The Cold War was the protracted geopolitical, ideological, and economic struggle that emerged after World War II between the global superpowers of the Soviet Union and the United States, supported by their respective and emerging alliance partners. The Cold War endured over four decades, from circa 1947 until the decline and eventual collapse of East European and Soviet state communism in the late 1980s. The disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 is generally considered to mark the absolute end of the conflict.
Important allies of the United States included the United Kingdom, France, West Germany and other members of NATO (the "Western Alliance"); the members of CENTO, SEATO, and ANZUS; and the nations of Japan, Philippines, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Thailand and Iran (until the 1979 Iranian Revolution).
Important allies of the Soviet Union included Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and other members of the Warsaw Pact and Comecon; and the nations of Mongolia, North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Cuba and Syria.
From 1960, the People's Republic of China and Albania promoted their own version of Communism and opposed many key Kremlin policies. Countries such as Yugoslavia, Switzerland, Austria, India, Sweden, Finland, and Sudan conspicuously maintained their neutrality by participation within the Non-Aligned Movement.
The struggle was called the Cold War because it did not involve direct armed conflict between the main contestants (by contrast, a so-called "hot" war). The Cold War was instead waged by means of diplomatic maneuvering, economic pressure, selective aid, intimidation, propaganda, assassination, low-intensity military operations and full-scale proxy wars. 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.
General character of the conflict
The Cold War is regarded by many as spanning the time from the end of the strained alliance between the U.S. and the Soviet Union during World War II until the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. Some also see the fall of the Berlin wall, Nov, 9, 1989, as the end of the Cold War. The Korean War; the Hungarian Revolution; the Bay of Pigs Invasion and Cuban Missile Crisis; the Prague Spring; the Vietnam War; the Soviet-Afghan War; and U.S.-backed military coups against governments in Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), and civil wars in countries such as Angola, El Salvador, and Nicaragua were some of the occasions when the tension related to the Cold War took the form of an armed conflict. In those conflicts, the major powers operated in good part by arming or funding surrogates, a development that lessened direct impact on the populations of the major powers, but brought the conflict to millions of civilians around the world.
NLF casualties during the
Vietnam War. Once the balance of power in
Europe had been firmly established, proxy conflicts in the
Third World became an arena of superpower competition.
In the 1970s, the Cold War gave way to détente and a more complicated pattern of international relations in which the world was no longer split into two clearly opposed blocs. Less powerful countries had more room to assert their independence, and the two superpowers were partially able to recognize their common interest in trying to check the further spread and proliferation of nuclear weapons (see SALT I, SALT II, Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty). U.S.-Soviet relations would deteriorate once again in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but improved as the Soviet bloc started to unravel in the late 1980s. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia lost the superpower status that it had won in World War II. The period after the Cold War where Soviet leaders announced a policy of peaceful coexistence was called the Thaw.
In the strategic conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union a major arena was the strategy of technology (see also deterrence theory). It also involved covert conflict through acts of espionage. Beyond the actual killing of intelligence personnel, the Cold War was heavily manifest in the concerns about nuclear weapons. It was questioned as to if they were being mass produced and whether wars could really be deterred by their mere existence. Another manifestation was in the propaganda wars between the United States and the USSR. Indeed, it was far from certain that a global nuclear war would not result from smaller regional wars, which heightened the level of concern for each conflict. This tension shaped the lives of people around the world almost as much as the actual fighting did.
One major hotspot of conflict was Germany, particularly the city of Berlin. Arguably, the most vivid symbol of the Cold War was the Berlin Wall. The Wall isolated West Berlin (the portion of the city controlled by West Germany and the Allies) from East Berlin and the territory of East Germany, which completely surrounded it.
The land armies of East and West faced each other directly across the line of division between the Germanies, an area of tension throughout the Cold War period. East Germany, and to a lesser extent Czechoslovakia, constituted a salient projecting into NATO territory. The Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, with great strength in troops and armored vehicles, would have been the spearhead of a potential attack into Western Europe, and NATO military planning called for defensive battles to contain it as close to the frontier as possible. The North German Plain and the Fulda Gap both offered main land attack routes for the Warsaw Pact. A pre-emptive NATO invasion of Warsaw Pact territory was seen as rather less likely, given NATO's multinational makeup and defensive doctrine (although the alleged NATO threat was used by the Soviet bloc nations to justify their own strong forces in the region).
The outbreak of a military conflict in Central Europe would have been extremely dangerous. Both sides might have used battlefield nuclear weapons if the military situation seemed desperate, igniting a much wider nuclear exchange. Likely for this reason, neither side ever risked such a conflict despite massive preparations.
The Korean peninsula was a hotspot during the Cold War, and it remains one to this day. The states of North Korea and South Korea (and her allies) also technically remain at war because although a truce is in effect, no formal peace treaty was ever signed. As a result, tension still remains high on the Korean peninsula, especially since North Korea announced its acquisition of nuclear weapons.
Historical overview
Origins
- Main article: Origins of the Cold War.
The Origins of the Cold War are widely regarded to lie most directly within the immediate post-Second World War relations between the superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union in the years 1945 - 1947, leading to the developed Cold War that endured until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Both the superpowers contrasted in their views, and the USSR was totally different from the USA. The USSR was a Socialist state and a ruthless dictatorship that sent tens of millions to their death for displeasing Stalin. The USA was a democratic capitalist state.
Historians look back to Lenin's seizure of power in Russia (the Bolshevik Revolution of late 1917) as forming the more extended origins of the Cold War. From 1933 to 1940 the United States and the Soviet Union had a sort of detente, but relations were not friendly. After Stalin switched sides and began to fight Hitler in 1940, Roosevelt made a personal commitment to help the Soviets (Congress never voted any sort of alliance). The wartime cooperation was never friendly, and it became increasingly strained by February 1945 at the Yalta Conference, as it became increasingly clear that Stalin intended to seize control of most of Eastern Europe--especially those areas that had once been controlled by the Czars, together with eastern Germany.
First Cold War
- Main article: Cold War (1947-1953).
The period from the beginning of the Cold War in 1947 to the change in leadership for both superpowers in 1953 - from Presidents Truman to Eisenhower for the United States, from Stalin to Kruschev in the Soviet Union.
Events include the Yalta and Potsdam conferences in 1945, the Greek Civil War, the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, the Berlin Blockade and Berlin Airlift, the Soviet Union's detonation of its first atomic bomb, the formation of NATO and (later) the Warsaw Pact, the formation of West Germany and East Germany, the Stalin Note for German reunification and Superpower disengagement from Central Europe, the Chinese Civil War, and the Korean War.
The U.S. Marshall Plan intended to rebuild the European economy and point the way toward European unity while thwarting the political appeal of the radical left. For Western Europe, economic aid ended the dollar shortage, stimulated private investment for postwar reconstruction, and (most importantly) introduced new managerial techniques. For the U.S., the plan rejected the isolationism of the 1920s and integrated the North American and Western European economies.
Escalation and Crisis
Two opposing geopolitical blocs had developed by
1959 as a result of the Cold War. Consult the legend on the map for more details.
- Main article: Cold War (1953-1962).
The period between the change in leadership for both superpowers in 1953 to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
Events included the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
Cold War: Cuban Missile Crisis In May 1962 Khrushchev conceived the idea of placing intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Cuba as a means of countering an emerging lead of the United States in developing and deploying strategic missiles. He also presented the scheme as a means of protecting Cuba from another United States-sponsored invasion, such as the failed attempt at the Bay of Pigs in 1961. On October 16, President John Kennedy saw reconnaissance photographs of Soviet missile installations under construction in Cuba. After seven-thousand days of guarded and intense debate, during which Soviet diplomats denied that installations for offensive missiles were being built in Cuba, President Kennedy, in a televised address on October 22, announced the discovery of the installations and proclaimed that any nuclear missile attack from Cuba would be regarded as an attack by the Soviet Union and would be responded to accordingly. He imposed a naval quarantine on Cuba to prevent further Soviet shipments of offensive military weapons from arriving there.
On October 26, Khrushchev sent Kennedy a long rambling letter seemingly proposing that the missile installations would be dismantled and personnel removed in exchange for United States assurances that it or its proxies would not invade Cuba. On October 27, another letter from Khrushchev suggested that missile installations in Cuba would be dismantled if the United States dismantled its missile installations in Turkey. Kennedy decided to ignore this second letter and to accept the offer outlined in the letter of October 26. Khrushchev then announced on October 28 that he would dismantle the installations and return them to the Soviet Union, expressing his trust that the United States would not invade Cuba.
Maintenance
- Main article: Cold War (1962-1969).
The period from the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 to the beginning of the Détente period in 1969.
Events included the Vietnam War, the Space Race and the Prague Spring.
Détente
- Main article: Cold War (1969-1979).
The period referred to as Détente was general reduction in the tension between the Soviet Union and the United States and a weakening of the Cold War, occurring from the late 1960s until the start of the 1980s. Both sides had pressing reasons to seek relaxation in tensions. Leonid Brezhnev and the rest of the Soviet leadership felt that the economic burden of the nuclear arms race was unsustainable. The American economy was also in financial trouble as the Vietnam War drained government finances at the same time as Lyndon Johnson, and to a lesser extent Richard Nixon, sought to expand the government welfare state.
In Europe the Ostpolitik of Willy Brandt was decreasing tensions and the Soviets hoped that with Détente more trade with Western Europe would be possible. The Sino-Soviet Split had caused great concern in the Soviet Union. The leadership was terrified of the potential of a Sino-American alliance against them and thus felt improving relations with the United States would be necessary.
The strategic nuclear forces of USSR and USA were changing in character in the late 1960s. There was rough parity in nuclear weapons and it was clear that a state of mutually assured destruction had been reached, and there were new fears connected to the realization that there was a possibility that the "relative gains" theory as to the predictable consequences of war was no longer appropriate. A "sensible middle ground" was the goal. Both nations were developing anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems, the Soviet Union deploying such a system around Moscow in 1966 and the United States announcing an ABM program to protect twelve ICBM sites in 1967. The further cost of maintenance along with these other factors meant that the military and political leadership on both sides had an incentive to reduce their arsenals.
Both superpowers met for the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks Agreement. Negotiations lasted from November 1969 until May 1972 in a series of meetings beginning in Helsinki on November 17, 1969. Further sessions alternated between Vienna and Helsinki. After a long deadlock, the first results of SALT I came in May 1971, when agreement was reached over ABM systems. Further discussion brought the negotiations to an end on May 26, 1972 in Moscow when Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. SALT I froze the number of strategic ballistic missile launchers at existing levels, and provided for the addition of new submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) launchers only after the same number of older intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and SLBM launchers had been dismantled.
The United States had withdrawn from Vietnam in 1973, which was followed by the Communist takeover of South Vietnam. U.S. entry into Vietnam had originally begun during the Eisenhower Administration based on the "Domino Theory." The Domino Theory stated that if the West allowed one Southeast Asian country to fall to Communism, then one-by-one all the rest would follow. At this point in time, U.S. policy makers did not differentiate between the Soviet-style, primarily urban revolution from the agrarian-based revolutionary principles of Mao Tse Tung and his experience in gaining control of China from the Chinese Nationalists at the end of World War II. The Vietnamese War progressed on the agrarian model with the insurgents basing hit and run operations from within the Vietnamese populace and the West's response being that of providing government advisors utilizing mainly Special Forces and CIA operations rather than regular Army troops. It remained thus until 1964 when U.S. Naval vessals may or may not have been attacked by regular North Vietnamese naval forces at the Gulf of Tonkin. President Lyndon Johnson responded by escalating the conflict to include what eventually ended up being over 2 million U.S. military personnel in country. To feed the increased need for manpower, President Johnson sharply increased the draft which caused significant furor in the American populace. The U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam primarily occurred because the war had "sapped the enemy's will to fight," just as was predicted by Mao's agrarian revolutionary model. Over 56,000 U.S. soldiers died in the Vietnam War, with millions of Vietanamese casualities, and because war was never officially declared (as was also the case in Korea), this "conflict" still fell under the general heading of a "Cold War Event."
Nonetheless, the Nixon-Kissinger bombing continued after the U.S. withdrawal in Vietnam, this time in neighboring Cambodia. Ironically, the chaos created by these bombings of the Cambodian countryside in many ways created the perfect climate that allowed for the brutal, genocidal Communist regime, the Khmer Rouge lead by Pol Pot to gain power in 1975. Fanatical in his attempt to maintain power, Pol Pot is accredited with millions of civilian death in the now notorius 'killing fields'. The Khmer Rouge regime would end with the Vietnamese invasion in 1979.
While the Communists had these gains in South east asia, they were now divided, with China moving closer to the Western camp following Nixon's visit to China. In 1975 Portuguese colonies through the world became independent, with Communist governments established in Mozambique and Angola. In East Timor, Indonesia invaded partly to prevent the establishment of a communist government there. The Angolan Civil War began which involved many foreign powers such as Cuba, South Africa, the United States and Soviet Union.
Arab countries were divided between those backed by the Soviets, such as Libya and Syria, and those backed by the West, such as Saudi Arabia. The 1973 Yom Kippur War again saw the superiority of Western backed Israel over the Soviet backed Arab states. Following this, Egypt began to move from being a Soviet ally to a western ally with peace agreements in the 1970s sponsored by the United States with Israel. In 1979 a revolution in Iran brought a government to power which was neither friendly to the United States or the Soviet Union. Iran had occupied a strategic place in U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East, acting as an island of stability, and a buffer against Soviet penetration into the region. He was pro-American, but domestically oppressive. The U.S. national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski advocated a U.S. invasion to stabilize Iran. President Carter could not decide how to appropriately use force, opposed a U.S. coup. A deal was worked out with the Iranian generals to shift support to a moderate government, but this plan fell apart when Khomeini and his followers swept the country, taking power 12 February 1979. Communist revolutions occurred in 1979 in Nicaragua and Grenada. Also that year, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. These increasing gains of communists and western enemies in the third world in the late 1970s ended detente and brought the more militarist governments of Reagan and Thatcher to power and a more confrontationalist attitude of the west in the 1980s.
Second Cold War
The diversified state of the Cold War relations in
1980. Consult the legend on the map for more details.
- Main article: Cold War (1979-1985).
The period between the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev as Soviet leader in 1985 was characterised by a marked "freeze" in relations between the superpowers after the "thaw" of the Détente period of the 1970s. As a result of this re-intensification, the period is sometimes referred to as the "Second Cold War".
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 in support of an embryonic communist regime in that country led to international outcries and the widespread boycotting of the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games by many Western countries in protest at Soviet actions.
Worried by Soviet deployment of nuclear SS-20 missiles (commenced in 1977), NATO allies agreed in 1979 to continued Strategic Arms Limitation Talks to constrain the number of nuclear missiles for battlefield targets, while threatening to deploy some 500 cruise missiles and Pershing II missiles in West Germany and the Netherlands if negotiations were unsuccessful. The negotiations, taken up in Geneva, November 30, 1981, were bound to fail. The planned deployment of Pershing II met intense and widespread opposition from public opinion across Europe, which became the site of the largest demonstrations ever seen in several countries.[1] Pershing II missiles were deployed in Europe from January 1984. They were, however, soon withdrawn beginning in October 1988.
In spite of detente's real successes, the "new conservatives" or "neoconservatives" rebelled against both the Nixon-era policies and the similar position of Democratic Party toward the Soviet Union. Many clustered around hawkish Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a Democrat, and pressured President Carter into a more confrontational stance. Eventually they aligned themselves with Ronald Reagan and the conservative wing of the Republicans, who promised to confront charges of Soviet expansionism.
The election, firstly of Margaret Thatcher as UK Prime Minister in 1979, followed by that of Ronald Reagan to the American Presidency in 1981, saw the elevation of two hardline Cold Warriors to the leadership of the Western World.
Others events included the Star Wars and Solidarity.
End of the Cold War
- Main article: Cold War (1985-1991).
The period between the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev as Soviet leader in 1985 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Events included the Chernobyl accident in 1986, glasnost and perestroika in the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the Soviet coup attempt of 1991 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Others include the implementation of the policies of glasnost and perestroika, public discontent over the Soviet Union's war in Afghanistan, and the socio-political effects of the Chernobyl accident in 1986. East-West tensions eased rapidly after the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev. After the deaths of three elderly Soviet leaders in a row since 1982, the Politburo elected Gorbachev Soviet Communist Party chief in 1985, marking the rise of a new generation of leadership. Under Gorbachev, relatively young reform-oriented technocrats, who had begun their careers in the heyday of "de-Stalinization" under reformist leader Nikita Khrushchev (1953-1964), rapidly consolidated power, providing new momentum for political and economic liberalization, and the impetus for cultivating warmer relations and trade with the West.
Meanwhile, in his second term Reagan surprised the neoconservatives by meeting with Gorbachev in Geneva, Switzerland in 1985 and Reykjavík, Iceland in 1986, the latter to continue discussions about scaling back their intermediate missile arsenals in Europe. The talks broke down in failure. Afterwards, Soviet policymakers increasingly accepted Reagan administration warnings that the U.S. would make the arms race a huge burden for them. The twin burdens of the Cold War arms race on one hand, and the provision of large sums of foreign and military aid, which their socialist allies had grown to expect, possibly left Gorbachev's efforts to boost production of consumer goods and reform the stagnating economy all but impossible. The result in was a dual approach of cooperation with the west and economic restructuring (perestroika) and democratization (glasnost) domestically, which eventually made it impossible for Gorbachev to reassert central control and influence over Warsaw Pact member states.
Conservatives often argue that the primary cause of death of the Soviet Union was the massive fiscal spending on military technology that the Soviets saw as necessary in response to NATO's increased armament of the 1980s. Soviet efforts to keep up with NATO military expenditures resulted in massive economic disruption and the effective bankruptcy of the Soviet economy, which had always laboured to keep up with its western counterparts. The pace of military technology was advancing such that the Soviets were simply incapable of keeping up and still maintaining a healthy economy. The arms race, both nuclear and conventional, was too much for the underdeveloped Soviet economy of the time. It is for this reason that President Ronald Reagan, portrayed by some as a militarist or warmonger, is seen by many as the man who 'won' the Cold War by forcing the Soviets into bankruptcy through his aggressive pursuit of military expansion.
The Soviet Union provided little infrastructure help for its Eastern European satellites, but they did receive substantial military assistance in the form of funds, matériel, and advisors. Their integration into the inefficient military oriented economy of the Soviet Union caused severe readjustment problems after the fall of Communism.
Though the Cold War is seemingly over, its effects continue to be felt to the present day. American involvement in first supporting the rebels in Afghanistan and subsequently abandoning that region, the military and economic hegemony of the United States, and the rise of previously suppressed nationalisms are but some of the factors emerging from shadows of the Cold War leading extremists in the Middle East to oppose the United States in a new kind of war.
Research shows that the fall of Communism was accompanied by a sudden and dramatic decline in total warfare, interstate wars, ethnic wars, revolutionary wars, the number of refugees and displaced persons, and an increase in the number of democratic states.[2]
Arms race
- Main article: Nuclear arms race
The
B-52 Stratofortress intercontinental bomber, designed in the late 1940s, remains in operation in 2006.
A major feature of the Cold War was the arms race between the member states of the Warsaw Pact and those of NATO. This resulted in substantial scientific discoveries in many technological and military fields.
Some particularly revolutionary advances were made in the field of nuclear weapons and rocketry, which led to the space race (many of the rockets used to launch humans and satellites into orbit were originally based on military designs formulated during this period).
Other fields in which arms races occurred include: jet fighters, bombers, chemical weapons, biological weapons, anti-aircraft warfare, surface-to-surface missiles (including SRBMs and cruise missiles), inter-continental ballistic missiles (as well as IRBMs), anti-ballistic missiles, anti-tank weapons, submarines and anti-submarine warfare, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, electronic intelligence, signals intelligence, reconnaissance aircraft and spy satellites.
All of these fields required massive technological and manufacturing investment. Except in aeronautics and rocket and missile design, the West mainly created weapons with superior effectiveness, mainly due to their lead in digital computers after 1965. However, the Eastern bloc fielded a larger number of designs in each field and built a larger number of many types of weapons.
One prominent feature of the nuclear arms race, especially following the massed deployment of nuclear ICBMs due to the flawed assumption that the manned bomber was fatally vulnerable to SAMs, was the concept of deterrence via assured destruction, later, mutually assured destruction or "MAD". The idea was that the Western bloc would not attack the Eastern bloc or vice versa, because both sides had more than enough nuclear weapons to reduce each other to nothing, and to make the entire planet uninhabitable. Therefore, launching an attack on either party would be suicidal, and so neither would attempt it. With increasing numbers and accuracy of delivery systems, particularly in the closing stages of the Cold War, the possibility of a first strike doctrine weakened the deterrence theory. A first strike would aim to degrade the enemy's nuclear forces to such an extent that the retalitatory response would involve "acceptable" losses.
Intelligence
Military forces from the countries involved rarely had much direct participation in the Cold War; the war was primarily fought by intelligence agencies like the CIA (United States), MI6 (United Kingdom), BND (West Germany), Stasi (East Germany) and the KGB (Soviet Union).
The abilities of ECHELON, a U.S.-UK intelligence sharing organization that was created during World War II, were used against the USSR, China and their allies.
According to the CIA, much of the technology in the Communist states consisted simply of copies of Western products that had been legally purchased or gained through a massive espionage program. Stricter Western control of the export of technology through COCOM and providing defective technology to Communist agents after the discovery of the Farewell Dossier contributed to the fall of Communism.
Origin of the Term "Cold War"
The origins of the term "Cold War" are debated. The term was used hypothetically by George Orwell in 1945, though not in reference to the struggle between the USA and the Soviet Union, which had not yet been initiated. American politician Bernard Baruch began using the term in April 1947 but it first came into general use in September 1947 when journalist Walter Lippmann published a series of newspaper columns (and book) on US-Soviet tensions entitled The Cold War.
Historiography
Three distinct periods have existed in the Western scholarship of the Cold War: the traditionalist, the revisionist, and the post-revisionist. For more than a decade after the end of World War II, few American historians saw any reason to challenge the conventional "traditionalist" interpretation of the beginning of the Cold War: that the breakdown of relations was a direct result of Stalin's violation of the accords of the Yalta conference, the imposition of Soviet-dominated governments on an unwilling Eastern Europe, Soviet intransigence, and aggressive Soviet expansionism. They would point out that Marxist theory rejected liberal democracy, while prescribing a worldwide proletarian revolution, and argue that this stance made conflict inevitable. Organizations such as the Comintern were regarded as actively working for the overthrow of all Western governments.
Later New Left revisionist historians were influenced by Marxist theory. William Appleman Williams of the University of Wisconsin in his 1959 The Tragedy of American Diplomacy and Walter LaFeber in his 1967 America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-1968 argued that the Cold War was primarily an outgrowth of American economic interests, which led Moscow to react defensively to potential U.S. imperial encroachment in its backyard. Some new left revisionist historians have argued that U.S. policy of containment as expressed in the Truman Doctrine were at least equally to blame, if not more so. Some date the onset of the Cold War to the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, regarding the U.S. use of nuclear weapons as a warning to the Soviet Union, which was about to join the war against the nearly defeated Japan. In short, historians have disagreed as to who was responsible for the breakdown of U.S.-Soviet relations and whether the conflict between the two superpowers was inevitable. This revisionist approach reached its height during the Vietnam War when many began to view the U.S. and U.S.S.R. as morally comparable empires.
In the later years of the Cold War, there were attempts to forge a "post-revisionist" synthesis by historians. Prominent post-revisionist historians include John Lewis Gaddis and Melvyn Leffler. Rather than attribute the beginning of the Cold War to the actions of either superpower, post-revisionist historians have focused on mutual misperception, mutual reactivity, and shared responsibility between the leaders of the superpowers. Gaddis traces the origins of the conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union less as the lone fault of one side or the other and more as the result of a plethora of conflicting interests and misperceptions between the two superpowers, propelled by domestic politics and bureaucratic inertia. Leffler contends that Truman and Eisenhower acted, on the whole, thoughtfully in meeting what was understandably perceived to be a potentially serious threat from a totalitarian communist regime that was ruthless at home and that might be potentially threatening abroad. Borrowing from the realist school of international relations, the post-revisionists essentially accepted U.S. European policy in Europe, such as aid to Greece in 1947 and the Marshall Plan. According to this synthesis, "Communist activity" was not the root of the difficulties of Europe, but rather a consequence of the disruptive effects of the Second World War on the economic, political, and social structure of Europe which threatened to drastically alter the balance of power in a manner favorable to the U.S.S.R.
The end of the Cold War opened many of the archives of the Communist states which has increased the support for the traditionalist position. Gaddis has written that Stalin's "authoritarian, paranoid, and narcissistic predisposition" locked the Cold War into place. "Stalin alone pursued personal security by depriving everyone else of it: no Western leader relied on terror to the extent that he did. He alone had transformed his country into an extension of himself: no Western leader could have succeeded at such a feat, and none attempted it. He alone saw war and revolution as acceptable means with which to pursue ultimate ends: no Western leader associated violence with progress to the extent that he did."[3]
Further reading
- Overviews
- Ball, S. J. The Cold War: An International History, 1947-1991 (1998), British perspective
- Brzezinski, Zbigniew. The Grand Failure: The Birth and Death of Communism in the Twentieth Century (1989);
- Flory, Harriette and Jenike, Samual. The Modern World 16th century to present. (1992).
- Gaddis, John Lewis. The Cold War: A New History (2005), recent overview
- 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)
- LaFeber, Walter. America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-1992 7th ed. (1993)
- 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)
- 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)
- Lundestad, Geir. East, West, North, South : Major Developments in International Politics since 1945 (1999). USA: Oxford University Press..
- Historiography
- Fitzpatrick, Sheila. "Russia's Twentieth Century in History and Historiography," The Australian Journal of Politics and History, Vol. 46, 2000
- Gaddis, John Lewis. We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (1998)
- Kort, Michael. The Columbia Guide to the Cold War (1998)
- Matlock, Jack E. "The End of the Cold War" Harvard International Review, Vol. 23 (2001)
- Walker, J. Samuel. "Historians and Cold War Origins: The New Consensus", in Gerald K. Haines and J. Samuel Walker, eds., American Foreign Relations: A Historiographical Review (1981), 207-236.
- White, Timothy J. "Cold War Historiography: New Evidence Behind Traditional Typographies" International Social Science Review, (2000)
- William Appleman Williams The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (1958) (1988 edition: ISBN 0-393-30493-0)
- Berger, Henry W. ed. A William Appleman Williams Reader (1992)
- Redefining the Past: Essays in Diplomatic History in Honor of William Appleman Williams. Lloyd C. Gardner (ed.) (1986)
- Origins
- to 1950
- Cumings, Bruce The Origins of the Korean War (2 vols., 1981-90), friendly to North Korea and hostile to US
- Gaddis, John Lewis. The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947 (1972)
- Holloway, David . Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1959-1956 (1994)
- Goncharov, Sergei, John Lewis and Xue Litai , Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao and the Korean War (1993)
- Leffler, Melvyn. A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration and the Cold War (1992).
- Mastny, Vojtech. Russia's Road to the Cold War: Diplomacy, Warfare, and the Politics of Communism, 1941-1945 (1979)
- Levering, Ralph, Vladamir Pechatnov, Verena Botzenhart-Viehe, and C. Earl Edmondson. Debating the Origins of the Cold War (2001)
- Trachtenberg, Marc. A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945-1963 (1999) (ISBN: 0691002738)
- Intelligence
- Aldrich, Richard J. The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence (2002).
- Ambrose, Stephen E. Ike's Spies: Eisenhower and the Intelligence Establishment (1981).
- Andrew, Christopher and Vasili Mitrokhin. The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (1999)
- Mitrokhin. Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin. The Mitrokhin Archive (1999). vol 1, on KGB
- Andrew, Christopher, and Oleg Gordievsky. KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev (1990).
- Bogle, Lori, ed. Cold War Espionage and Spying (2001), essays
- Dorril, Stephen. MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service (2000).
- Gates, Robert M. From The Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story Of Five Presidents And How They Won The Cold War (1997)
- Haynes, John Earl, and Harvey Klehr. Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (1999).
- Helms, Richard. A Look over My Shoulder: A Life in the Central Intelligence Agency (2003)
- Koehler, John O. Stasi: The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police (1999)
- Murphy, David E., Sergei A. Kondrashev, and George Bailey. Battleground Berlin: CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War (1997).
- Prados, John. Presidents' Secret Wars: CIA and Pentagon Covert Operations Since World War II (1996)
- Rositzke, Harry. The CIA's Secret Operations: Espionage, Counterespionage, and Covert Action (1988)
- Trahair, Richard C. S. Encyclopedia of Cold War Espionage, Spies and Secret Operations (2004), by an Australian scholar; contains historiographical introduction
- Weinstein, Allen, and Alexander Vassiliev. The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America—The Stalin Era (1999).
- 1950s and 1960s
- Beschloss, Michael. Kennedy v. Khrushchev: The Crisis Years, 1960-63 (1991)
- Brands, H. W. Cold Warriors. Eisenhower's Generation and American Foreign Policy (1988).
- Brands, H. W. The Wages of Globalism: Lyndon Johnson and the Limits of American Power (1997)
- Brzezinski, Zbigniew. Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict, New York: Praeger (1961), ISBN 0674825454
- Divine, Robert A. Eisenhower and the Cold War (1981)
- Divine, Robert A. ed., The Cuban Missile Crisis 2nd ed. (1988)
- Freedman, Lawrence. Kennedy's Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam (2000)
- Fursenko, Aleksandr and Timothy Naftali. One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958-1964 (1997)
- Kunz, Diane B. The Diplomacy of the Crucial Decade: American foreign Relations during the 1960s (1994)
- Navratil, Jaromir. The Prague Spring 68´ (1998)
- Mastny, Vojtech. The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years (1998)
- Melanson, Richard A. and David Mayers, eds., Reevaluating Eisenhower. American Foreign Policy in the 1950s (1986)
- Paterson, Thomas G. ed., Kennedy's Quest for Victory: American Foreign Policy, 1961-1963 (1989).
- Reynolds, David, ed. The Origins of the Cold War in Europe: International Perspectives (1994)
- Stueck, Jr. William W. The Korean War: An International History (1995)
- Vandiver, Frank E. Shadows of Vietnam: Lyndon Johnson's Wars (1997)
- Williams, Kirrian. The Prague Spring and its Aftermath : Czechoslovak Politics, 1968-1970 (1997)
- Detente
- 1969-1979
- Edmonds, Robin. Soviet Foreign Policy: The Brezhnev Years (1983)
- Garthoff, Raymond. Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan 2nd ed (1994), detailed narrative
- Isaacson, Walter. Kissinger (1992);
- Kissinger, Henry. White House Years (1979) and Years of Upheaval (1982)
- Nixon, Richard. Memoirs (1981)
- Ulam, Adam B. Dangerous Relations. The Soviet Union in World Politics, 1970-1982 (1983).
- Second Cold War
- 1979-86
- Brzezinski, Zbigniew. Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977-1981 (1983);
- Edmonds, Robin. Soviet Foreign Policy: The Brezhnev Years (1983)
- Mower, A. Glenn Jr. Human Rights and American Foreign Policy: The Carter and Reagan Experiences ( 1987),
- Smith, Gaddis. Morality, Reason and Power:American Diplomacy in the Carter Years (1986).
- End of Cold War
- 1986-91
- Beschloss, Michael, and Strobe Talbott. At the Highest Levels:The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War (1993)
- Bialer, Seweryn and Michael Mandelbaum, eds. Gorbachev's Russia and American Foreign Policy (1988).
- Gaddis, John Lewis. The United States and the End of the Cold War: Implications, Reconsiderations, Provocations (1992)
- Garthoff, Raymond. The Great Transition:American-Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold War (1994), detailed narrative
- Hogan, Michael ed. The End of the Cold War. Its Meaning and Implications (1992) articles from Diplomatic History online at JSTOR
- Kyvig, David ed. Reagan and the World (1990)
- Matlock, Jack F. Autopsy of an Empire (1995) by US ambassador to Moscow
- Shultz, George P. Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (1993).
- Economics and Internal Forces
- Heiss, Mary Ann. "The Economic Cold War: America, Britain, and East-West Trade, 1948-63" The Historian, Vol. 65, (2003)
- Hogan, Michael J. The Marshall Plan: America, Britain and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1947-1952 (1989)
- Keohane, Robert O. and Joseph S. Nye. Power and Interdependence (3rd Edition) (2000)
- Kunz, Diane B. Butter and Guns: America's Cold War Economic Diplomacy (1997)
- Morgan, Patrick M. and Keith L. Nelson (eds); Re-Viewing the Cold War: Domestic Factors and Foreign Policy in the East-West Confrontation (1997)
- Popular culture
- Boyer, Paul S. By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (1994)
- Mulvihill, Jason. "James Bond's Cold War Part I" Journal of Instructional Media, Vol. 28, (2001)
- Schwartz, Richard Alan. Cold War Culture: Media and the Arts, 1945-1990 (2000)
- Zeman, Scott C. "I Was a Cold War Monster: Horror Films, Eroticism and the Cold War Imagination"
- Shapiro Jerome F. Atomic Bomb Cinema: The Apocalyptic Imagination on Film (2001)
- Whitfield, Stephen J. The Culture of the Cold War (1996)
- Primary sources
- Documents and memoirs
- Acheson, Dean. Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (1992).
- Etzold, Thomas and John Lewis Gaddis , eds., Containment: Documents on American Policy and Strategy, 1945-1950 (1978)
- Chang, Laurence and Peter Kornbluh , eds., The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1952 (1985)
- Khrushchev, Nikita. Memoirs:
- Khrushchev Remembers ed. Strobe Talbott (1991)
- Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament ed. Strobe Talbott (1987)
- Khrushchev Remembers: The Glasnost Tapes ed. Jerrold Schechter (1989)
- Kissinger, Henry
- vol 1 White House Years (1979)
- vol 2 Years of Upheaval (1982)
- vol 3 Years of Renewal (1999), 1974-76
- Nixon, Richard. Memoirs (1981)
- Shultz, George P. Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (1993)
External links
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