Cold War

The Cold War (Russian: Холодная Война Kholodnaya Voina; Chinese: 冷戰) refers to the protracted geostrategic, economic and ideological struggle that emerged after World War II between the global superpowers of the Soviet Union and the United States of America, supported by their respective alliance partners. The Cold War endured over four decades, from circa 1947 until the decline and eventual collapse of East European and Soviet Communism in 1989. The disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 marked the end of the conflict.

Consistent allies of the Soviet Union during the Cold War period included Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and other members of the Warsaw Pact and Comecon in Eurasia, together with the nations of Mongolia, North Korea, Cuba and Vietnam further afield. Erstwhile close Soviet allies, the People's Republic of China and Albania promoted their own versions of Communism and either opposed or adopted alternatives to many key Kremlin policies from 1960 onwards.

Consistent allies of the United States during the Cold War period included Britain, West Germany and other members of NATO (the so-called "Western Alliance"); the members of CENTO, SEATO, and ANZUS; and the nations of Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Beyond these broad groupings, many other countries—including such strategically-important states as the Yugoslavia, Switzerland, India, Sweden and Finland—conspicuously maintained their neutrality during the conflict; some of them tried to form a third bloc, the "Non-Aligned Movement."

The struggle was widely called the "Cold War" on the grounds that it did not involve direct armed conflict (by contrast, a so-called "hot" war) between the primary contestants of the Soviet Union and the USA. The Cold War was instead prosecuted by varied means that included diplomatic maneuvering, economic pressure and selective aid, economic and technological rivalry, intimidation, propaganda, and indirect proxy wars. Importantly, although lacking direct conflict between the superpower protagonists, the Cold War period also simultaneously witnessed the largest arms race (both conventional and nuclear) in history, leading to widespread global fears of a potential nuclear war, that never happened.

Historical overview

Crisis and Escalation (1953-1962)

Arms Race

 Stalin began a nuclear program in 1943, under the direction of secret police chief Beria; Russian scientists took the lead, aided by many Germans scientists and engineers who had been captured in 1945. In 1949, using high-quality blueprints of the American bomb provided by Klaus Fuchs and other spies, the Soviets exploded their first bomb--and exploded as well American complacency about a nuclear monopoly. The US responded by turning  its hand-crafted bomb construction system into an assembly line, and by examining the possibilities of a vastly more powerful nuclear weapon, the hydrogen bomb. 

Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who ran the science part of the wartime Manhattan Project, strenuously tried to stop the H-bomb project. He matched wits with physicist Edward Teller, who insisted the H-bomb could and should be built. Teller won and Oppenheimer was forced out of the AEC after he was charged with being a security risk. By the early 1950s the Soviets had a nuclear arsenal plus long-range bombers, though lacking the sort of overseas bases the US possessed, it remained weaker in global capabilities.

By 1957 when American Strategic Air Command (SAC) was finally up to speed, and an air defense network or radars and fighters was in place to defend American cities from Soviet bombers, an entirely new challenge appeared. The Soviets launched Sputnik, the first earth satellite, thus demonstrating a stunning technological leap to a frightened world. Some of the Russian success was due to the work of captured German scientists, (true also for the US), but Moscow had built up enough rocket, satellite and nuclear expertise of its own to challenge the US on equal terms in space. By 1960 the USSR was building intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) with hydrogen-bomb warheads that could not be intercepted. Americans (notably Senator John F. Kennedy) warned of a "missile gap." Before Sputnik the US had underrated the intense Soviet effort to build their own nuclear weapons, and intercontinental bombers and missiles to deliver them. A strong commitment to the tradition of human pilots in the cockpit diverted the Air Force from developing of its own long-range missiles. Nevertheless it used its claim to control the "aerospace" mission to inhibit the Army or Navy from building long-range rockets. Finally the Air Force saw the need for rocketry, and working closely with civilian aerospace firms it gave President Kennedy a more powerful arsenal of ICBMs than Khrushchev could command. A space race ensued--with both nations directing all their resources to scientific achievements with obvious military implications. In 1969 American astronauts landed on the moon, proving conclusively that American technology had regained a decisive lead in space. Indeed, in almost all areas of science and technology, especially computers, the US totally dominated the globe in the 1960s.

Legacy

Despite the rapid collapse of Communism in the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe in the period 1989-1991, several countries (primarily in east and south-east Asia) retain Communist identities to the present day, espousing Marxism-Leninism as a fundamental political philosophy and retaining a one-party political structure in which institutions of the party and the state remain intimately interconnected. In order of longest existence, these countries (and their ruling parties) are:

• the People's Republic of China (since 1949); Communist Party of China
• the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) (since 1948); Korean Workers' Party
• the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (Vietnam) (since 1976), previously, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) (since 1950; Communist Party of Vietnam
• the Republic of Cuba (Cuban Revolution in 1959, socialist state declared in 1961); Communist Party of Cuba
• the Lao People's Democratic Republic (Laos) (since 1975); Lao People's Revolutionary Party

While these countries share a similar system of government and political philosophy, each has adopted highly divergent economic policies over the past 15 years, several even incorporating elements of capitalism within their state economies. It is widely perceived, however, that the more purist of these states have retained a Cold War outlook of continuing antagonism with, and suspicion of, the West; North Korea and Cuba are commonly understood to be fulfilling this role, compounded by both diplomatic and geopolitical isolation (whether externally- or self-imposed). China retains an ambivolent approach to engagement with the West and neighbours such as India and Japan; many observers view its apparent rise to superpower status in the early twenty-first century as eventually threatening a new Cold War, based on its projected economic and military rivalry with the United States of America.

Select Bibliography

For a much more detailed guide see Cold War, Bibliography

• Ball, S. J. The Cold War: An International History, 1947–1991 (1998), British perspective
• Boyle Peter G. American-Soviet Relations: From the Russian Revolution to the Fall of Communism. 1993.
• Brzezinski, Zbigniew. The Grand Failure: The Birth and Death of Communism in the Twentieth Century (1989)
• Clarke, Bob. Four Minute Warning: Britain's Cold War (2005)
• Crockatt Richard. The Fifty Years War: The United States and the Soviet Union in World Politics, 1941-1991. 1995.
• Friedman, Norman. The Fifty Year War: Conflict and Strategy in the Cold War. (2000)
• Gaddis, John Lewis, The Cold War. A New History, Allen Lane, 2005.
• Gaddis, John Lewis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History, Oxford University Press, 1998. online edition
• Gaddis, John Lewis. Russia, the Soviet Union and the United States. An Interpretative History 2nd ed. (1990)
• Gaddis, John Lewis. Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (1987)
• Gaddis, John Lewis. Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (1982) online edition
• Charles W. Kegley Jr., ed., The Long Postwar Peace. 1991:
• Judt, Tony, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, (2005)
• Kort, Michael. The Columbia Guide to the Cold War (1998)
• LaFeber, Walter. America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945–1992 7th ed. (1993)
• Lundestad, Geir. East, West, North, South: Major Developments in International Politics since 1945 Oxford University Press (1999).
• Mitchell, George. The Iron Curtain: The Cold War in Europe (2004)
• Ninkovich, Frank. Germany and the United States: The Transformation of the German Question since 1945 (1988)
• Paterson, Thomas G. Meeting the Communist Threat: Truman to Reagan (1988)
• Powaski, Ronald E. The Cold War: The United States and the Soviet Union, 1917–1991 (1998) online edition
• Sivachev, Nikolai and Nikolai Yakolev, Russia and the United States (1979), by Soviet historians
• Ulam, Adam B. Expansion and Coexistence: Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917–1973, 2nd ed. (1974)
• Westad, Odd Arne The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of our Times (2006)

External links

• the Cold War Museum

• the Cold War International History Project