Introduction
During the Cold War, the relationship between the United States of America and the Soviet Union was characterized by competition and conflict between communist nations, led by the USSR, and Western democracies, including the US. The US and the Soviet Union fought alongside each other against Nazi Germany during World War II. But U.S. relations with the Soviet Union were never genuinely amicable. Americans had long opposed Soviet communism and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's oppressive regime. The Soviets hated Americans for not giving them a prominent role in international affairs, and they resented America's belated entry into the Second World War, which resulted in the death of millions of Russians.
The grievances developed into a strong sense of mistrust and enmity between the two countries, which did not evolve into open warfare (hence the term "cold war"). The expansionism of the Soviet Union into Eastern Europe caused many Americans to fear a Russian attempt to dominate the world. At the same time, the Soviet Union came to resent the bellicose language of American officials, the accumulation of weapons, and the heavy-handedness of American foreign policy. In such an environment, the Cold War was not solely the fault of either side; in fact, historians have argued that it was inevitable.
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Containment
By the end of World War II, the majority of American leaders were of the opinion that containment was the most effective way to protect against the Soviet threat. In his renowned "Long Telegram," George Kennan, a diplomat, stated that the Soviet Union was a political entity that believed that there could be no permanent agreement between the two countries. Consequently, America's only option was to maintain a long-term, patient, but firm and vigilant control over Russia's expansionist tendencies.
In his address to Congress in 1947, he declared that it was the duty of the United States to support free peoples who were resisting attempts to coerce them "by external pressures". This attitude would have a lasting impact on American foreign policy over the next forty years.
᪴ Did you know that the term ‘cold war’ was first used in an essay written by George Orwell in 1945 called ‘You and the Atom Bomb?’
Cold War: The Atom Age
The containment strategy also led to an unprecedented arms race in the US. In 1950, the National Security Council’s (NSC) NSC–68 echoed President Truman’s call for the country to use military force “to contain communist expansionism wherever it appears to be taking place.” The report recommended a fourfold increase in defence expenditures.
In particular, U.S. leaders supported the creation of atomic weapons similar to those used to end World War II. This started a dangerous “arms race”. In 1949, the Soviet Union tested an atomic bomb of its own. President Truman declared that the U.S. would develop an even more devastating nuclear weapon, the hydrogen bomb, also known as the “super bomb.” President Joseph Stalin followed suit.
The result was that the Cold War was a very dangerous time. The first test of the H-bomb, on the Marshall Islands atoll, proved just how bad things could get in the nuclear age. It blew up an entire island, ripped a hole in the bottom of the ocean, and had enough power to take out half of Manhattan. The US and Soviet follow-up tests released radioactive debris into the atmosphere.
The Cold War also affected American domestic life. Homes were bomb-proofed, and attack drills were held in schools and public places. Popular films of the 1950’s and 1960’s terrified moviegoers with scenes of nuclear destruction and mutated creatures. In this and many other ways, the Cold War continued to shape American life.
The Cold War and the Space Race
Space was another arena of Cold War rivalry. The first artificial satellite, Sputnik, was launched from the Soviet Union on October 4th, 1957. (Sputnik is Russian for "travelling companion".) It was the first human-made object ever put into orbit around the Earth. The launch of Sputnik came as something of a surprise to most Americans.
Space, in America’s view, was the next frontier; it was the logical continuation of the nation’s long history of exploration; and it was vital that the United States did not lose ground to the Soviet Union. Moreover, the Soviet R-7 rocket’s apparent ability to launch a warhead into American air space made intelligence gathering about Soviet military operations all the more critical.
How The Cold War Launched The Space Race NowThis Originals
The American satellite Explorer I was launched in 1958 by the United States Army under the guidance of rocket engineer Wernher Von Braun, ushering in what would become known as the “Space Race.”
That same year President Dwight Eisenhower issued a public order that created NASA, a federal agency devoted to space exploration and several programs that sought to tap into the military capabilities of space. The Soviets, however, were even more ahead of the competition, launching their first man into orbit in April 1961.
In May 1969, the month after Alan Shepard became America’s first cosmonaut, President Kennedy made a daring public announcement that the United States would have a man on the Moon by the end of 1970. On July 20, 1970, astronaut Neil Armstrong of NASA's Apollo 11 mission became the first man on the moon, officially ending the space race for the Americans.
Cold War and the Red Scare
In the meantime, in 1947, HUAC brought home the Cold War in a different way. The HUAC hearings began to demonstrate that communist subversiveness in the U.S. was very much alive.
In Hollywood, hundreds of people working in the movie business were forced to turn themselves in and testify against each other by HUAC. Over 500 people were fired and many of them were "blacklisted" and unable to work for more than 10 years. HUAC accused State Department employees of being involved in anti-government activities. Later, other communist politicians, including Senator Joseph McCarthy, expanded this investigation to include anyone working in the federal government.
As the 1950s saw the rise of the anti-communist scare, thousands of federal workers were targeted for investigation, dismissal, and even criminal prosecution. Liberal college professors were fired, people were forced to testify against fellow workers, and so-called loyalty oaths became common.
The Cold War Abroad
The struggle against domestic disruption was in stark contrast to the growing fear of the Soviet threat overseas. The first military action in the new Cold War began in June 1950, when North Korea's pro-Western neighbour, South Korea, was invaded by the Soviet-backed People's Army. Many American leaders feared that this was the beginning of a communist drive to dominate the world and that non-intervention was out of the question. President Truman ordered the U.S. Army into Korea. The Korean War dragged on and ended in a stalemate in 1953.
The United States and other NATO members made West Germany part of NATO in 1955 and allowed it to become more heavily armed. The Soviet Union responded by establishing the Warsaw Pact in 1957. The Warsaw Pact was a mutual defence arrangement between the Soviet Union (which included Albania, Poland, and Romania), Hungary (which included East Germany), Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria, which created a unified military command led by Marshal Ivan S.
Other conflicts followed. President Kennedy faced several crises in his hemisphere in the early 1960’s. The invasion of Cuba by the communist forces known as the Bay of Pigs in 1961, and the subsequent Cuban missile crisis, seemed to confirm that the real threat from communism now resided in the volatile, post-imperial Third World.
Perhaps nowhere was this more evident than in Vietnam. The French colonial regime that had ruled the country for more than a century had collapsed, and the war between the nationalist, American-backed Dien-Bien Diem, in the south, and the communist, nationalist, Ho Chi-Minh, in the north, was about to begin. The U.S. had been devoted to the preservation of an anti-communist regime in the region since the 1950s, and in the early 1960s, U.S. leaders knew that if they wanted “containment” of communist expansionism in Vietnam, they would need to do more to support Diem. But what was supposed to be a short-term military engagement quickly turned into a decade-long conflict.
The End of the Cold War and its Effects
Almost immediately after taking office in January 1969, President Richard Nixon of the United States (1913-94) proposed a new strategy for international relations. Rather than viewing the world as an inhospitable, "bi-polar" place, he said, "Why not use diplomacy to create more poles?" He urged the UN to recognize the communist government of China and, after a visit to China in 1972, began the process of establishing diplomatic relations with Beijing.
He also established a policy of "détente" with the Soviet Union, which he referred to as "relaxation". In 1972, he signed the strategic arms limitation treaty (SALT I) with Soviet Premier Leonide Brezhnev, which prohibited the production of intermediate-range nuclear missiles by both countries and reduced the threat of nuclear war for the first time in decades.
Nixon’s efforts did not stop the Cold War from heating up again during the presidency of Ronald Reagan (1911-2004). Like most leaders of his time, Reagan believed the spread of communism posed a threat to freedom everywhere. As such, he worked to support anti-communist governments and anti-imperialist uprisings around the world by providing financial and military assistance. This policy, especially in the developing world such as Grenada and Salvador, became known as the “Reagan Doctrine.”
The influence of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe declined. In 1989, all other communist countries in the region replaced their communist governments with non-communist ones. In November 1989, the Berlin Wall, the most prominent symbol of the Cold War, came down. The fall of the Berlin Wall came a little more than two years after President Reagan called on Soviet Prime Minister Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall in a speech at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate. “Gorbachev,” Reagan said, “let this wall come down.” The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. The Cold War ended.
