The Cold War

The term “Cold War” was first used in 1947 to explain US-Soviet relations. The Cold War, which lasted from 1945-1990, was a time period during which the USSR and U.S. employed ideological, military, and political instruments against each other without actually waging a real war.

Causes (divisive issues):

o  Delay of Second Front

o  End of Lend-Lease aid

o  Soviet fears about the U.N.

o  US resentment of late Soviet entry into Pacific war

o  The sharing of atomic technology (1946 Soviets reject Baruch Plan)

o  Division of Germany

o  Free elections of Poland

o  Ideological competition (capitalism v. communism)

o  Personalities of Stalin and American policy makers (i.e. Truman and Dean Acheson)

o  American global economic expansion

o  Absence of a common enemy (i.e. Hitler) to unify the US & USSR

o  “Vital security interests”: US must have access to Middle East oil and global markets; Soviet Union needs security belt on its frontiers—the Soviet Union takes control of Eastern Europe to create a “buffer zone”

Effects:

(United States)

o  Policy of containment¾US gives economic aid to Greece, Turkey (Truman Doctrine), and Western Europe (Marshall Plan)

o  McCarthyism (Second Red Scare)

o  Delay of Civil Rights Movement

o  The growth of the military-industrial complex

o  Reagan’s “evil empire” speech and the US decision to deploy Pershing II nuclear missiles to Europe (1983)

(International)

o  Berlin airlift ends Soviet blockade

o  NATO and Warsaw Pact are formed

o  American and Soviet arms race begins

o  Korean War (1950-1953)

o  Cuban Missile Crisis (1962)

o  Vietnam War (1965-1973)

Containment:

From Moscow on February 22, 1946, George Kennan, an American diplomat sent a 5,540-word cablegram to the State Department on American postwar foreign policy. In what came to be known as the Long Telegram, Kennan suggested a strategy of containment of the Soviet Union—direct application of counter pressure wherever the communists threatened to expand.

o  Kennan was the director of the planning staff of the State Department

o  Under the pseudonym “X” Kennan explained containment in an article called “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” in Foreign Affairs magazine (July 1947)

o  He was declared persona non grata by the USSR

o  He won a Pulitzer Prize for two of his works, including his memoirs.