middle of the long axis of the table. The room is which is decorated in white, with drapes, a gold chandelier and a portrait of Lincoln.
Thatcher's Ministry meets with Reagan's Cabinet at the White House, 1981

In January 1977, four years prior to becoming president, Ronald Reagan bluntly stated, in a conversation with Richard V. Allen, his basic expectation in relation to the Cold War. "My idea of American policy toward the Soviet Union is simple, and some would say simplistic," he said. "It is this: We win and they lose. What do you think of that?"[198] In 1980, Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter in the 1980 presidential election, vowing to increase military spending and confront the Soviets everywhere.[199] Both Reagan and new British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher denounced the Soviet Union and its ideology. Reagan labeled the Soviet Union an "evil empire" and predicted that Communism would be left on the "ash heap of history".[200]

Despite anti-American sentiment in Iran as a result of the 1979 Iranian Revolution against the pro-American shah and an accompanying breakdown in relations with the new Ayatollah Khomeini government over the Iran hostage crisis, the Reagan administration reached out to the anti-communist Khomeini in an effort to recruit the theocracy into the American camp in the early 1980s. Then-CIA director William Casey described the Khomeini government as "faltering and [possibly] moving toward a moment of truth... The U.S. has almost no cards to play; the USSR has many."[201] One mode of American support for the Iranians consisted of secret arms sales. In 1983, the CIA passed an extensive list of Iranian communists and other leftists secretly working in the Iranian government to Khomeini's administration.[202] A Tower Commission report later observed that the list was utilized to take "measures, including mass executions, that virtually eliminated the pro-Soviet infrastructure in Iran."[202]

By early 1985, Reagan's anti-communist position had developed into a stance known as the new Reagan Doctrine—which, in addition to containment, formulated an additional right to subvert existing communist governments.[203] Besides continuing Carters' policy of supporting the Islamic opponents of the Soviet Union and the Soviet-backed PDPA government in Afghanistan, the CIA also sought to weaken the Soviet Union itself by promoting political Islam in the majority-Muslim Central Asian Soviet Union.[204] Additionally, the CIA encouraged anti-communist Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency to train Muslims from around the world to participate in the jihad against the Soviet Union.[204]

Polish Solidarity movement and martial law

Pope John Paul II provided a moral focus for anti-communism; a visit to his native Poland in 1979 stimulated a religious and nationalist resurgence centered on the Solidarity movement that galvanized opposition and may have led to his attempted assassination two years later.[205]

In December 1981, Poland's Wojciech Jaruzelski reacted to the crisis by imposing a period of martial law. Reagan imposed economic sanctions on Poland in response.[206] Mikhail Suslov, the Kremlin's top ideologist, advised Soviet leaders not to intervene if Poland fell under the control of Solidarity, for fear it might lead to heavy economic sanctions, representing a catastrophe for the Soviet economy.[206]

Soviet and US military and economic issues

US and USSR/Russian nuclear weapons stockpiles, 1945–2006
Delta 183 launch vehicle lifts off, carrying the Strategic Defense Initiative sensor experiment "Delta Star".

Moscow had built up a military that consumed as much as 25 percent of the Soviet Union's gross national product at the expense of consumer goods and investment in civilian sectors.[207] Soviet spending on the arms race and other Cold War commitments both caused and exacerbated deep-seated structural problems in the Soviet system,[208] which saw at least a decade of economic stagnation during the late Brezhnev years.

Soviet investment in the defense sector was not driven by military necessity, but in large part by the interests of massive party and state bureaucracies dependent on the sector for their own power and privileges.[209] The Soviet Armed Forces became the largest in the world in terms of the numbers and types of weapons they possessed, in the number of troops in their ranks, and in the sheer size of their military–industrial base.[210] However, the quantitative advantages held by the Soviet military often concealed areas[which?] where the Eastern Bloc dramatically lagged behind the West.[211]

After ten year old American Samantha Smith wrote a letter to Yuri Andropov expressing her fear of nuclear war, Andropov invited Smith to the Soviet Union.

By the early 1980s, the USSR had built up a military arsenal and army surpassing that of the United States. Soon after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, president Carter began massively building up the United States military. This buildup was accelerated by the Reagan administration, which increased the military spending from 5.3 percent of GNP in 1981 to 6.5 percent in 1986,[212] the largest peacetime defense buildup in United States history.[213]

Tensions continued intensifying in the early 1980s when Reagan revived the B-1 Lancer program that was canceled by the Carter administration, produced LGM-118 Peacekeepers,[214] installed US cruise missiles in Europe, and announced his experimental Strategic Defense Initiative, dubbed "Star Wars" by the media, a defense program to shoot down missiles in mid-flight.[215]

With the background of a buildup in tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States, and the deployment of Soviet RSD-10 Pioneer ballistic missiles targeting Western Europe, NATO decided, under the impetus of the Carter presidency, to deploy MGM-31 Pershing and cruise missiles in Europe, primarily West Germany.[216] This deployment would have placed missiles just 10 minutes' striking distance from Moscow.[217]

After Reagan's military buildup, the Soviet Union did not respond by further building its military[218] because the enormous military expenses, along with inefficient planned manufacturing and collectivized agriculture, were already a heavy burden for the Soviet economy.[219] At the same time, Saudi Arabia increased oil production,[220] even as other non-OPEC nations were increasing production.[221] These developments contributed to the 1980s oil glut, which affected the Soviet Union, as oil was the main source of Soviet export revenues.[207][219] Issues with command economics,[222] oil prices decreases and large military expenditures gradually brought the Soviet economy to stagnation.[219]

On September 1, 1983, the Soviet Union shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, a Boeing 747 with 269 people aboard, including sitting Congressman Larry McDonald, when it violated Soviet airspace just past the west coast of Sakhalin Island near Moneron Island —an act which Reagan characterized as a "massacre". This act increased support for military deployment, overseen by Reagan, which stood in place until the later accords between Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev.[223] The Able Archer 83 exercise in November 1983, a realistic simulation of a coordinated NATO nuclear release, has been called most dangerous moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis, as the Soviet leadership keeping a close watch on it considered a nuclear attack to be imminent.[224]

US domestic public concerns about intervening in foreign conflicts persisted from the end of the Vietnam War.[225] The Reagan administration emphasized the use of quick, low-cost counter-insurgency tactics to intervene in foreign conflicts.[225] In 1983, the Reagan administration intervened in the multisided Lebanese Civil War, invaded Grenada, bombed Libya and backed the Central American Contras, anti-communist paramilitaries seeking to overthrow the Soviet-aligned Sandinista government in Nicaragua.[97] While Reagan's interventions against Grenada and Libya were popular in the United States, his backing of the Contra rebels was mired in controversy.[226]

Meanwhile, the Soviets incurred high costs for their own foreign interventions. Although Brezhnev was convinced in 1979 that the Soviet war in Afghanistan would be brief, Muslim guerrillas, aided by the US and other countries, waged a fierce resistance against the invasion.[227] The Kremlin sent nearly 100,000 troops to support its puppet regime in Afghanistan, leading many outside observers to dub the war "the Soviets' Vietnam".[227] However, Moscow's quagmire in Afghanistan was far more disastrous for the Soviets than Vietnam had been for the Americans because the conflict coincided with a period of internal decay and domestic crisis in the Soviet system.

A senior US State Department official predicted such an outcome as early as 1980, positing that the invasion resulted in part from a "domestic crisis within the Soviet system. ... It may be that the thermodynamic law of entropy has ... caught up with the Soviet system, which now seems to expend more energy on simply maintaining its equilibrium than on improving itself. We could be seeing a period of foreign movement at a time of internal decay".[228][229] The Soviets were not helped by their aged and sclerotic leadership either: Brezhnev, virtually incapacitated in his last years, was succeeded by Andropov and Chernenko, neither of whom lasted long. After Chernenko's death, Reagan was asked why he had not negotiated with Soviet leaders. Reagan quipped, "They keep dying on me".[230]

Final years (1985–91)

Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan sign the INF Treaty at the White House, 1987
File:Evstafiev-afghan-apc-passes-russian.jpg
Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1988.

Gorbachev reforms

By the time the comparatively youthful Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary in 1985,[200] the Soviet economy was stagnant and faced a sharp fall in foreign currency earnings as a result of the downward slide in oil prices in the 1980s.[231] These issues prompted Gorbachev to investigate measures to revive the ailing state.[231]

An ineffectual start led to the conclusion that deeper structural changes were necessary and in June 1987 Gorbachev announced an agenda of economic reform called perestroika, or restructuring.[232] Perestroika relaxed the production quota system, allowed private ownership of businesses and paved the way for foreign investment. These measures were intended to redirect the country's resources from costly Cold War military commitments to more productive areas in the civilian sector.[232]

Despite initial skepticism in the West, the new Soviet leader proved to be committed to reversing the Soviet Union's deteriorating economic condition instead of continuing the arms race with the West.[110][233] Partly as a way to fight off internal opposition from party cliques to his reforms, Gorbachev simultaneously introduced glasnost, or openness, which increased freedom of the press and the transparency of state institutions.[234] Glasnost was intended to reduce the corruption at the top of the Communist Party and moderate the abuse of power in the Central Committee.[235] Glasnost also enabled increased contact between Soviet citizens and the western world, particularly with the United States, contributing to the accelerating détente between the two nations.[236]

Thaw in relations

In response to the Kremlin's military and political concessions, Reagan agreed to renew talks on economic issues and the scaling-back of the arms race.[237] The first was held in November 1985 in Geneva, Switzerland.[237] At one stage the two men, accompanied only by an interpreter, agreed in principle to reduce each country's nuclear arsenal by 50 percent.[238] A second Reykjavík Summit was held in Iceland. Talks went well until the focus shifted to Reagan's proposed Strategic Defense Initiative, which Gorbachev wanted eliminated: Reagan refused.[239] The negotiations failed, but the third summit in 1987 led to a breakthrough with the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). The INF treaty eliminated all nuclear-armed, ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers (300 to 3,400 miles) and their infrastructure.[240]

East–West tensions rapidly subsided through the mid-to-late 1980s, culminating with the final summit in Moscow in 1989, when Gorbachev and George H. W. Bush signed the START I arms control treaty.[241] During the following year it became apparent to the Soviets that oil and gas subsidies, along with the cost of maintaining massive troops levels, represented a substantial economic drain.[242] In addition, the security advantage of a buffer zone was recognised as irrelevant and the Soviets officially declared that they would no longer intervene in the affairs of allied states in Eastern Europe.[243]

In 1989, Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan[244] and by 1990 Gorbachev consented to German reunification,[242] the only alternative being a Tiananmen scenario.[245] When the Berlin Wall came down, Gorbachev's "Common European Home" concept began to take shape.[246]

On December 3, 1989, Gorbachev and Reagan's successor, George H. W. Bush, declared the Cold War over at the Malta Summit;[247] a year later, the two former rivals were partners in the Gulf War against Iraq.[248]

Faltering Soviet system

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

By 1989, the Soviet alliance system was on the brink of collapse, and, deprived of Soviet military support, the Communist leaders of the Warsaw Pact states were losing power.[244] In the USSR itself, glasnost weakened the bonds that held the Soviet Union together[243] and by February 1990, with the dissolution of the USSR looming, the Communist Party was forced to surrender its 73-year-old monopoly on state power.[249]

At the same time freedom of press and dissent allowed by glasnost and the festering "nationalities question" increasingly led the Union's component republics to declare their autonomy from Moscow, with the Baltic states withdrawing from the Union entirely.[250] The 1989 revolutionary wave that swept across Central and Eastern Europe overthrew the Soviet-style communist states, such as Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria,[251] Romania being the only Eastern-bloc country to topple its communist regime violently and execute its head of state.[252]

Soviet dissolution

Commonwealth of Independent States, the official end of the Soviet Union

Gorbachev's permissive attitude toward Eastern Europe did not initially extend to Soviet territory; even Bush, who strove to maintain friendly relations, condemned the January 1991 killings in Latvia and Lithuania, privately warning that economic ties would be frozen if the violence continued.[253] The USSR was fatally weakened by a failed coup and a growing number of Soviet republics, particularly Russia, who threatened to secede from the USSR. The Commonwealth of Independent States, created on December 21, 1991, is viewed as a successor entity to the Soviet Union but, according to Russia's leaders, its purpose was to "allow a civilized divorce" between the Soviet Republics and is comparable to a loose confederation.[254] The USSR was declared officially dissolved on December 25, 1991.[255]

Aftermath

NATO/CSTO
NATO has expanded eastwards into the former Warsaw Pact and parts of the former Soviet Union since the end of the Cold War.

Following the Cold War, Russia cut military spending dramatically, creating a wrenching adjustment as the military-industrial sector had previously employed one of every five Soviet adults,[256] meaning its dismantling left millions throughout the former Soviet Union unemployed.[256] After Russia embarked on capitalist economic reforms in the 1990s, it suffered a financial crisis and a recession more severe than the US and Germany had experienced during the Great Depression.[257] Russian living standards have worsened overall in the post–Cold War years, although the economy has resumed growth since 1999.[257]

The aftermath of the Cold War continues to influence world affairs.[12] After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the post–Cold War world is widely considered as unipolar, with the United States the sole remaining superpower.[258][259][260] The Cold War defined the political role of the United States in the post–World War II world: by 1989 the US held military alliances with 50 countries, and had 526,000[261] troops posted abroad in dozens of countries, with 326,000 in Europe (two-thirds of which in west Germany)[262] and about 130,000 in Asia (mainly Japan and South Korea).[261] The Cold War also marked the apex of peacetime military-industrial complexes, especially in the USA, and large-scale military funding of science.[263] These complexes, though their origins may be found as early as the 19th century, have grown considerably during the Cold War. The military-industrial complexes have great impact on their countries and help shape their society, policy and foreign relations.[264]

Military expenditures by the US during the Cold War years were estimated to have been $8 trillion, while nearly 100,000 Americans lost their lives in the Korean War and Vietnam War.[265] Although the loss of life among Soviet soldiers is difficult to estimate, as a share of their gross national product the financial cost for the Soviet Union was far higher than that incurred by the United States.[266]

In addition to the loss of life by uniformed soldiers, millions died in the superpowers' proxy wars around the globe, most notably in Southeast Asia.[267] Most of the proxy wars and subsidies for local conflicts ended along with the Cold War; interstate wars, ethnic wars, revolutionary wars, as well as refugee and displaced persons crises have declined sharply in the post–Cold War years.[268]

The aftermath of Cold War conflict, however, is not always easily erased, as many of the economic and social tensions that were exploited to fuel Cold War competition in parts of the Third World remain acute.[12] The breakdown of state control in a number of areas formerly ruled by Communist governments has produced new civil and ethnic conflicts, particularly in the former Yugoslavia.[12] In Eastern Europe, the end of the Cold War has ushered in an era of economic growth and an increase in the number of liberal democracies, while in other parts of the world, such as Afghanistan, independence was accompanied by state failure.[12]

Historiography

As soon as the term "Cold War" was popularized to refer to post-war tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, interpreting the course and origins of the conflict has been a source of heated controversy among historians, political scientists, and journalists.[269] In particular, historians have sharply disagreed as to who was responsible 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.[270] 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 and reaction between the two sides.[12]

Although explanations of the origins of the conflict in academic discussions are complex and diverse, several general schools of thought on the subject can be identified. Historians commonly speak of three differing approaches to the study of the Cold War: "orthodox" accounts, "revisionism", and "post-revisionism".[263]

"Orthodox" accounts place responsibility for the Cold War on the Soviet Union and its expansion into Eastern Europe.[263] "Revisionist" writers place more responsibility for the breakdown of post-war peace on the United States, citing a range of US efforts to isolate and confront the Soviet Union well before the end of World War II.[263] "Post-revisionists" see the events of the Cold War as more nuanced, and attempt to be more balanced in determining what occurred during the Cold War.[263] Much of the historiography on the Cold War weaves together two or even all three of these broad categories.[31]

See also

Footnotes

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  2. ^ Orwell, George, The Observer, March 10, 1946
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References and further reading

  • Davis, Simon, and Joseph Smith. The A to Z of the Cold War (Scarecrow, 2005), encyclopedia focused on military aspects
  • Friedman, Norman (2007). The Fifty-Year War: Conflict and Strategy in the Cold War. Naval Institute Press. ISBN 1591142873.
  • Gaddis, John Lewis (1990). Russia, the Soviet Union and the United States. An Interpretative History. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0075572583. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  • Gaddis, John Lewis (1997). We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198780702.
  • Gaddis, John Lewis (2005). The Cold War: A New History. Penguin Press. ISBN 1594200629. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  • Garthoff, Raymond (1994). Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan. Brookings Institution Press. ISBN 0815730411. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  • Haslam, Jonathan. Russia's Cold War: From the October Revolution to the Fall of the Wall (Yale University Press; 2011) 512 pages
  • Hoffman, David E. The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy (2010)
  • Hopkins, Michael F. "Continuing Debate and New Approaches in Cold War History," Historical Journal, Dec 2007, Vol. 50 Issue 4, pp 913–934, historiography
  • Johnston, Gordon. "Revisiting the cultural Cold War," Social History, Aug 2010, Vol. 35 Issue 3, pp 290–307
  • Lüthi, Lorenz M (2008). The Sino-Soviet split: Cold War in the communist world. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691135908.
  • LaFeber, Walter (2002). America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-2002. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0072849037. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  • Leffler, Melvyn (1992). A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War. Stanford University Press. ISBN 0804722188. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  • Leffler, Melvyn P. and Odd Arne Westad, eds. The Cambridge History of the Cold War (3 vol, 2010) 2000pp; new essays by leading scholars
  • Lewkowicz, Nicolas (2010). The German Question and the International Order, 1943-48. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9780230248120. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  • Lundestad, Geir (2005). East, West, North, South: Major Developments in International Politics since 1945. Oxford University Press. ISBN 1412907489.
  • McMahon, Robert (2003). The Cold War: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0192801783.
  • Lüthi, Lorenz M (2008). The Sino-Soviet split: Cold War in the communist world. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691135908.
  • Malkasian, Carter (2001). The Korean War: Essential Histories. Osprey Publishing. ISBN 1841762822. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  • Mastny, Vojtech. The Cold War and Soviet insecurity: the Stalin years (1996) online edition
  • Fedorov, Alexander (2011). Russian Image on the Western Screen: Trends, Stereotypes, Myths, Illusions. Lambert Academic Publishing,. ISBN 978-3843393300.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
  • Miller, Roger Gene (2000). To Save a City: The Berlin Airlift, 1948-1949. Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 0890969671. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  • Njolstad, Olav (2004). The Last Decade of the Cold War. Routledge. ISBN 071468371X. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  • Nolan, Peter (1995). China's Rise, Russia's Fall. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0312127146.
  • Pearson, Raymond (1998). The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire. Macmillan. ISBN 0312174071. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  • Plokhy, S.M. (2010). Yalta: The Price of Peace. Penguin?. ISBN 0670021415. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  • Porter, Bruce (1984). The USSR in Third World Conflicts: Soviet Arms and Diplomacy in Local Wars. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521310644. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  • Puddington, Arch (2003). Broadcasting Freedom: The Cold War Triumph of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0813190452. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  • Roberts, Geoffrey (2006). Stalin's Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939–1953. Yale University Press. ISBN 0300112041. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  • Stone, Norman (2010). The Atlantic and Its Enemies: A History of the Cold War. Basic Books Press. ISBN 0465020437. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  • Taubman, William (2004). Khrushchev: The Man and His Era. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0393324842. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: postscript (link); Pulitzer Prize
  • Tompson‏, William J (1997). Khrushchev: A Political Life. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0312163606. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  • Tucker, Spencer, ed. Encyclopedia of the Cold War: A Political, Social, and Military History (5 vol. 2008), world coverage
  • Walker, Martin. The Cold War: A History (1995), British perspective
  • Wettig, Gerhard (2008). Stalin and the Cold War in Europe. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 0742555429. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  • Zubok, Vladislav (1996). Inside the Kremlin's Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674455312. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  • Zubok, Vladislav M. A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (2008)

Primary sources

  • Andrew, Christopher (2000). The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB. Basic Books. ISBN 0585418284. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  • Dobrynin, Anatoly (2001). In Confidence: Moscow's Ambassador to Six Cold War Presidents. University of Washington Press. ISBN 0295980818. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  • Hanhimaki, Jussi and Odd Arne Westad, eds. The Cold War: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts (Oxford University Press, 2003). ISBN 0-19-927280-8.
  • Sakwa, Richard (1999). The rise and fall of the Soviet Union, 1917-1991. Routledge. ISBN 0415122902. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  • Cardona, Luis (2007). Cold War KFA. Routledge. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |unused_data= ignored (help)CS1 maint: postscript (link)
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