UNIT EIGHTEEN: THE POST-WORLD WAR II BLUES, 1945- 2000
I. The Origins of the Cold War
A. The roots of the Cold War lay in the distrust that existed between the Western allies (United States
and Britain) and their ally in the East, the Soviet Union. The extent of this distrust became evident
during the wartime conferences between the leaders of these three nations to plan war aims and
strategies. These conferences included:
1) Teheran Conference (November 28-December 1, 1943).
2) Yalta Conference (February 4-February 11, 1945).
3) Potsdam Conference (July 17-August 2, 1945)
B. Following the dropping of atomic bombs first on Hiroshima and then on Nagasaki, WWII at last
came to an end. Relations between the United States and the Soviet Union rapidly deteriorated.
Even as the Western Allies moved to implement their part of the Yalta agreements the Soviets did
not. Stalin, alarmed by the West's nuclear monopoly, angered by Secretary of State James
Byrne's clumsy efforts to use American nuclear superiority as a club, and fearful of a future
resurgent Germany, pursued an aggressive policy in Eastern Europe. In 1946-1947 Stalin imposed
communist regimes in Poland, Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria.
1) Despite their anger and alarm over Stalin's actions, in 1946 the United States, Britain, and
Canada (partners in developing the atomic bomb) proposed to the United Nations' Atomic
Energy Commission that an International Atomic Development Authority be given a
monopoly over nuclear weapons and atomic energy (Baruch Plan). The Soviets, fearing
Western domination of the commission and working on their own bomb, rejected the plan. They
proposed to make the manufacture and use of nuclear weapon illegal with the Security Council
responsible for enforcement. The Soviet opposition to any effective international inspection
protocol, however, killed this plan. The Soviets detonated their own atomic bomb in September,
1949.
2) In a speech delivered at Fulton, Missouri in 1946, Winston Churchill acknowledged the existence
of the Cold War when he declared that "an Iron Curtain has descended across the continent of
Europe" that divided the democracies of the West from the totalitarian communist states of the
East.
3) At about the same time, Stalin made a similar acknowledgement when he proclaimed
international peace an impossibility "under the present capitalistic development of the world
economy."
4) Confronted with Stalin's avowed hostility, American diplomat George F. Kennan warned his
government of the Soviets' fanatical commitment "to the belief that it is desirable and
necessary that the internal harmony of our society be disrupted, our traditional way of life
destroyed, the international power of our state be broken, if Soviet power is to be secure." A
year later, he anonymously outlined a policy of containment in Foreign Affairs. He saw such
a policy as the best means of dealing with the Soviet threat. He defined the policy as "a long
term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansionist tendencies." Over time,
Kennan thought, Soviet ideology would moderate and more normal relations between the two
countries might be possible. With some foresight he suggested that "Soviet power ... bears
within the seeds of its own decay, and that the sprouting of those seeds is well advanced."
II. Cold War Foreign Policy: Containment in Action, 1947-1995
A. Containment, as employed by the United State represented a multifaceted policy.
1) On one level it reflected a commitment to assist governments threatened by communist
insurgencies.
a) Harry Truman first gave voice to this idea in the Truman Doctrine (March, 1947).
i) Events in Turkey and Greece compelled Truman to assert this doctrine.
aa) The Soviets, seeking access to the Mediterranean, had begun to pressure
Turkey to grant them rights for naval bases in Turkish territory.
bb) Of greater significance, the financially strapped British government informed
the United States that it could no longer support assist the Greek government in
its war against communist rebels.
ii) Truman, warning that the United States must sustain free peoples resisting
communist domination, requested and received from Congress $400 million in
military and economic aid for Greece and Turkey.
b) President Dwight D. Eisenhower elaborated on the ideas of the Truman Doctrine in
January, 1957, when he enunciated the Eisenhower Doctrine. Confronted with Soviet
efforts to gain a foothold in this vital oil-producing Middle East, Eisenhower warned that
the United States would employ military force to block any Soviet incursion into the region.
Under the Eisenhower Doctrine, U.S. marines occupied Beirut, Lebanon in July, 1958, to
maintain stability during a change of government. The marines were withdrawn a few
months later.
c) In response to the Vietnam War, President Richard Nixon announced the Nixon Doctrine
in 1969. During a speech delivered in Guam, he informed America's Asian allies that,
while the United States would honor its treaty commitments by providing economic and
military assistance, they would be expected to provide the troops for their own defense.
He did promise that American military power would respond to any nuclear threat against
its allies.
d) In 1980, President Jimmy Carter felt compelled to elaborate on the Eisenhower Doctrine.
Fearful that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan might be a prelude to an advance into the
oil-rich Persian Gulf region, the Carter Doctrine avowed that the United States would
respond to any such assault as it would to an attack on its own territory. Carter provided
his doctrine with teeth by establishing a Rapid Deployment Force (RDF) and extending
economic aid to Oman in exchange for military bases. Later the Pentagon renamed the
RDF Central Command (Centcom) and expanded its size. It also stockpiled military
supplies in the Persian Gulf region ready for use in an emergency.
e) President Ronald Reagan reasserted America's commitment to assist those threatened by
communism in 1985. Prompted by a desire to reverse the isolationist trend that had gripped
the United States following its embarrassment in Vietnam, the Reagan Doctrine asserted
that the United States would support anticommunist forces wherever they sought "to defy
Soviet-supported aggression." Even before declaring this policy early in his second term,
Reagan had already put it into operation with support for the anticommunists in El Salvador,
the anticommunist Contras in Nicaragua, and in the invasion of Grenada.
2) Economic assistance for the reconstruction of a war-torn world figured prominently in
containment policy.
a) The Marshall Plan (1948-1951) to rebuild Europe best represented this aspect of
containment.
i) Officially designated by Congress as the European Recovery Program, the
Marshall Plan provided some $12.5 billion dollars to reconstruct war-ravaged Europe.
ii) Although offered to all European nations, neither the Soviets nor their Eastern Bloc
puppets agreed to participate. Instead, the Soviets established the Council of
Mutual Economic Assistance to rebuild Eastern Europe. Lacking America's
economic resources, the Soviet aid proved limited and recovery in Eastern Europe
lagged far behind that of the West.
iii) The non-communist nations of Europe welcomed this opportunity for "recovery, not
relief." The United States allowed the participating nations to define their own needs
through the Council of European Economic Cooperation (CEEC). (As early as
July, 1944, at the Bretton Woods Conference representatives from Europe and the
United States had agreed to create an international bank and a World Monetary
Fund to stabilize international currencies and rebuild the economies of war-torn
nations.)
iv) While motivated in part by a desire to restore a Europe that Winston Churchill had
labeled "a rubble heap, a charnel house, a breeding ground of pestilence and hate,"
the United States also acted from the conviction that a ruined Europe would be far
more susceptible to the Sirens' call of communism than a Europe undergoing
reconstruction and burgeoning prosperity.
b) The Point Four Program (1949) embodied President Truman's policy of extending
technical assistance to help developing nations in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa,
and Asia increase agricultural and industrial output, improve government administration,
promote public health, and advance education.
c) In the Food for Peace Program (1954), President Eisenhower made outright gifts or low-
cost sales of American surplus food products to help developing nations.
d) Through the Alliance for Progress (1961), President John F. Kennedy substantially
increased aid to Latin American nations in hopes of improving living conditions for the
masses of people there.
e) President Kennedy also created the Peace Corps (1961). This agency sent volunteers to
developing nations that requested aid in implementing programs of technical assistance.
f) Concern about growing communist insurgencies in Latin America prompted President
Reagan to announce the Caribbean Basin Initiative (1982). Warning that the United
States must act "decisively in the defense of freedom" or risk the emergence of "new
Cubas" throughout the hemisphere, Reagan proposed a broad plan of economic and
technical assistance to improve the well-being of 28 nations in or bordering the Caribbean.
3) Military confrontations and wars also played a significant role in the policy of containment.
a) Alliances played a significant role in this military process.
i) In 1948, the industrial democracies of the West became alarmed by aggressive Soviet
moves in Central Europe that included the takeover of Czechoslovakia by local
communists, Soviet pressure on Finland to accept a mutual assistance pact, and the
Berlin Blockade. The western nations responded by forming the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949.
aa) In the North Atlantic Pact the members of NATO pledged to treat an attack on
any one of them as an attack on all of them.
bb) The original 12 members included Britain, France, Belgium, Holland,
Luxembourg, Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Canada, and the United
States. Later, membership was extended to Greece and Turkey in 1952, West
Germany in 1955, and Spain in 1982.
cc) In 1950, NATO members established a NATO army with each country
contributing personnel and equipment. The NATO army's headquarters are in
Belgium and its commander has always been an American.
dd) The Soviets responded to NATO's admission of West Germany by forming the
Warsaw Pact in 1955.
ii) In the years that followed the United States forged similar alliances with more than 40
nations. These include:
aa) Australia-New Zealand-United States (ANZUS) Pact.
bb) Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO).
b) Direct confrontations between the western allies and their Soviet opponents represented the
most dangerous aspect of the Cold War and Containment.
i) One of the earliest such confrontations came in Berlin in 1948-1949.
aa) The Berlin Crisis began when Britain, France, and the United States announced
plans to unite their zones of control to form the German Federal Republic
(West Germany).
bb) Outraged by this announcement, Stalin resolved to expel the western allies from
Berlin which lay deep inside the Soviet zone of control – despite agreements
which guaranteed their right to be there. He sought to do so by severing the
surface routes that connected West Berlin with West Germany.
cc) To thwart the Soviet blockade of Berlin, President Truman and other western
leaders resolved to keep the inhabitants of West Berlin supplied with necessities
by means of the massive Berlin Ai rlift (Operation Vittles). Unable to halt the flow
of supplies without shooting down the planes and precipitating war, in 1949, the
Soviets lifted the blockade.
ii) Berlin, however, remained a serious – potentially deadly – source of discord between
the Cold War foes.
aa) In 1958, Premier Khrushchev repeated the Soviet Union's determination to expel
the western allies from Berlin. The allies vowed to remain, but agreed to
negotiations. When the negotiations produced no results, the Soviets did not
attempt to force the allies out.
bb) Another crisis emerged in 1961 over Berlin following the unsuccessful
American backed Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba. President Kennedy called up
reserve and National Guard units and requested increased defense funds from
Congress. Khrushchev responded by ordering the border between East and
West Berlin closed by construction of the Berlin Wall.
iii) Yet Berlin was not the only point at which the allies and the Soviets came into direct
conflict.
aa) When communist rebels under Fidel Castro overthrew Fulgencio Batista and
seized control of Cuba in 1959, President Eisenhower authorized the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) to train an army of 2,000 Cuban refugees to
invade the island. Kennedy inherited this army and the CIA's plan. In 1961, he
allowed the planned invasion to go forward. This Bay of Pigs invasion proved a
complete fiasco and chiefly served to encourage the Soviets in their belief that
Kennedy could be pushed around.
bb) Seeking to gain an advantage in the Cold War balance of power, the Soviets
used the potential of another American-backed invasion of Cuba as an excuse
for deploying nuclear missiles there.
cc) The Cuban Missile Crisis erupted in October, 1962, when United States U-2
spy planes brought back photographs of missile sites under construction in
Cuba.
dd) After considering and rejecting military strikes against the missile sites, Kennedy
blockaded the island. (Kennedy described this as a “quarantine” because a
blockade is an act of war.)
ee) The world waited anxiously to see if Khrushchev would challenge Kennedy by
attempting to violate the blockade. He did not. Instead, he withdrew the
missiles. Kennedy lifted the blockade. He also promised not to invade Cuba
and to remove some obsolete American "Jupiter" missiles from Turkey.
ff) Following this dangerous crisis – which had brought the world to the brink of
nuclear war – the United States and Soviet Union established a "hot line"