The Bipolar World summary

The Bipolar World summary

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Chapter 21 - The Bipolar World, 1945 to 1991

I Bipolar Transformation in the West

Western Europe seemed at an all time low in 1945. The hegemony she had held less than a century earlier had vanished and the new Cold War seemed to dwarf European concerns. The first step in recovery was the thirteen billion dollars that the Marshall Plan pumped into the shattered economies of Western Europe. It not only helped rebuild war-torn infrastructure and local economies but it helped to contain the spread of communism.  This led to the “miracle” of the 50s and 60s during which European economies went beyond rebuilding and, like the United States’ economy, expanded and flourished.

Among the losers: Germany and Austria were divided into four zones of occupation: French, British, American and Russian. In 1949 the American, French and British zones became West Germany (known as The Federal Republic of Germany) which rose from ruins to become the strongest economic powerhouse of Western Europe. The deeply respected Konrad Adenauer became chancellor of West Germany from 1949-1963 and brought West Germany back into the family of nations. He had been mayor of Cologne from 1917 to 1933 and was imprisoned by the Nazis in 1944. After the war he was the co-founder of the Christian Democratic Union, (a successor to the Centre Party) which tied to embrace Protestants as well as Catholics in a single party. In 1955, the Austrian zones which had been absorbed by Hitler in 1938 were reunified as the Republic of Austria.

Italy had tried to negotiate a separate surrender with the allies in 1943 and had dumped Mussolini. Hitler however, rescued his old friend and the Germans held Northern Italy until they surrendered in 1945. Mussolini himself was killed by Italian partisans. After the war, Italy rejected both Fascism and the monarchy and became a republic in 1948. She became firmly tied to the West and joined N.A.T.O. the following year.

The Western European winners also were exhausted as Europe’s day in world leadership had passed to the other side of the Atlantic as the United States was no longer an isolationist nation. The best example a losing-winner was Great Britain, which was literally bankrupt after the war. Her leadership role in world trade, shipping, and banking had passed to the United States, and her overseas investments had been largely liquidated to pay the cost of the war. In mid 1945, the wartime Prime Minister, Winston Churchill was voted out of office and replaced by Clement Attlee and a new Labour party government which swept into power and nationalized many industries including electricity, gas, water, and health. Britain took a long time to recover from the cost of war and rationing lasted into the early 1950s. Nevertheless postwar austerity and nationalization was followed by the economic miracle of the 1950s which the nation rebounded, modernized and the standard of living grew dramatically. In the 1960s, the economy slowed but by the early 1970s, the British economy was in stagnation.

France had been utterly devastated by the war and Nazi occupation, but with the help of the Marshall Plan, France recovered, proclaimed the Fourth Republic in 1946 and experienced strong growth in all modes of economic activity. Most other European democracies followed similar pathways. But Charles de Gaulle, France’s only real WWII war hero, felt that France and all of Europe would never regain great power status as long as it depended upon the United States for military protection. In spite of his myopic (limited) political vision, he had been a visionary before the war, known for advocating concentration of tanks and air power much as the Germans did with Blitzkrieg. He became the leader of the Free French in World War II and president of the provisional government from 1944 to 1946. In 1959, he was called on to form a new government under a new constitution which became the Fifth Republic with himself as its first president. His ideology of walking France down an independent path was known as Gaullism.

In 1963, De Gaulle refused to sign a partial nuclear test ban treaty, which had been signed by the USA, the USSR and Great Britain. He refused to cooperate with NATO and recognized the communist People’s Republic of China. He tried to bring the French military up to parity with the super powers. When he left office in 1969, it was obvious that he had failed, but his vision would (in a major sense) succeed in 1993 with the creation of the European Union or EU.

What De Gaulle wanted politically (with France in the leadership position) came about through economic necessity as Europeans came to realize the danger that they were in because they had become de-facto second class powers. So they began to work together to increase their economic strength. In 1952, six nations (Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Italy, France and West Germany) joined to form The European Coal and Steel Community. In 1957, they signed the Treaty of Rome, which established the EEC (European Economic Community), also known as the European Common Market. Its goal was to eliminate tariffs and other internal barriers, which would impede free market movement of money, goods, services and labor. In 1973, Britain, Ireland and Denmark joined; Greece in 1981; Spain and Portugal in 1986. In1993, the member nations signed the Treaty of Maastricht, which formally created the European Union. Two years later, Austria, Finland and Sweden joined.

After the breakup of Soviet Empire, many of its former [unwilling] members became interested in joining the union. On May 1, 2004, Slovenia, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia joined the union with non former soviet Cyprus (the Greek half) and Malta; creating a community of 450 million people with an economic output almost equal that of the United States. (Gross Domestic Product: E.U. = 9 trillion, U.S. = 10.4 trillion) In 2007, Bulgaria and Romania joined; in 2008, Cyprus and Malta; Slovakia in 2009; Estonia in 2011, Latvia in 2014 and Lithuania in 2015.

Bosnia and Herzegovina have applied for membership and currently six countries listed as candidates for membership: Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Turkey. It is interesting to note that Norway, Iceland and Switzerland have not jointed and that the microstates of Andorra, Monaco, San Marino, and the Vatican use the Euro or currency.

On June 23, 2016, Great Britain (always suspicious of the union) voted to lead the European Union mostly on negative economic and immigration issues. As 2017 proceeds, Britain is continuing its BREXIT (Britain’s Exit) plan to separate from the European Union. 

Social Politics
In social politics, the postwar period reacted to discredited Fascism and extreme right wing movements by moving toward leftist ideals (i.e. communism) and liberal democracy. As Europe flourished economically, so too did the movement toward the Welfare State. As the Labour Party had done in Britain, so the Christian Democrats in France, Italy and other Western European countries set up economic and social programs in which the state began to play a key role in the protection and promotion of the economic and social well-being of its citizens.

By 1948, most European democracies had established welfare states with state funded medical care, housing assistance, and regulation of parts of the economy, such as crop sizes or airline fares. The United States moved more slowly, but in the 1960s, under President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, medical assistance programs were created for the poor and elderly. Canada also enacted the European model of the Welfare State. It is important to note that the welfare state made the government more centralized in the lives of people with new and pervasive regulations and higher taxes. Only the United States avoided complete government planning.

By the 1970 s, both Europe and the United States discovered that their blend of capitalism and socialism had flaws and that decade saw a period of extended economic malaise (weakness). Inflation and recession, which was commonly called stagflation, (stagnation + inflation) coupled with unemployment created economic crises in the Euro-American world, and a devalued U S dollar led to instability across the globe. The first oil embargo of 1973, imposed by the nations of the Middle East and other OPEC nations, further damaged Euro-American economies.

Nevertheless, Euro-American Economies bounced back in the 1980s. They also often took a turn to the political right to escape the economic malaise of the 1970s. Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain steered a course back to a free market economy and entrepreneurialism. She lowered unemployment, won a war recapturing the distant Falkland Islands and became the only British Prime Minister in the 20th century to serve three consecutive terms (1979-1990). After a speech in which she referred to the Russians as “preferring guns to butter”, the Russians called her the Iron Lady, and the name stuck.

In 1980, Ronald Regan was elected the 40th president of the United States. He advocated a balanced budget to combat inflation and engineered a supply-side economic program of tax and non-defense budget cuts. He took a hard stance with the Soviet Union, which he called the Evil Empire and oversaw the largest peacetime escalation of military spending in American history. However, he was unable to restrain or control overall spending and huge government deficits accumulated, but the United States recovered from stagflation and his military spending (arms race) put great economic pressure of the Soviet Empire.

Willy Brandt, Chancellor of West Germany from 1969 to 1974 followed the steps of Konrad Adenauer by his Ostpolitik or détente with Eastern Europe. Helmut Kohl, a conservative like Regan and Thatcher who five times as Chancellor from 1982 to 1998, led his country to economic dominance in Europe during the 1980s. His great legacy was his managing the process of German reunification that started with the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989 and completed on October 3, 1990.

Although a socialist, France’s president, Francois Mitterand, was forced to make various concessions to the right. Thus, the 80s and 90s were a time when Euro-American governments often stepped back a little from the social-welfare systems and rebuilt sagging military forces. Unemployment, racial and economic discrimination seemed to balance prosperity, democracy and technological (i.e. computers and internet) advances. Thatcher and Regan took a strong military stand against the Soviet Empire. In response, the Soviet Union tried to build up their defenses. The financial strain on the Soviets brought about economic disaster and helped hasten the demise of the Soviet Empire.

II Bipolar Transformation in the East

In 1945, not only was Western Europe in shambles, but so was Eastern Europe. Although Stalin tried to keep it a secret, the USSR had been badly hurt by the war. Thirty million war dead and a third of their economy destroyed! The bottom line was that the Soviet Union was in no position to fight the United States. Therefore, Stalin tried to catch up.

First, Stalin tried to create a buffer zone. He won allied agreement to push Germany’s eastern borders two hundred miles to the west; then the same with Poland. From 1945 to 1948, he absorbed all of Eastern Europe installing soviet style, puppet governments in East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. He also aided Communist governments in Yugoslavia and Albania.

Second, he abandoned his Socialism in One Country approach of the late 20s and 30s and began to export communism, thus gaining influence in Turkey, Iran, Greece – and even France and Italy.

Third, he continued to rebuild the Soviet economy, taking as much as he could from Eastern Europe and Germany. He used German scientists to catch up to the U. S. in rocketry and nuclear capabilities.

Stalin’s goal was the push the Americans as hard as he could short of an open conflict. At Yalta (February 1945), Stalin had promised to allow free elections in Eastern Europe. When he broke these promises and began setting up a Soviet Sphere of Influence so that he became a military threat, President Truman responded with Containment, NATO and the Marshall Plan. Stalin naturally resisted and responded with COMECON (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) and the Warsaw Pact. The Bipolar World had been created and the Cold War was on.

Like Western Europe, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe also experienced substantial economic growth after World War II. The Soviet Union finally became a fully industrialized society and its urban population rose to more than 50% of its total population. Massive industrialization campaigns were undertaken and, although not as brutal as forced collectivization, the Soviet System nonetheless required each East European nation to specialize in the production of certain goods or natural resources. (Might we call this a Soviet form of Encomienda or Mercantilism?)

The Soviet system included the great socialist umbrella, which provided education, medical care, old age pensions and other basic services for all citizens. Nevertheless, production was of notoriously poor quality and consumer goods were constantly in short supply, as military production for the Arms Race with the United States took first place. Moreover, the entire system was harsh and repressive and filled with corruption; environmental concerns were totally ignored.

Thus, it is not surprising that the earliest resistance to Soviet hegemony took place in Eastern Europe. In Yugoslavia, Josip Broz (1892-1980), also known as Marshal Tito, who had served in the Austrian Army in WWI and joined the Communist Party in the 1920s, became the resistance leader against the Nazis and was able to gain control of Yugoslavia after the war. Tito, however, managed to escape the Soviet block and pursue a non-aligned course. His resistance to Soviet control led to a break with Stalin who expelled Tito from the Soviet Bloc in 1948. At the same time, Tito maintained good relations with East European states and worked hard with Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-1970) and India’s Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) to make a third path of nonalignment a reality. After his death in 1980, Yugoslavia quickly collapsed into ethnic divisions and broke up into Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia and Serbia, still called Yugoslavia.

In 1953, Joseph Stalin died; nobody cried. Cautiously several top Soviet leaders denounced Stalin and his reign of terror. The most important was his successor, Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971). Khrushchev became a political commissar (a supervisor of political education with authority over both the military and civilians) during the Russian Civil War. He worked his way up the Communist Party hierarchy, supported Stalin’s purges and fought bravely (still a political commissar) during World War II, especially at Stalingrad. Although one of Stalin’s inner circle, Khrushchev not only denounced Stalin but also instituted a policy of de-Stalinization, which condemned Stalin for his treatment of political opponents, his narrow (self-serving) interpretations of Marxist doctrine and his failure to prepare adequately for World War II. This de-Stalinization (even though it was not obvious to West) marked the beginning of a huge change in Russian/Soviet politics and led to some de-centralization, even though Communist party control and centralized economic planning remained intact.

Nevertheless, the repressive political ice had been broken and monuments to the former dictator were torn down. Khrushchev called for peaceful competition (peaceful coexistence) with Capitalist nations. This warming period caused a partial liberalization of Soviet society, especially in cultural life. In October 1964, Khrushchev was removed from power mostly because he could not increase agricultural production or reform the bureaucracy. He lived in obscurity outside Moscow until his death in 1971. A shrewd politician, his most famous quote was, “Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.”

The life of Alexander Solzhenitsyn illustrates how Soviet cultural life evolved after the death of Stalin. Solzhenitsyn was born into an old Cossack family and educated at the University at Rostov on the Don River. In World War II, he rose to the rank of captain of artillery, but was arrested in 1945 for writing a letter critical of Stalin and sent a forced labor camp. Freed in 1956, he settled in Ryazan in Central Russia, became a mathematics teacher and began to write. In 1962, he published One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, a short a moving description of life in a Siberian Gulag based on his own experiences. After Krushchev’s fall from power, he continued to write, but was increasingly criticized by the Russian government under the Brezhnev regime. Nonetheless, Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970, but did not travel abroad to accept it for fear he would not be allowed to return to Russia. Although not all his works dealt with political repression or even politics, his most famous work, the Gulag Archipelago, published in the early 1970s, dealt with the arrest, interrogation, conviction, transportation, and imprisonment of the Gulag's victims as practiced by Soviet authorities over four decades. Solzhenitsyn was immediately attacked by the Soviet press, arrested, charged with treason and expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974. Interestingly, even in exile (and safety) in the West, he found the West too materialistic and individualistic; and favored the formation of a benevolent authoritarian regime that would draw upon the resources of Russia's traditional Christian values. He even espoused a return to monarchy. After Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of Glasnost (openness), Solzhenitsyn had his citizenship restored and was allowed to return to Russia in 1994.

During the Khrushchev years, the most serious challenge to the Soviet control of Eastern Europe came in 1956, when reform-minded Hungarians demanded democracy and a break with Russian domination. For a short time, they expelled the Soviets and tasted freedom, until the Soviets outright invaded Hungary and used heavy tanks to crush the rebellion. The two Hungarian leaders suffered contrasting fates: Imre Nagy fought for freedom, was betrayed and executed; but Janos Kadar collaborated with the Soviets and became Hungary’s leader. Khrushchev and the Soviets took much bad press about this brutal re-assertion of power. Nevertheless, in spite of its apparent failure, the Hungarian Revolution planted the seeds of dissent in other Eastern bloc leaders and hastened the spread of de-Stalinization.

Khrushchev was succeeded by Leonid Brezhnev who had been Khrushchev’s protégée. In the early 1920s, Brezhnev served in the Communist Youth Organization and later became a political commissar, fought in World War II and rose to the rank of major general. But it was when Stalin died in 1953, he began to rise in the party leadership. He was part of the plot to remove Khrushchev and became General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1964 to 1982. Under Brezhnev, the Soviet Union finally achieved nuclear parity with the United States. The first challenge to his authority came in the spring of 1968 in Czechoslovakia when a liberal government, under Alexander Dubček came to power and - in a less threatening manner than Hungary – again challenged Soviet hegemony. Dubcek attempted to reform the Communist government and promised Socialism with a Human Face.  Brezhnev acted decisively and the Soviets put down the Prague Spring Rebellion by force but not as violently as the repression of Hungary a decade earlier.

Out of this Soviet intervention came Leonid Brezhnev’s Doctrine of Limited Sovereignty or the Brezhnev Doctrine, which allowed the Soviet Union to prevent any satellite state from leaving Soviet influence. The irony was that Dubcek was a fervent, but more forward thinking communist than Brezhnev. His “Democratic” Communism advocated freedom of the press and freedom of speech - and, even though he was forcibly removed, his Prague Spring anticipated the fall of the Soviet satellite system. Dubček himself would live to see the fall and breakup of the Soviet Empire and would try (although in vain) to prevent the separation of Czechoslovakia into Slovakia and the Czech Republic in what come to be called the Velvet Divorce. Moreover, like Hungary, other East Europeans were watching and learning in spite of the Brezhnev Doctrine.

Brezhnev also faced a deteriorating situation with China. The Soviet Union had enjoyed great relations with China in the 1940s and early 1950s when they worked together as the two principal forces promoting international communism and challenging the West. However, as the Korean conflict was heating up in 1950, Mao Zedong went to Moscow to try to get aid. What he was offered was too little with too many strings attached. Moreover Mao rested that fact that he was treated as social inferior and the treaty he had to sign (to get some aid) smacked too much of the old Unequal Treaties of the 19th Century. Therefore, Mao began to re-think his relationship with Russia. By the late 1950s, China began criticizing Soviet Union for not challenging the Americans more actively. The Russians responded by calling the Chinese Left-wing Adventurers and the Chinese retorted by calling the Soviets Revisionists. As this Sino-Soviet Split deepened, both the Soviet Union and China competed for influence in nonaligned nations. In 1979, the American President Richard Nixon split the crack a little wider when he went to China which was an act that eventually led the United States recognizing and formalizing diplomatic relations with Communist China. Thus began a triangular Washington – Moscow – Beijing diplomatic relationship that changed the dynamics of the Cold War.

To prevent a Sino-American alliance, Brezhnev opened closer relations with the United States, which led to the signing of the SALT I (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty) in 1974, which marked the beginning of an era of détente between the superpowers. However, Brezhnev also faced serious internal problems. The dual problem was a stagnating economy and huge military expenditures. His last years were marked by a growing (but benign compared to Stalin) cult of personality and the two big events of 1979:  the invasion of Afghanistan and the signing of the SALT II treaty.

In March 1982, Leonid Brezhnev suffered a stroke and died later that year. He took Soviet military and political might to great heights, but he left a legacy of economic stagnation (the Brezhnev Stagnation) and growing disaster in Afghanistan. Brezhnev was succeeded by Yuri Andropov (1914-1984) who served in the Young Communist League and, during World War II, with guerrilla forces in Finland. He helped suppress the Hungarian uprising and later became head of the KGB (Committee of State Security = Secret Police) and helped suppress Prague Spring. Two days after Brezhnev died he succeeded Brezhnev as General Secretary. Although he was a hard liner, he helped promote reformers like Mikhail Gorbachev.

III Bipolar Confrontation

When the USSR tested its first atomic bomb in 1949, that explosion marked the acceleration of the Cold War. The bomb now made the USSR equal to (or almost equal to) the United States. Just like the HMS Dreadnought in 1906 had made all battleship fleets obsolete, so the atom bomb made conventional war weapons obsolete – sort of. But the point is that the year 1949 marked the beginning of a 40-year arms race that, at times, threatened the earth with global annihilation. However, conventional weapons were still needed for all the small conflicts or hot spots that would break out during the cold war.

The Cold War was a fundamental disagreement between political, economic and social systems. It was a war for the hearts and minds of people; a war between Capitalism and Communism. The United States attacked the socialist economics of Communism: its dismal record on human rights, its failure to provide for basic human necessities (goods and services) and its suppression of civil and religious institutions. The Soviets attacked the Americans for the failings of laissez faire capitalism and the disparate (or widening) gulf between rich and poor in Euro- American countries.

Nevertheless, whatever they said, the Soviets and Euro-Americans were both changing and growing in the Bipolar World - that is to say, they were evolving.

For example, under Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviets recognized the failings of collectivization and the counter productiveness of Stalin’s terrorist KGB and his brutal purges. By contrast, Khrushchev offered a “New Communism” that tried to balance industrial growth and agricultural output. Nevertheless, in the end Communism was never able to liberate society (the dream of Marx and Lenin) or create a dynamic (expanding) economic community.

America and the West, on the other hand, tried to temper (or correct) laissez fair economics and to weave many socialist and liberal principles into its revised fabric, protecting the social and economic rights. Keynes and Roosevelt’s New Deal had been the genesis of these changes.  

The heart of the American postwar foreign policy was clearly contained in the Truman doctrine, whose goal was to limit the spread of communism through Containment and the Marshall Plan. This resulted in giving military and financial aid to any nation where there was a threat of a communist takeover – or even of the rise of a legitimate (or Stalinist inspired) leftist party. The Soviet response was to support wars of national liberation or colonial revolution and to try to achieve military parity with the United States.

In Europe, these competing goals resulted in an east-west split along, to use Churchill’s word, the “Iron Curtain”. The most visible element in this split was the division of Germany and Berlin. The first hot spot of the cold war flared in 1948 when the Soviets suddenly cut off highway and railroad traffic between West Berlin and West Germany. [Remember, West Berlin was inside the Russian occupied East Germany] Stalin hoped the United States and its allies would abandon West Berlin, but the United States responded by the famous Berlin Airlift, which was an incredible effort of supplying everything a city needed by air: from coal to hardware to groceries including milk and fresh produce. Stalin did not want (and could not afford/risk) war and so did not interfere with the airlift.

By 1949, the Division of Germany appeared to be final with the formation of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany). However, Berlin remained the greatest symbol of the Cold War.

The next Hot Spot flared in Korea. By 1948, Korea had been split into communist North Korea under Kim Il Sung and South Korea under Syngman Rhee. On June 25, 1950, North Korea ignored treaty agreements and crossed the 38th parallel driving back South Korean and American troops in an attempt to occupy the entire peninsula. The Americans counter attacked and pushed the North Koreans back up almost to the Chinese border along the Yalu River, as they too attempted to occupy the entire peninsula. Suddenly however, 300,000 Chinese troops poured across the border, pushed American, South Korean and United Nations forces back to the 38th parallel and for three years fought a seesaw conflict in the middle of the country. The Korean War ended in a cease-fire not a peace treaty in July of 1953, but nearly three-million people, mostly Korean civilians, died and the war left a legacy of lingering hostility. And it is important to understand that the ending of the war was merely a truce or cease fire.

In 1957, The Soviet Union launched the first unmanned earth satellite (Sputnik I) and the following year launched the first manned spacecraft, starting the space race. In 1959 Khrushchev visited he United States, but he had trouble with dealing with Mao Zedong in China. In 1960, he was preparing for peace talks with the United States when an American U–2 Spy Plane, piloted by Francis Gary Powers, was shot down over Russia. The peace talks were cancelled and tensions were strained, but war was avoided, most likely because the world knew that the Soviets knew about the flights anyway. 

Then came a second Berlin Blockade and the superpowers were again uncomfortably close to war. On August 13, 1961, the East German government, frustrated over the hemorrhaging of East Germans fleeing to the west, built the Berlin Wall, thus physically closing off West Berlin from East Germany, although it was still possible to travel by rail and highway from West Berlin to West Germany only.

The next hot spot came in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In April 1961, the United States’ newly elected president, John F. Kennedy, had given his approval to the Bay of Pigs Operation, in which Cuban expatriate rebels (backed by the American Central Intelligence Agency or CIA) attempted to invade Cuba and oust dictator the Communist dictator, Fidel Castro. The operation failed and embarrassed the United States badly. Then in early 1962, the Soviets began to secretly ship nuclear tipped rockets to Cuba and began to set them up, aimed at the United States – only ninety miles away. By October, American spy planes had discovered what was happening and the resulting Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to the very brink of nuclear holocaust. Had Kennedy chosen to invade Cuba, such a holocaust might have incinerated the globe, but he chose instead to blockade Cuba and block the Soviets from sending more missiles. Cool heads eventually prevailed and Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles already there.

The testing of the first Soviet A-bomb, the Berlin blockades, Korea and the Cuban Missile Crisis mirrored another Cold War reality: the Nuclear Arms Race. At first, the United States had the advantage, but by the mid-1960s, the Soviet Union under Khrushchev’s successor Leonid Brezhnev caught up and the superpowers reached a sate of nuclear parity (equality). By 1970, this loose strategic arrangement was known as MAD or Mutually Assured Destruction. This uneasy arrangement of deterrence kept both sides from the unthinkable insanity of global holocaust and finally led to arms limitation talks.

In 1957 Neville Shute published a post-apocalyptic, end-of-the-world novel, On the Beach, which was a hypothetical story about survivors in Australia after World War III, who faced a short six-month life expectancy because of the coming radiation. The tragedy and pathos in the novel and the two subsequent movie versions (1959 and 2000) caught the spirit of this unthinkable insanity.

The most frustrating challenge to American hegemony (global leadership and influence) was the Vietnam War. By the early 1960s, Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy were sending substantial military support for President Ngô Đình Diệm’s anti-communist government in South Vietnam in its struggle to defend itself from North Vietnam and its resilient leader Ho Chi Minh. Historians are divided about the motives of both men but it is mostly accurate to say that both were nationalists with the contrast being that Diệm was Vietnamese-oriented but Ho Chi Minh was Communist oriented.

At any rate, in August of 1964, North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked American warships in the Gulf of Tonkin, which led to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in which the American government authorized military action in Vietnam. The paradox the Americans faced was that Diệm and his government was corrupt and unstable, but on the other hand, the Americans felt they had to contain Communism by defending South Vietnam.

The United States was working on the Domino Theory an expression coined by President Eisenhower. The Domino Theory postulated that if one country fell to Communism, more would fall like Dominos. Eventually, Diem was overthrown and eventually Nguyen Van Thieu was elected president. Thieu was a great improvement, but, unfortunately, the South Vietnamese government did not become more effective or less corrupt.

Meanwhile the United States, under President Lyndon Johnson, increased its commitment to the growing war in Vietnam. By 1966, there were 150,000 American troops in Vietnam; by 1969, 550,000. In 1968, North Vietnamese forces launched a major offensive, the Tet Offensive, which stunned the Americans but did not dislodge them. Nevertheless, the Tet Offensive was the turning point in the war because it showed that the Vietcong soldiers of Ho Chi Minh could not be defeated, especially with the Chinese and Soviet aid pouring into North Vietnam. In addition, the American bombing of North Vietnam polarized American public opinion and serious negotiations to end the war began after Johnson's decision not to seek reelection in 1968.

In 1969, President Richard Nixon intensified the war but at the same time wisely pursued the peace talks with the North Vietnamese in Paris. A peace treaty (The Paris Peace Accords) was signed in January of 1973 and America soon withdrew its forces. In 1975, the North Vietnamese opened the war again, and easily conquered South Vietnam, creating a united nation of Vietnam. Vietnam was America’s only major defeat in the Cold War, even though her military forces ironically won almost every military engagement. American emotional scars caused by this conflict are still bitter and not [completely] forgotten.

The emotional scars of the Vietnam War reflected a social upheaval rooted in the global changes caused by the Cold War. Euro-Americans became more cynical of their leaders and their cultural institutions as the 1964 Film Dr. Strangelove demonstrated. Morals and mores were dramatically changed. College demonstrations for peace or to protest nuclear arms or abolishing rules and regulations (along with rock and roll, and musical groups like the Beadles and the Rolling Stones) all pointed to a radicalism unknown before the 1960s. Cultural Containment and conformity became a battleground between traditionalists and liberals in universities and in the halls of government. When President Nixon overstepped himself by trying to conceal evidence of a political spying in the Watergate Scandal, the resulting national indignation forced him to be the only president of the United States to resign his office.

The Soviets suffered their “Vietnam” in Afghanistan. In 1978, a pro Soviet coup split the Muslim state into a civil war between the PDPA (People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan) and Islamic religious and ethnic leaders. By the summer of 1979, the Islamic rebels controlled much of the countryside and the Soviet Union with token interference from the Carter administration (1977-1981), intervened and set up a puppet government of Babrak Karmal. What followed was a frustrating attempt by the Soviets to pacify the country. Nevertheless, the Karmal government remained unpopular and the rebellion intensified. For nine years, the Soviet army tried to destroy the Afghan Mujahideen (or Islamic warriors). The gleeful United States and China along with Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran sent supplies to the Mujahideen and by 1986, the Soviets admitted defeat by withdrawing from a war that had become too costly and un-winnable. Afghanistan remained locked in turmoil, however, until 1996, when the Taliban, an organization claiming to be an army of religious students, took control and established a strict Islamic state.

IV Growing Détente

From 1969 to 1979, the USSR, China and the United States evolved a policy called détente, or a permanent relaxation in international affairs during the Cold War rather than just a temporary relaxation, like the thaw of the Krushchev years. This reduction in hostility grew both out of the horror at the bloodshed in the hot spots of the Cold War, especially Korea and Vietnam, as well as the growing fear of nuclear holocaust.

Détente gained strength because China was fearful of her isolation in the world. She was also fearful of what the United States had done in Vietnam. China was also afraid of deepening the Sino-Soviet split and that border fights might also turn into nuclear holocaust. The United States realized that there were better ways of containing communism than the militancy she had shown in the early cold war years. She was also aware of the massive cost of weapons production and maintaining a huge armed force. A peaceful relationship with the USSR would be very beneficial to USA especially after the cost of the Vietnam War. The USSR was spending a huge amount on weapons at the expense of basic household goods. Living standards were poor and USSR was aware that her relationship with China was far from good while USA was trying to improve hers with China.

Summary of the growth of détente:

• 1963 – A hot-line is established between White House in Washington D.C and the Kremlin in Moscow after the Cuban Missile Crisis                   
• 1963 – Along with Great Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union (without De Gaulle) agreed to use only underground tests for nuclear explosions (Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty).
• 1969 – After the Pueblo Incident of 1968 (North Korean warships captured and held hostage the crew of an American “spyship” Pueblo) brought the world close to nuclear holocaust, Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) start between the United States and the USSR.
• 1971 – Ping Pong diplomacy (China invited an American  table tennis team to China);
• Early 70s - In Europe, the Ostpolitik of Willy Brandt was decreasing tensions; the Soviets hoped that with Détente, more trade with Western Europe would be possible.
• 1972 - President Nixon goes to China and opens diplomatic relations
• 1972 - President Nixon visits Moscow where he and Leonid Brezhnev signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. This treaty was the fruit of the SALT I talks, which negotiated freezing the number of strategic ballistic missile launchers at existing levels, and provided for the addition of new submarine-launched ballistic missile launchers only after the same number of older intercontinental ballistic missile and submarine missile systems had been dismantled.
• 1973 - Leonid Brezhnev visits Washington
• 1974 – President Nixon visits Moscow a second time
• 1975 - Helsinki Agreement — The United States, the USSR, Canada and the major European powers accept European frontiers set up after World War II. This recognized that Germany was divided and East European countries agreed to allow their people human rights such as freedom of speech.
• 1978 - President Carter withdraws recognition of Taiwan
• 1979 – Carter and the United States gives official recognition to the Peoples Republic of China

V The Collapse of the Soviet Empire

The massive defeat of President Jimmy Carter in the presidential election of 1980 and opening of the Thatcher-Regan era marked both an end to détente and the beginning of a new arms race – a race that would lead to the collapse of the Soviet Empire. The USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan had given the Soviet Union bad world press. Moreover, there had been mounting tension caused by the 1979 Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua where the Soviets supported the Communist Sandinista and the United States supported the Sandinista opponents, the Contras.

The Soviets began to face mounting internal and external problems, although they were not always visible to the Soviet citizenry.

• First, pushed by President Regan, the arms race escalated in the early 1980s. Although the Soviets could maintain quantity, they were hard pressed to keep up with the quality and various delivery systems of American weaponry.

• Second, the political system in the Soviet Union was hopelessly corrupt and economy was in shambles. From the late 1970s until Brezhnev’s death in 1982, the Soviet stagnant economy was plagued by shortages of consumer goods as more and more economic resources went to the arms race.

• Third, the failure of the Afghan war, which Regan decried as Soviet Adventurism, caused much disillusionment.

• Fourth, a growing dissident movement of humanitarians and intellectuals grew louder and larger. Perhaps the best known was Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, a Russian novelist, dramatist and historian, whom we have already discussed and who was responsible for exposing the horror of the Gulag system.

• Fifth, growing unrest in Eastern Europe underscored the Soviet inability to tap into the nationalism inherent in Eastern Europe.

For example, in Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu gained more autonomy (self-government). In Hungary, Janos Kadar was replaced and limited capitalism was introduced with the Democracy Package. Czechoslovakia saw demonstrations led by Vaclav Havel who was the last president of Czechoslovakia and (would be) the first president of the Czech Republic. But it was Poland that would bring the greatest threat to Soviet hegemony. In 1980, Lech Walesa led a combined Trade Union and political movement called Solidarity, which was immediately supported by Roman Catholic clergy and most intellectuals – and quickly became the catalyst for protest and anti-Soviet outrage. In late 1981, the Communist government of Poland declared martial law, arrested Walesa and drove Solidarity underground. However, Solidarity did not go away and its “illegal” activities became both a political and financial drain to the USSR.

In addition to Eastern Europe, there was China which had undergone painful and sometimes misguided modernization under Mao Zedong. Nevertheless, after Mao’s death in 1976, Deng Xiaoping came to power in 1978 after a two-year power struggle. Deng was pragmatic, patient and willing to compromise. He was more concerned with China than abstract Marxist ideals. (Very Confucian?!?!!!) Thus, unlike Mao who was vigorously anti-capitalistic, Deng allowed more and more free market reforms under the slogan “create wealth for the people.”  Although not a direct financial drain to the Soviet Union, it was Deng’s political and diplomatic challenge that would plague the USSR during the 1980s.

In March 1985, a new, young and reform-minded politician became the premier of the Soviet Union. Mikhail Gorbachev (b. 1031), to put it mildly, inherited a worsening crisis of epidemic proportions. Drastic action was called for and Gorbachev was up to the challenge. First, on April 20, 1985, at a party congress speech, Gorbachev used the expression Uskorenie, which came to be a slogan acceleration of social and economical development of the Soviet Union. By Uskorenie, he meant to urge forward the human factor in Soviet revitalization.  

Then Gorbachev implemented the policy of Perestroika or restructuring. The aim was to strengthen the Soviet economy by emphasizing local control over central planning. In many ways, Perestroika resembled the reforms of Deng Xiaoping, but Perestroika failed mostly because the USSR was too deeply mired in corruption and inefficiency dating back to the Five Year Plans of Stalin.

Finally, Gorbachev allowed political and cultural liberalization in his policy or Glasnost or openness. Glasnost allowed for greater freedom of the media, open debate (especially of the Stalinist period), public criticism of Soviet social and economic problems and exposure of corruption and workplace abuses. Gorbachev also legalized non-Communist parties. However, like Perestroika, Glasnost was too little, too late, for a political and social system stuck in inefficiency and corruption.

At the same time, Gorbachev worked for more friendly relations with the west. He understood that the USSR could not win the arms race and so in 1987 he and President Regan negotiated the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (IMF Treaty), which removed short and mid-range nuclear weapons from Europe. In Eastern Europe Gorbachev called for economic reforms and more attention to human rights. Gorbachev was walking a tight rope. He risked angering the hard line, stalwart members of the Communist Leadership if he liberalized too much. On the other hand, if he made no reforms and made no efforts at détente, he risked financial and perhaps military disaster. These attitudes and policies would make Gorbachev immensely popular in the west and they would help to end the Cold War. However, the unintended side effect would be the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

In Eastern Europe Gorbachev replaced the Brezhnev Doctrine with the Sinatra Doctrine (named for American singer Frank Sinatra’s popular song “My Way”). In essence, this now allowed the countries of Eastern Europe to follow their own separate paths. Gorbachev also informed the leaders of the Communist governments of these countries that they could no longer count on money or political support from the Soviet Union – even in the event of a military crisis. The result was a massive wave of liberalization and revolution in 1989 and 1990.

VI The Transformation of Eastern Europe

Poland: All during the 1980s Solidarity struggled for freedom, but in the summer of 1989, Solidarity was given legal status. Free elections were held and Solidarity won a huge majority and led Poland to become the first Warsaw Pact Nation to free itself from Communism. Lech Walesa became the country’s first president in 1990. Poland’s action then opened the floodgates.

Hungary: As far back as Czechoslovakia’s 1968 Prague Spring, Hungary quietly introduced modest economic reforms. In 1989, the Hungarian Communist Party opened relations with the west and voted itself out of existence. Hungary opened its border with Austria and allowed free travel between the two countries. The created a breach (hole) in the Iron Curtain and thousands of East Germans used this breach to move from East German to Hungary to Austria to West Germany. In May, the revolution broke out when Janos Kadar was stripped of power and the Hungarian Communist Party became the Hungarian Socialist Party In 1990, free elections were held and József Antall became the first democratically elected Prime Minister since World War II

East Germany: In the autumn of 1989, popular disruptions erupted in many East German cities and – to the surprise of many - the East German Communist Party, led by hard-liner Erich Honaker, collapsed and younger Communist leaders took over but quickly resigned and a new government was formed. In November, the new government ordered the destruction of the Berlin Wall and tens of thousands East Berliners crossed to West Berlin to celebrate and shop.  Soon, West Germany soon became involved and, under the leadership of West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, the two German states became a united Germany in 1990. Even though the former West Germany assumed the former East German’s debts and poverty, the new Germany quickly gained economic dominance in Europe. In 1994, Berlin again became the German capital.

Czechoslovakia: Revolution in Czechoslovakia came quickly after the breach in the Berlin Wall. In November, the Velvet Revolution (velvet meant bloodless or non-violent) deposed Gustav Husak (the Communist ruler since 1968) and overthrew the Czechoslovakian Communist government in bloodless coup. On December 28, Alexander Dubcek became chairman of the Czechoslovakian Parliament, and the next day, Vaclav Havel was elected president. Then, in 1993, the Velvet Divorce divided Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Yugoslavia: before 1991, Yugoslavia consisted of six republics (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro) dominated by Serbia and the Communist party. After the fall of the Soviet Empire, the Serbians tried to keep Yugoslavia intact, but in vain. Within a year, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Macedonia had become independent nations and the old Yugoslavia had only two republics left, Serbia and Montenegro, which in 2003 became the country of Serbia and Montenegro. The region was also torn by racial and ethnic strife. All sides committed atrocities and ethnic cleansing (a euphemism for genocide), first in Bosnia and later in Kosovo. The UN and NATO helped restore order by 1999, but tensions still linger.

Bulgaria: In the autumn of 1989, after years of gentle movement away from Marxism, democratic reforms were introduced and the long ruler (even though he was never a Stalinist), Todor Zhivkov, was removed from power by the Bulgarian Communist Party. In 1990, the Bulgarian Communist Party changed its name to the Bulgarian Socialist Party, adopted a center-left political system and renamed the Peoples’ Republic of Bulgaria the Republic of Bulgaria.

Romania: In the only revolution that involved significant violence, Nicolae Ceausescu, who had governed without opposition since 1965 and ordered that demonstrators be shot by police, was overthrown on December 22nd, and quickly executed on December 25th. In 1990, the National Salvation Front, led by Ion Iliescu, restored partial multi-party democratic and free market reforms.

A New Russian Republic: the Collapse of Eastern Europe did not help Gorbachev. Glasnost and Perestroika had both failed and the economy had not improved. The non-Russian Republics of the USSR were restless and in some cases agitating for outright freedom. Liberals like Boris Yeltsin were calling for greater reforms and a break with Communism; Conservatives hard-liners were angry at Gorbachev’s failures. In August 1991, the hard line Communists staged a coup and placed Gorbachev under house arrest. However, before they could take over the government, Boris Yeltsin called for all citizens to oppose the hard liner’s coup and the takeover collapsed. The USSR was finished. During the months that followed the various republics of the USSR including Russia itself decided to become independent of the Soviet Union. By September, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Ukraine, Byelorussia, Moldavia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Armenia declared their independence.

World War I was finally over and on December 25, 1991 the Soviet Union ceased to exist and the Commonwealth of Independent States was created. Boris Yeltsin led the Russian Republic during the 1990s in a period marked by widespread corruption, economic collapse, and enormous political and social problems. He was unable to solve these problems and retired in 1999 when Vladimir Putin, a former hard liner communist, was elected president. Nevertheless, the struggle with corruption and stabilization of economic production continues to plague the Republic.

VII Cold War Societies in the Bipolar World

A The United States and the West
During the early Cold War period, the United States boasted about what it felt to be its superior society with all its creature comforts and modern conveniences. The feeling was that American husbands made enough money for a family to live comfortably so that women did not need to work and best served their families by staying home and raising patriotic children. It echoed Mrs. John Stanford in her 1833 book Woman in her Social and Domestic Character.

VITU: that the United States in the 1950s was neurotically afraid that Communism would spread to and in America. This was called the Red Scare. Air Raid siren drills and duck and cover drills became part of worker and school life. Senator Joseph McCarthy became infamous for his attempts to roots out communists in America, especially in Hollywood and Congress. Television shows dealt with Red Spies vs. the FBI; even Science Fiction movies joined in.

In the 1956 Sci Fi Flick, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the Red Scare is echoed when an inhuman race tries to take over the earth and destroy the American way of life. Many felt that only a retreat to the “family” many felt would make America safe from the Red Menace. This retreat to earlier ideals of “home and hearth” has been called Domestic Containment or the idea that conformity to a socially approved style of values was the best way to win the Cold War at home.

But women were changing! More women went into the workforce; more women went to college; more women did not feel guilty for not staying at home and being the perfect “little woman” who knew her place. Many women revolted against the social norms and became feminists. Feminists believe that rights, privilege, status and obligations should not be determined by gender. Organized feminism dates to the 19th century suffrage movement and the Seneca Falls Convention which took its inspiration from John Stuart Mill published The Subjection of Women to demonstrate that "the legal subordination of one sex to the other is wrong...and...one of the chief hindrances to human improvement." 

In 1949 Simone de Beauvior (1908-1986) wrote The Second Sex in which she condemns male control over females. She argues that throughout history women have been considered the deviation from the norm and that the male was to be idealized. Women, she asserted, had to break out of this stereotype and realize their potential is equal to men. In 1963 Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique which depicted the roles of women in industrial societies, and in particular the full-time homemaker role, as unhappy and stifling.

Controversial as they were, feminists helped to point out that America had her problems. Students in American universities began protest elements of life that seemed restricting and backward thinking. They organized demonstrations against the inferior status of women and minorities; the Vietnam War and militarism.  They demanded that people be given their rights. This idea paralleled the decolonization movement in Africa and Asia where colonial peoples were demanding their independence. The Jamaican musician Bob Marley in his song “Get up Stand up” not only symbolized resistance to racism and poverty in Jamaica but he also captured the spirit of an age that looked for freedom from the tyranny they felt had trampled basic human rights. So the age of protests and demonstrations began.

For African American in the United States there remained the problem of second class citizenship – and for their leaders – what to do about it. Many Africans and African Americans had been deeply affected by the works of Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) who advocated that American blacks seek to return to Africa. Kwame Nkrumah, who led Ghana to independence and was its first Prime Minister, was influenced by Garvey in his philosophy of Pan Africanism, the dual idea that African share a cultural similarity and that all black persons – anywhere in the world are first and foremost – African. Moderate African American leaders had long distanced themselves from such radical solutions. The most prominent of these leaders was Dr. Martin Luther King (1929-1968) who adopted the approach non violent resistance and boycotts made famous by Mohandas Gandhi.

VITU: the coincidence of Feminism and the Civil Rights Movement with the Cold War showed that the world was a smaller place and where people, ideas and events were closely linked.

American blacks after World War II continued to live as second class citizens, especially in the South, but also in the North and West. The Soviet Union’s propagandists delighted in pointing out this second class citizenship status as an example of the weaknesses and corruption of the capitalist system. Southern States had instutionalized Segregation, a system of laws and social customs designed to separate black and whites.  They often lost their voting rights, were denied equal access to educational, recreational and business opportunities and suffered emotional and physical threats and violence. In the North and West black also faced some discrimination but could almost always vote.

The first big breakthrough came in 1954 when the United States Supreme Court ruled that segregation in schools was illegal in the Brown vs. the Board of Education. The next year came another victory. An African American woman, Rosa Parks, refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama. African-Americans in Montgomery refused to ride city buses until they were desegregated. The boycott was led by Dr. Martin Luther King was successful and proved the effectiveness of Gandhi’s methods. King went on to lead more demonstrations until he was assassinated in 1968.

B The Soviet Union and the East
The USSR her satellites had their bad press as well. Lack of personal freedom and lack of consumer goods topped the list. In The great Kitchen Debate of 1959, the American Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev debated luxuries vs. real needs, but it were clear that the West, led by the United States had the highest standard of living in the world. The Soviet sphere did not know automobiles, Hollywood movies, televisions, record albums and many other luxuries.

Another problem area was the problem of Stalin’s ruthless methods of dealing with even loyal opposition and dissenting opinions. Indeed, America had Senator McCarthy, but American Loyalty oaths for employees and conformity pressures on its citizens were almost non existent compared to the KGB (Soviet Secret Police) and the lack of basic freedoms found in all Soviet countries. Moreover Soviet sphere countries experienced minuscule economic growth and a dearth of consumer goods. And then was Stalin who tolerated no dissent.

But Stalin died in March of 1953 and by September Khrushchev was in complete control of the Russian state. He pursued a course of reform and shocked delegates to the 20th Party Congress on February 23, 1956 by making his famous Secret Speech denouncing the "cult of personality" that surrounded Stalin, and he outright accused Stalin of the crimes committed during the Great Purges. This process was known as De-Stalinization and it opened the door in the Soviet Union for significant reforms. He deemphasized Collectivism and made industries more sensitive to local needs, but he ultimately failed to significantly increase agricultural or industrial output. In his foreign policy Khrushchev emphasized Peaceful Coexistence, that is to say, living in peace with the West as an alternative to Mutually Assured Destruction in a nuclear holocaust.

But there were limits to his reforms and capabilities as a leader. Khrushchev’s enemies in Russia called him a boorish peasant. He had a ferocious temper; he disrupted the United Nations on numerous occasions; and he made threatening statements that were just plain dangerous. Under his watch, the Soviet Union viciously crushed a Hungarian Rebellion in 1956 and took much bad press. The novelist Boris Pasternak, author of Dr. Zhivago, was not allowed to pick up his Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958. Perhaps angered by his attitudes of Peaceful Coexistence with the west, Mao Zedong and he had a falling out in 1960, the so called Sino-Soviet Split. Khrushchev tried to blockade Berlin in 1961 and survived the Cuban Missile Crisis, but (as we have seen) in 1964 he was forced out of the premiership and lived in obscurity (under house arrest) until his death in 1971.

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