History of the Cold War: Difference between revisions

[[File:cuban-missile-crisis-kennedy-kruschev_4266.jpg|frame|<small>I think the other guy just blinked.</small> ]]

 

 

The four minute warning. The balance of power. Mutually Assured Destruction. A massive number of movies. The Cold War's impact on the world was huge. This is the story in reasonably short form.

* Traditionalist - America good, USSR bad.

* Revisionist - Both bad, America worse.

 

The views of historians are much more divergent, and can be broken down into three methodological schools:

Our story properly begins at the end of [[World War II|the Second World War]]. First, however, a prologue:

 

From [[Red October|1917]] to 1923, The White Army, with the occasional aid of foreign troops <ref>(Japanese, British, Canadian, French, American, German, Australian- including two who received the Victoria Cross for their actions against the Red Army- , Greek, Czechoslovak)</ref>, battled for control of Russia against the Bolsheviks, aka The [[Reds with Rockets|Communist Red Army]]. It should be noted that the whites were not actually a single force, but several different armies led by different generals. In addition to fighting the Bolsheviks, these factions [[We ARE Struggling Together!|frequently fought each other]] as well. Both sides also had a tendency to be cruel to the local populations (and, for that matter, [[We Have Reserves|their own troops]]).

 

 

Most leaders of the West, including [[Winston Churchill]], considered the Soviet Union the greatest threat to the world, only [[Enemy Mine|accepting the USSR as an ally]] when they finally realized that [[Adolf Hitler|something]] [[Nazi Germany|worse]] had risen in the center of Europe. Ironically, Fascism had gained prominence mainly as an anti-Communist movement, and earned a great deal of respect throughout the West for that reason. <ref>[[Winston Churchill]] was a big fan of Mussolini, and admiration even for Hitler was okay in mixed company until they surprised everyone by attacking Western nations instead of the USSR.</ref>

 

 

 

By the Yalta Conference in February 1945, it was obvious to more or less everyone bar Hitler that Germany was going to lose the war. Stalin wanted a Soviet sphere of influence in Central and Eastern Europe, a "buffer zone" so to speak. No army had ever conquered the ''whole'' of the Soviet Union; they typically caused extensive death and destruction, which Stalin [[Genre Savvy|wanted to avoid]]. He got his buffer, in return for all the territories holding free elections. Roosevelt hoped that the United Nations- created by this same agreement- would restrain Stalin. It didn't. During the McCarthy period, Roosevelt and his allies - particularly the U.S. Democratic party - would often be called "soft on communism".

 

 

The Soviet Union had promised to hold free elections in the areas under its control. The elections held, however, are [[You Said You Would Let Them Go|generally considered to have been unfree]]. [[Iron Curtain|Communist governments were slowly installed in the various states, who declared their allegiance to Moscow.]] The monarchies of Romania and Bulgaria were abolished, literally at gunpoint in Romania and with a ridiculously blatant rigging of a plebiscite in Bulgaria. <ref>In a strange twist, Simeon II, last Tsar of Bulgaria, would much later be democratically elected prime minister of that country.</ref>

 

 

The Communists weren't a hundred percent successful. Greece was undergoing a civil war that had been going on since before World War II started. The USSR did not actively support the Greek Communists, because Stalin had agreed at Yalta that Greece would fall under the Western sphere of influence. Somewhat surprisingly, Stalin kept his word. The Greek Communists saw this as a betrayal of their cause. Despite Soviet non-interference, the US government perceived a threat of a "domino effect" in which the "fall" of one nation to communism would be followed by others ([[Chekhov's Gun|an idea we'll visit again soon]]). This led to the Truman Doctrine. Truman called on the US to "support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures". One could sum up the entire of US Cold War foreign policy and indeed post-Cold War policy that way. (Although it would be a [[Broad Stroke]].)

 

 

Berlin, as mentioned earlier, had been split into four occupation zones. This meant that the three Western Zones of Berlin were 90 miles inside the Soviet Zone. The Western Allies had set up a new German currency, the Deutsche Mark, in their zones. The Soviets refused to honour it, as they did ''not'' want a revitalised Germany. However, the money was already flowing freely around the zones. Stalin decided the solution was simple -- Berlin must be 100% under Soviet control.

 

 

 

 

 

On 25 June 1950 (which is why the war is known as the 6.25 War in Korea), North Korean forces unexpectedly crossed the 38th parallel into South Korea, using that age-old justification that they were attacked first. (In this case, they weren't.) When it became very clear that South Korea was losing badly, Truman went to the United Nations to get approval for what he termed a "police action". This rather strange term allowed him to avoid actually getting a declaration of war from Congress, which he felt would be too time-consuming. The legality of this is disputed, but it has since proved [[Combat Pragmatist|a useful maneuver in US foreign policy]].

As <s> [[The West Wing|Jed Bartlet]]</s> someone once said, "Decisions are made by those who show up". In this case, it was the Soviet Union who didn't. They boycotted Security Council meetings because of the China issue. For decades, there had been a civil war ongoing between the Communist Party of China and the U.S.-backed Chinese Nationalist Party (aka the Kuomintang). Finally the Communists won, and the Kuomintang set up shop in Taiwan. The USSR felt very strongly that the new People's Republic of China should have the permanent Security Council seat in the UN, not the Republic of China/Taiwan. Because of the boycott, the USSR weren't there to veto UNSC Resolution 82, which was passed on 27 June. For the first time in its history, the UN was going to war.

 

 

Korea is notable for being the first jet war, where jet aircraft were used in a big way, especially the MiG-15 and F-86 Sabre. It was still, however, a guns only environment, since air-to-air missiles were not around yet. A lot of the North Korean pilots were actually Soviet. The UN knew this and decided to ignore it.

After a lot of mostly one sided battles (even the Chinese victories were [[Pyrrhic Victory|usually pyrrhic at best]]) the war ended in a stalemate, unresolved to this day. Since the UN, China, and the Soviet Union never officially declared war, no treaty was signed. The two surface combatants, North and South Korea, still have not officially signed a treaty to end the war.

 

 

 

 

 

Malenkov's First Secretary was Nikita Khrushchev, who was quite influential in running the country during Malenkov's premiership. He was the first advocate of reducing nuclear arms in order to refocus the economy on consumer goods, which required peace talks with the US. Eventually Malenkov ran afoul of Khrushchev, who he referred to as "the moon-faced idiot", and was ousted as Premier and replaced with Nikolai Bulganin who basically just let Khrushchev run the country. Malenkov ended up as a manager of a hydroelectric plant in Kazakhstan.<ref>An improvement from Stalinist times; in the past he might have been shot</ref>

 

 

On 29 August 1949, a 22 kiloton nuclear explosion happened in the Kazakh SSR. Called Pervaya molniya ("First Lightning"), RDS-1 or Joe-1, it was the first of the USSR's [[Mnogo Nukes]]. Thanks to the Soviet spies in the Manhattan Project, the Arms Race had begun. The two superpowers raced to develop, and test, more powerful nuclear weapons, with Britain, France and later China joining in. They also developed nuclear deployment systems, especially in the bomber field.

 

Predictably, the rapid build-up of ever more powerful nuclear arms by two ideologically-opposed superpowers seemingly on the brink of war scared quite a few people. The world had, after all, seen the terrible power of atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and some of the new ones were hundreds of times more powerful than those from 1945. Nuclear testing has shown by the 1950s the dangers of radiation, or "fallout", which can result from a nuclear explosion. In the United States fallout shelters were built around the country and children learn to "duck and cover". Citizens were told to expect, and be prepared for, a nuclear attack at any time.

 

 

 

 

Anyway, the British had been having to deal with Indian civil disobedience for quite a while. So they decided to let India go. Messily, they attempted to appease two populations by splitting it into two states, India and Pakistan. This led to a great deal of violent chaos, one remnant of which is the "Kashmir Question" which lingers to this day. The partitions of Palestine and Cyprus, both British possessions, were also less than perfect, while the British fought bloody insurgencies in Kenya and Malaysia before granting both countries independence. The rest of the Empire went pretty quietly.

 

 

 

 

The Americans claimed that they'd lost a NASA plane due to the pilot losing consciousness. What they didn't know was that U-2 pilot Gary Powers had ejected and was in USSR custody. (Powers had been issued a [[Cyanide Pill]] for such an eventuality, but opted against using it.) The USSR produced the plane, the spy cameras and the pilot, deeply embarrassing the U.S.. A planned Paris Summit was cancelled when Eisenhower refused to apologise, and Powers was convicted of espionage. He would ultimately be [[Prisoner Exchange|swapped]] for a captured KGB agent.

 

 

 

 

From about 1956-1961, China and the Soviet Union slowly split apart due to a myriad of issues and bad blood in general. One such issue was Stalin's insistence in the 1930s that the Communists remain allied with the Nationalists... at a time when the Nationalists were killing Communists. Mao for his part believed that Stalin's successors were too soft. In any case, tension mounted until it escalated into border clashes. China tested its own nuclear weapons partly as a deterrent against the Soviets. China began to compete with the Soviet Union for satellite states; notably, Enver Hoxha’s Albania switched to China’s side in 1961 <ref>After Mao’s death Hoxha would pursue a paranoid isolationist policy, denouncing both the PRC and the USSR, and proclaimed Albania to be the world’s only Marxist-Leninist state</ref>

The break opened up China to America more, starting with sporting tournaments and building to Richard Nixon's famous visit in 1972. <ref>As an aside, the saying "only Nixon could go to China" is symbolic of Nixon's conservatism- a liberal would've been accused of being a Communist.</ref> Mao Zedong's death in 1976 brought the more capitalist Deng Xiaoping into power, and he instituted many economic reforms. By the end of the Cold War China had abandoned much of the Maoist ideology and fast moving towards becoming a market economy, though it remains to this day a one-party state.

 

 

 

In 1958, a man with an impressive beard called [[Fidel Castro]] overthrew the Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista. Batista had been pro-[[Banana Republic|big business]]. Cuba was a major exporter of sugar, was famous for its cigars, and [[The Mafia]] had set up shop there. However, the US government had not been totally in love with Batista guy, and had actually arms embargoed him.

 

 

Dwight D. Eisenhower decided to covertly fund a [[Bay of Pigs Invasion|CIA invasion of Cuba via the Bay of Pigs]]. Policy makers believed they could cover up US involvement. The plan was not complete when JFK became president. JFK decided to go ahead anyway, believing that the CIA and military knew what they were doing. He didn't want to deal with the criticism that he abandoned Eisenhower's plan, and he also didn't like Communism.

 

 

 

It was now clear to the Soviet leadership that the USSR was considerably behind the US, its [[Mnogo Nukes]] being far less capable than the Americans' [[Superior Firepower]]. <ref>To give an example, the Americans had just put Polaris sub-launched missiles into service. These (the A1 version) had a range of 1,367 miles (2,200 km), could be launched submerged and 16 could be carried by the ''George Washington'' class of converted ''Skipjack'' nuclear submarines. The best Soviet SSBN at the time was the Project 658 "Hotel" class, which had R-13/SS-N-4 "Sark" missiles with a range of only 404 miles (650 km), and had to launch them surfaced. This process took twelve minutes. Surfacing when you're a boomer is a pretty bad idea. </ref>

 

 

The USSR had another problem. The Americans had deployed Jupiter and Thor medium range ballistic missiles in Europe, especially Turkey. These allowed the US to hit Moscow within 16 minutes of a launch. The Soviets had no equivalent.

After a few very tense days, two contradictory letters, and the Soviets deciding not to challenge the quarantine line, a deal was reached. The missiles would be removed from Cuba, and the US would not invade Cuba. The US also secretly agreed to remove the Jupiter and Thor missiles, but they were obsolete anyway as the ICBM force was coming on-stream. When the dust settled, Kennedy looked like the victor, Nikita suffered a blow to his prestige that would later see him lose his job, and the world breathed a sigh of relief that the "Thirteen Days" had not been their last. To make further crises easier to solve, the [[Hot Line]] was set up.

 

 

 

 

 

As mentioned above, the end of the Second World War meant the colonial empires were collapsing. A particularly important case was French Indochina, i.e. the states of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The French tried to keep this area under their control with covert American help, but failed. On May 7, 1954, the French lost the Battle of Dien Bien Phu to a Vietnamese independence movement known as the Vietminh. The subsequently withdrew from the area.

In 1960, the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam was created. We'll call it NLF, but it was widely known among Americans as the Việt Cộng ("Vietnamese Communists"), often shortened to VC, Victor Charlie or just Charlie. [[Apocalypse Now|The popularity of surfing among them is unclear]].

 

 

 

On 2 August 1964, ''USS Maddox'' fired on several torpedo boats that had been stalking the Gulf of Tonkin. Initial claims that the [[The Dog Shot First|North Vietnamese fired first]] were revealed to be false, although the ''Maddox'' fired warning shots and may well have been the target for an attack anyway. Two nights later, the ''Maddox'' and another destroyer fired on phantom targets. The North Vietnamese were doing nothing on that night.

[[The Vietnam War]] had a massive impact, not just in Vietnam. Figures for deaths [http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat2.htm#Vietnam widely vary], but 3 million is a good figure. While they killed far more North Vietnamese, the US lost 58,217 personnel, a figure only exceeded only by the [[American Civil War]] and the two World Wars. The South Vietnamese forces lost a lot, but the civilians really suffered- 500,000 to 2 million in both Vietnams and more in Cambodia. The figures are vague because the insurgent forces didn't wear uniforms, and thus it was difficult to tell an insurgent corpse from a civilian corpse. The political agenda of the writer is also a factor. Additionally, Large areas of Vietnamese farmland were rendered at least temporarily unusable via napalm damage. Chemical defoliants like Agent Orange would continue to poison the population for years to come.

 

 

A very large number of refugees, known as the "boat people", resulted from the fall of Saigon, the Cambodian Genocide and the 1979 Vietnam-China War. They mostly headed east for international shipping lanes, frequently suffering from hunger, thirst and pirate attacks. 823,000 Vietnamese refugees were ultimately taken by the United States, with Australia and Canada taking 137,000 each.

 

 

 

[[I Lied|It was a great big lie]].

 

 

 

 

After WWII, the Middle East was undergoing considerable changes with many new states being created and given independence from the UK and France. during this time, the UN voted on enforcing a 1922 League of nations resolution and partitioning an area called Palestine into two states, one Arab and one Jewish. Unfortunately, the area was already full of Arabs who objected to the establishment of a Jewish state in the area. [[Arab-Israeli Conflict|You are probably familiar with the results]].

 

 

Eventually, the two superpowers decided that things had just started getting silly and it was best to put a limit on the Arms Race. There were increasing numbers of anti-ballistic missiles being deployed and missiles were starting to get [[More Dakka|multiple warheads]]. In 1969, the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) started. They lasted three years before reaching a deal, with the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and the Interim Agreement, known as SALT I.

 

 

 

 

In 1978, Daoud was overthrown by the Afghan Army, who sympathized with the PDPA. The result was the Marxist-led Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, which lasted eighteen months. The PDPA offended many traditionally-minded Afghans with reforms of marriage customs. Their outlawing of usury- both deeply Islamic and socialist- made bitter enemies of wealthy landlords. And the brutality of their enforcement of land reforms made them unpopular all-around. Combined with factionalism in the PDPA itself, the result was civil war and general chaos.

 

 

 

In 1976, the Soviet government started the deployment of RT-21M Pioneer/SS-20 "Saber" missiles to the western USSR. They were probably intended to replace the "Sandal" missiles. However, they were considerably better than the SS-4. They had a range of at least double the SS-4s and the capacity to carry three independently-targetable warheads.

At this time, NATO were behind the Warsaw Pact in the arms race and probably could not have defended Western Europe without resorting to [[Superior Firepower]]. This would be rectified when "emerging technologies" such as [[wikipedia:Northrop Grumman E-8 Joint STARS|JSTARS]], [[wikipedia:Sense and Destroy ARMor|SADARM]] and development of operational-level thinking by the 1990s. Until then, however, the SS-20 missiles, could hit the UK from behind the Urals and were perceived as a major threat. The USSR could take out the entire theater nuclear capability of NATO in Europe before it would have a chance to fully respond.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Africa had not been ignored by the superpowers during this time. The two sides courted the various African states, supplying them with weapons and general aid. The Soviet Union and People's Republic of China particularly wanted to destabilise the western powers there and create pro-communist states.

 

 

 

ANC socialism soon proved to be of a rather moderate sort; the more radical leftists who'd fought alongside ANC leaders called for redistribution of wealth held by those who'd been privileged by the racist system. However, in terms of material goods, the most Mandela's government has provided to the poor in South Africa is free lunches for schoolchildren. There was certainly no alliance with the Soviet Union, though that may be because the USSR would soon be in no position to help anyone.

 

 

For backstory, we have to go back to [[WW 2]]. Britain and Russia both invaded Iran, both to stop Hitler from using the oil fields of the Middle East and to grab those fields for themselves. They installed Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as the Shah of Iran. He fled the country in 1953 when the popular Mohammad Mossadegh was democratically elected as Prime Minister. The CIA and [[MI 6]] launched a coup d'état that removed Mossadegh and reinstalled the Shah. The autocracy then secularized and Westernized the nation- often ignoring the Iranian Constitution. This caused nationalist, Leftist and Islamist groups to resist, though usually they weren't united. This is possibly why conspiracy theorists lump Communists and Islamists together, despite many of them hating the other with a passion.<ref>This isn't to say that there weren't some Islamist leftists; indeed, one of the biggest Islamist factions, the Mojahideen-e-Khalq (People's Mojahideen) followed the Islamic Socialism of [[wikipedia:Ali Shariati|Ali Shariati]], which tried to synthesize Islam and socialism.</ref> The tension from the suppression and fighting culminated in the Iranian Revolution in 1979, leading to the current Islamic Republic of Iran, led by the Ayatollah Khomeini.

 

 

 

On the 20th of August 1988, Iran agreed to a UN resolution and borders returned to their pre-war boundaries. After Iran signed to it, insurgency groups began a ten day offensive, with Iraqi support. However, pressure from other countries forced Iraqi planes from Iran, allowing them to destroy the insurgency.

 

 

 

[[Needs a Better Description]]

 

 

Then, in 1978 something changed. For the first time in history, a Pole had been chosen as [[The Pope]]. That was in a way a slap in the face for the Polish and Russian Communists. He visited his motherland the next year, drawing incredible crowds. The Poles for the first time in history since 1569 had a powerful ally, and the feelings of national pride resurfaced. He publicly claimed that this land needs change.

Solidarity moved underground. When the government was forced to lift the martial law, it resurfaced. Not-so-coincidentally, this occurred alongside Gorbachev's promises of Change, or "Perestroika".

 

Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary of the CPSU in 1985. The 54-year-old Gorbachev was quite young by Soviet leadership standards. Although a believer in Communism, he realized the importance of reform in the Soviet Union, which has been stagnating in just about every aspect since the early 1970s.

 

Soon after he came to power Gorbachev announced Perestroika or "restructuring" and it means precisely that: Gorbachev set out to reconfigure Soviet society. He began to overhaul the Soviet command economy, reducing central control to allow for more efficient and realistic planning to meet consumer demands, and eventually transferring decision-making powers to local workers. He began to allow small-scale private enterprise and encourage foreign investment, while combating corruption and cutting military spending.

 

 

 

 

It didn't take long for Glasnost to backfire. As a result of Glasnost, the Soviet people were given more civil and political freedoms than ever before... and they soon wanted more. Now that past and contemporary Soviet crimes, misrule and mistakes are now out in the open and being debated, the authority and legitimacy of the CPSU were being compromised. Worse still, nationalist sentiments which previously was either suppressed, controlled or otherwise made insignificant, began to fueled ethnic tension across the Soviet Union. "Socialist brothers" in Armenia and Azerbaijan in particular were at each other's throats over Nagarno-Karabakh (a messy situation involving an Armenian state surrounded by Azeri territory which remained unresolved to this day). Gorbachev, under attack from reformists, conservatives and nationalists, were unable to reconcile them.

Gorbachev was rather more successful on the international front. Relations between the USA and USSR began to improve. Gorbachev agreed to disarmament treaties and planned the withdraw Soviet troops out of Afghanistan, which was just as well - military spending had been crippling to the Soviet economy.

 

 

Soviet reforms were watched closely in the communist states of Eastern Europe. Their leaders were under increasing pressure to reform, from both their own people and from Moscow. Many of the ruling elite feared they were about to lose their hold on power. They were right.

 

 

Gorbachev wanted to see Eastern Europe embrace its new freedoms and establish moderate Communist regimes similar to his own. Eastern Europe, however, was force-fed Communism by Moscow for 40 years and decided it had enough. Instead of a revitalized Warsaw Pact, within two years all the Eastern European countries would abandon communism and the Warsaw Pact itself would cease to have any relevance whatsoever. The events of 1989 came to be called the "Autumn of Nations", but here at Tv Tropes it was the "[[Hole in Flag]] Revolution" <ref> so-called because when nationalists and democrats marched against the ruling Communists in 1989 and brought them down they were flying flags with the Communist state symbols cut out.</ref>

By 1991, all the Soviet satellite states of Eastern Europe, plus Albania, had thrown off Communist rule. Communist Yugoslavia, though not part of the Warsaw Pact, was also collapsing as different ethnic groups started killing each other. The only Communist state left in Eastern Europe was the Soviet Union itself. For the moment.

 

 

 

This was becoming increasingly difficult. The various Soviet Republics, previously in thrall to Moscow, gained more freedom from the Central Government and quickly decided they liked this freedom. The republics, especially the Baltic states, now wanted full independence. Gorbachev's own insistence on political freedom now saw him quickly losing control of the Soviet Union to nationalist leaders such as Boris Yeltsin. Gorbachev was forced to send in troops to quell nationalist demonstrations across the country - this only made matters worse.

The Baltic States - Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania - had decided to secede from the Soviet Union long before the August Coup. Now the rest of the Republics began to leave. In November 1991 Yeltsin banned the Communist Party. The Soviet Union itself was dissolved on December 8, 1991. Gorbachev, no longer with a country to rule, resigned as President of the Soviet Union on Christmas Day, 1991. That night, the Hammer and Sickle was lowered for the last time over the Kremlin.

 

 

The [[Cold War]] was all but over at this point, but it served as a demonstration of what the United States could have been capable of if it had wound up turning hot in the 1990s or later. However, it must be kept in mind that while Iraq used some Soviet equipment, it did not fight in a Soviet manner and was not at all representative of the Soviet military.

 

On 29 November 1990, the [[United Nations]] Security Council by a 12-1 vote, passed Resolution 678 , which stated:

 

 

That meant - get out of Kuwait or face war. Saddam didn't get out, so he faced war.

 

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[[Category:Hollywood History]]