Cold War (1948–1953)

• For overview see Cold War

Tsarist Russia and the West

A few scholars have traced the origins of the East-West conflict well before the Bolshevik Revolution. World System theorists have argued that Russia was late to be absorbed by the capitalist world-system, and only in its periphery or semi-periphery upon the Bolshevik Revolution, leaving it ripe for a radical break with capitalism. Some scholars even argue that East and West are fundamentally different civilizations. Among scholars in the latter camp, many have argued that Eastern Orthodox Slavs are heir to the Byzantine tradition. Others point out aspects of the Slavic cultural heritage, Asiatic influence, and a fundamentally different political culture shaped by rule of the tsar.

Others have argued that geographical causes would lead to intractable conflict. They see the states of the North Atlantic and East Asia as being fundamentally maritime powers based on trade and openness, while the states of Central Eurasia, most notably Russia, were land-based powers based on large armies and centralized control.

Imperial rivalry between the United Kingdom and Tsarist Russia would foreshadow the East-West tensions of the Cold War. Throughout the 19th century, improving Russia's maritime access was a perennial aim of the tsars' foreign policy; impeding it was a perennial obsession of the UK's. Despite Russia's vast size, most of its ten thousand miles of seacoast was frozen over most of the year or controlled by other powers, particularly in the Baltic and Black Seas. The British had been determined since the Crimean War in the 1850s to slow Russian expansion at the expense of Ottoman Turkey, the "sick man of Europe." After the completion of the Suez Canal in 1869, the prospects of seizing a portion of the Ottoman seacoast on the Mediterranean, whereby it could threaten the strategic waterway, were all the more mortifying to the British. The close proximity of the Tsar's territorially expanding empire in Central Asia to India also terrified South Asia's British imperial overlords, triggering a series of quixotic British adventures in Afghanistan. Fears over Russia, however, subsided following Russia's stunning defeat in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. Some historians have noted that the British long exaggerated the strength of the relatively backward sprawling empire, which in hindsight was probably concerned with trade and securing its frontiers, not threatening Western interests. Some historians have even noted the parallels to the post-World War II period, when, again, the West exaggerated Russian "expansionism" in Eastern Europe, which, like the territorial growth of imperial Russia, was probably motivated by securing vulnerable frontiers.

Strategic rivalry between the United States and Russia—both huge, sprawling nations—goes back to the 1890s when, after a century of friendship, Americans and Russians became rivals over the development of Manchuria. Tsarist Russia, unable to compete industrially, sought to close off and colonize parts of East Asia, while Americans demanded open competition for markets.

Many believe the Cold War was an inevitable conflict between the two continent-sized states, each with huge reserves of manpower and natural resources who were destined to compete for world preeminence.

Bolshevik Revolution

Main article: Bolshevik Revolution

In 1917 after a coup of the revolutionary democratic government by the Bolsheviks in Russia the rivalry gained an intensely ideological component. The United States did not even establish relations with the new Soviet government until 1933. The western allies never forgot that the Soviet government negotiated a separate peace with Germany in the First World War in 1918, leaving the Western Allies to fight the Central Powers alone. Lasting Russian mistrust stemmed from the landing of western troops in Soviet Russia in 1918, who became involved, directly and indirectly, in assisting the anti-Bolshevik Whites in the civil war. This helped solidify lasting suspicions among Soviet leadership of the capitalist world.

The West saw the Soviet system as a threat. In Europe, and to a lesser degree in the United States, there were strong socialist and communist movements that threatened the status quo. The atheistic nature of Soviet communism also concerned many. Up until the mid-1930s, both the United Kingdom and the United States believed the Soviet Union to be a much greater threat than Nazi Germany and focused most of their intelligence efforts against it. Stalin suspected that the policy of appeasement was primarily directed at pushing Germany towards the east and into a conflict with the USSR, as a way of exhausting both powers. The exclusion of Soviet negotiators from the Munich Agreement only increased Stalin's suspicion. The USSR sought to evade the Nazi threat by signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, an act which shocked Western countries.

The wartime alliance

When Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, the Soviets and the Western Allies quickly put their past tensions behind them and cooperated. Most notably, the United States shipped vast quantities of materiel to the Soviets, keeping their war effort alive. But the wartime alliance between the Anglo-Americans and the Soviet Union was an aberration from the normal tenor of Soviet-US relations and Soviet-British relations. Even during the warmest days of the alliance, tensions existed below the surface. In the words of Winston Churchill: "If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons".

On one hand, before the war the Soviets had stunned the world by signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany, and then participated in the dividing up of Eastern Europe. On the other, the Soviets were annoyed at having to the bear the brunt of the Axis alliance since 1941, despite calls for the Allies to open a second front in Europe, which did not occur until June 1944. In the meantime, the Russians suffered heavy casualties, with as many as twenty million dead. The allies responded by saying that they had opened a second front in Italy during 1943 and could not invade France immediately.

Throughout the war, mutual distrust was always present. The United States and the United Kingdom did not tell Stalin about breakthroughs such as Ultra, the decoding of German cyphers. Stalin suspected that the West would stand by and watch Germany defeat the USSR right up to the Invasion of Normandy. However, a mutual interest in the need to defeat a still powerful Germany was enough to keep a functioning alliance. This changed when Franklin D. Roosevelt collapsed with victory in sight. His vice president Truman, an amateur in foreign affairs, was "not up on all details" as he himself admitted. His failure to inform Stalin of the decision to drop the atomic bomb, which was scheduled right after the Potsdam Conference, was seen as a deep personal insult. The Soviets had gained knowledge of these U.S programs through elaborate Soviet spy rings that had continued to operate during the wartime alliance.

The breakdown of postwar peace

When the war ended in Europe on May 8, 1945, Soviet and Western (US, British, and French) troops were located in particular places, essentially, along a line in the center of Europe. Aside from a few minor adjustments, this would be the "Iron Curtain" of the Cold War. In hindsight, Yalta signified the agreement of both sides that they could stay there and that neither side would use force to push the other out. This tacit accord applied to Asia as well, as evidenced by US occupation of Japan and the division of Korea. Politically, therefore, Yalta was an agreement on the postwar status quo in which Soviet Union hegemony reigned over about one third and the United States over two thirds.

There were fundamental contrasts between the visions of the United States and the Soviet Union, between capitalism and communism. Those contrasts had been simplified and refined in national ideologies to represent two ways of life, each vindicated in 1945 by previous disasters. Conflicting models of autarky versus exports, of state planning against private enterprise, were to vie for the allegiance of the developing and developed world in the postwar years. Even so, however, the Cold War was not obviously inevitable in 1945.

Despite the wherewithal of the United States to advance a different vision of postwar Europe, Stalin viewed the reemergence of Germany and Japan as Russia's chief threats, not the United States. He assumed that the capitalist camp would soon resume its internal rivalry over colonies and trade and not pose a threat to the USSR. Economic advisers such as Eugen Varga reinforced this view, predicting a postwar crisis of overproduction in capitalist countries, which would culminate by 1947-1948 in another great depression. He believed that America's prosperity in 1945 was not so much a triumph of free enterprise as the result of the government bankrolling business.

What would be the result of massive postwar demilitarization? Stalin predicted overproduction and depression. Stalin thus assumed that the Americans would need to offer him economic aid, needing to find any outlet for massive capital investments just to maintain the wartime industrial production that brought the US out of the Great Depression. Thus, the prospects of an Anglo-American front against him seemed slim from Stalin's standpoint. However, there would be no postwar crisis of overproduction. And, as Stalin anticipated, this was averted by maintaining roughly the same levels of government spending. It was just maintained in a vastly different way.

But the whole role of government was not set in stone and was in question once again. Although America's military-industrial complex was born in World War II, it could have been scaled back. Pressures to "get back to normal" were intense. Congress wanted a return to low, balanced budgets, and families clamored to see the soldiers sent back home. The Truman administration worried first about a postwar slump, then about the inflationary consequences of pent-up consumer demand. The GI Bill of Rights, adopted in 1944, was one answer: subsidizing veterans to complete their education rather than flood the job market and probably boost the unemployment figures. Moreover, on July 20, 1948 President Harry S. Truman issued the first peacetime military draft in the United States amid increasing tensions with the Soviet Union.

Thus, a conversion to the prewar economy would be extremely difficult, and in the end, it did not happen. In the end, the postwar government would look a lot like the wartime government, with the military establishment, along with military-security dominant. The postwar capitalist slump predicted by Stalin would not be averted by domestic management, supplemented perhaps by a greater role in promoting international trade and monetary relations. In fact, President Roosevelt in 1941 hoped that after the war, the world's largest building, the huge, mile-circumference Pentagon complex in northern Virginia, would be converted into a storage facility. It did not; the military-industrial complex dominated postwar life, largely the result of the Cold War.

Two visions of the world

The United States hoped to shape the postwar world by opening up the world's markets to capitalist trade - a rebuilt capitalist Europe that could again serve as a hub in world affairs. The Atlantic Charter was publicized regarding this with principles such as self-determination - the right of nations to choose their own government - but was in practice abrogated by both the West as by the East. Franklin D. Roosevelt had never forgotten the excitement with which he had greeted the principles of Wilsonian idealism during World War I, and he saw his mission in the 1940s as bringing lasting peace and genuine democracy to the world.

This vision was equally a vision of national self-interest. World War II resulted in enormous destruction of infrastructure and populations throughout Eurasia, from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans, with almost no country left unscathed. The only major industrial power in the world to emerge intact—and even greatly strengthened from an economic perspective—was the United States, which moved swiftly to consolidate its position. As the world's greatest industrial power, and as the only world power unravaged by the war, the United States stood to gain more than any other country from opening the entire world to unfettered trade. The United States would have a global market for its exports, and it would have unrestricted access to vital raw materials. Determined to avoid another economic catastrophe like that of the 1930s, Roosevelt saw the creation of the postwar order as a way to ensure continuing US prosperity.

Truman could advance these principles with an economic powerhouse that produced 50% of the world's industrial goods and military power that rested on a monopoly of the new atom bomb. These aims were at the center of what the Soviet Union strove to avoid as the breakdown of the wartime alliance went forward. It also required new international agencies: the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, which were created to ensure an open, capitalist, international economy. The Soviet Union opted not to take part.

The fate of postwar Europe

The withdrawal of the United States to advance a different vision of the postwar world conflicted with Soviet interests, which motivated their determination to shape postwar Europe. The Soviet Union had, since 1924, placed higher priority on its own security and internal development than on Trotsky's vision of world revolution. Accordingly, Stalin had been willing before the war to engage non-communist governments that recognized Soviet control of the former Tsarist Empire and offered assurances of non-aggression. Germany's betrayal of its non-aggression promise convinced Stalin that he could no longer rely on non-communist governments.

After the war, Stalin sought to secure the Soviet Union's western border by installing Communist-dominated regimes under Soviet influence in bordering countries of Poland, Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria. This decision was a response to a 150-year history of repeated Western assaults on Russia, including World War I, World War II and Napoleon's 1812 invasion. Stalin considered it essential to destroy Germany's capacity for another war, which conflicted with the US desire to rebuild Germany as the economic center of a stable Europe. Thus, much of the heavy industry was uprooted to the USSR. The West viewed these developments as violations of those nations' basic rights and a clear disregard of the Yalta agreement. Winston Churchill accused Stalin of cordoning off a new Russian empire with an "Iron Curtain." The dispute over Germany escalated after Truman refused to give the Soviet Union reparations from West Germany's industrial plants because he believed it would hamper Germany's economic recovery further. Stalin responded by splitting off the Soviet sector of Germany as a communist state.

Russia's historic lack of direct, year-round maritime access, a perennial concern of Russian foreign policy well before the Bolshevik Revolution, was also a focus for Russia where interests diverged between East and West. Stalin pressed the Turks for improved access out of the Black Sea through Turkey's Dardanelles Strait, which would allow Soviet passage from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. Churchill had earlier recognized Stalin's claims, but now the British and Americans forced the Soviet Union to pull back.

There were other signs of caution on Stalin's part. The Soviet Union eventually withdrew from Northern Iran, at Anglo-American behest; Stalin did observe his 1944 agreement with Churchill and did not aid the communists in the struggle against a weak government in Greece that was supported by the UK; in Finland he accepted a friendly, non-communist government; and Russian troops were withdrawn from Czechoslovakia by the end of 1945. However, a communist coup in 1948 made Czechoslovakia an effective Soviet satellite.

Containment

The Truman Doctrine

Main article: Truman Doctrine

The immediate post-1945 period may have been the historical high point for the popularity of communist ideology. The burdens the Red Army and USSR endured had earned it massive respect which, had it been fully exploited by Stalin, had a good chance of resulting in a communist Europe. Communist parties won sizeable shares of the vote in countries such as Belgium, France, Italy, Czechoslovakia, and Finland and won significant popular support in Asia - in Vietnam, India, and Japan - and throughout Latin America. In addition, they achieved a significant popularity in such nations as China, Greece, and Iran. In northern Iran the USSR created the Republic of Mahabad, the second Kurdish independent state. After the red army left Iran, the Republic was conquered by Iranian forces.

The United Kingdom and the United States were concerned that a political victory by communists in any of these countries could lead to a Soviet takeover similar to those in Eastern Europe. While the Soviet Union acquiesced to Anglo-American efforts to impede Soviet access to the Mediterranean (a perennial focus of British foreign policy since the Crimean War in the 1850s), the Americans increased their anti-communist campaign.

Both East and West regarded Greece as a nation well within the sphere of influence of the United Kingdom. Stalin had respected his agreement with Churchill to not intervene, but Yugoslavia, under Tito, continuously sent arms and supplies during the Greek Civil War to the partisan forces of the Communist Party of Greece, the ELAS (National Popular Liberation Army). Startlingly, the UK had given aid to the royalist Greek forces, and ELAS leaders, failing to realize that there would be no Soviet aid and foolishly having boycotted the elections, were at a disadvantaged position. However by 1947, the near-bankrupt British government could no longer maintain its massive overseas commitments and was forced to receive aid from such nations as New Zealand. In addition to granting India independence and handing back the Palestinian Mandate to the United Nations, the British government decided to withdraw from both Greece and nearby Turkey. This would have left the two nations, in particular Greece, vulnerable to a communist takeover.

Notified that British aid to Greece and Turkey would end in less than six weeks, the US government, already hostile towards and suspicious of Soviet intentions, decided that action was necessary. With Congress solidly in Republican hands and populated by the traditional isolationists, Truman adopted an ideological approach. In a meeting with congressional leaders, the argument of "apples in a barrel infected by one rotten one" was used to convince them of the significance in supporting Greece and Turkey. It was to become the Domino Theory, the justification for containment. On the morning of March 12, 1947, Truman appeared before Congress to ask for $400 million of aid to Greece and Turkey. Calling on congressional approval for the United States to "support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures," or in short a policy of containment, Truman articulated a presentation of the ideological struggle that became known as the Truman Doctrine. Although based on a simplistic analysis of internal strife in Greece and Turkey, it was to be the single dominating influence over US thinking until at least the Vietnam War.

Truman's speech had a tremendous effect. The anti-communist feelings that had just begun to hatch in the US were given a great boost, and a silenced Congress voted overwhelmingly in approval of aid. The United States would not withdraw back to the Western Hemisphere as it had after the First World War. From then on, the US would actively engage any communist threats anywhere in the globe under the ostensible cause of "freedom", "democracy" and "human rights." The US brandished its role as the leader of the "free world." Meanwhile, the Soviet Union brandished its position as the leader of the "progressive" and "anti-imperialist" camp.

In 1947, the Marshal Plan began and was designed to give billions of dollars to assist the recovery of Europe. The Soviets, however, refused to accept any aid in their satellite states. Consequently, the West gained an economic boom while the Eastern living standards remained low.

The Berlin Blockade

Main article: Berlin Blockade

Stalin responded by blocking access to Berlin, which was deep within the Soviet zone although subject to four power control. The Soviets cut off all rail and road routes to West Berlin. No trucks or trains were allowed entry into the city during the Berlin Blockade. Truman embarked on a highly visible move that would humiliate the Soviets internationally: flying supplies in over the blockade during 1948-1949. Military confrontation loomed while Truman flew supplies through East Germany into West Berlin during the 1948-1949 blockade. This costly aerial supplying of West Berlin became known as the Berlin Airlift.

NATO

Main article: North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

Truman joined eleven other nations in 1949 to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), America's first "entangling" European alliance in 170 years. Stalin retaliated against these steps by integrating the economies of Eastern Europe in his version of the Marshall Plan, exploding the first Soviet atomic device in 1949, signing an alliance with People's Republic of China in February 1950, and forming the Warsaw Pact, Eastern Europe's counterpart to NATO.

NSC-68

Main article: NSC-68

US officials quickly moved to escalate and expand "containment." In a secret 1950 document, NSC-68, they proposed to strengthen their alliance systems, quadruple defense spending, and embark on an elaborate propaganda campaign to convince the US public to fight this costly cold war. Truman ordered the development of a hydrogen bomb; and in early 1950 came the first US effort to opposing communist forces in Vietnam, plans to form a West German army, and proposals for a peace treaty with Japan that would guarantee long-term US military bases.

Communist China

Shortly after World War II, an all out war resumed in China between the Communist Party of China led by Mao Zedong and the Nationalist Party of China (Kuomintang) led by Chiang Kai-shek. While the Soviet Union provided limited aid to the Communists, the United States assisted the Nationalists with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of military supplies and generous loans of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of military equipment. However, the demoralized and undisciplined Nationalist troops proved no match for the communist People's Liberation Army, which had gained the support of the peasantry. Although the Nationalists had an advantage in numbers of men and weapons, initially controlled a much larger territory and population than their adversaries, and enjoyed considerable international support, they were exhausted by the long war with Japan and the attendant internal responsibilities. In addition, the Chinese Communists were able to fill the political vacuum left in Manchuria after Soviet forces withdrew from the area and thus gained China's prime industrial base. The Chinese Communists were able to fight their way from the North and Northeast and virtually all of mainland China was taken by the end of 1949. On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic of China. Chiang Kai-shek and 600,000 Nationalist troops and 2 million refugees, predominantly from the government and business community, fled from the mainland to the island of Taiwan. In December 1949 Chiang proclaimed Taipei the temporary capital of the Republic of China and continued to assert his government as the sole legitimate authority in China.

The continued hostility between the Communists on the mainland and the Nationalists on Taiwan would continue throughout the Cold War. Though the United States refused to aide Chiang Kai-shek in his hope to "recover the mainland," it continued supporting the Republic of China with military supplies and expertise to prevent Taiwan from falling into Communist hands. Through the support of the Western bloc (most Western countries continued to recognize the ROC as the sole legitimate government of China), the Republic of China on Taiwan retained China's seat in the United Nations until 1971.

The Korean War

For details see the main article Korean War.

In early 1950 came the first US commitment to form a peace treaty with Japan that would guarantee long-term US military bases. Some observers (including George Kennan) believed that the Japanese treaty led Stalin to approve a plan to invade US-supported South Korea on June 25, 1950. Korea had been divided at the end of World War II along the 38th parallel into Soviet (Northern) and American (Southern) occupation zones, in which a communist government was installed in the North by the Soviets and a capitalist government in the South came to power after UN-supervised elections in 1948. Fearing that a united communist Korea could neutralize US power in Japan and encourage communist movements world-wide, Truman committed US forces and obtained help from the United Nations to drive back the North Koreans, to Stalin's surprise. In a historic diplomatic blunder, the Soviets boycotted the UN Security Council, and thus its power to veto Truman's action in the UN, because the UN would not admit the People's Republic of China and continued to recognize the Republic of China on Taiwan as the sole legitimate Chinese government.

However, Truman would offset this with his own monumental, historic error: allowing his forces to go to the Chinese-Korean border. Communist China responded with massive attack in November 1950 that decimated US-led forces as well as their own. Fighting stabilized along the 38th parallel, which had separated the Koreas, but Truman now faced a hostile China, a Sino-Soviet partnership, and a bloated defense budget that quadrupled in eighteen months.

continued...

External links

• Draft, Report on Communist Expansion, February 28, 1947

References

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);
• Gaddis, John Lewis. The Cold War: A New History (2005), most important recent overview
• 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)
• 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)
• 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.

• 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)

Significant Documents

• Potsdam Declaration: July 26, 1945. A formal statement issued by Harry S. Truman (US), Winston Churchill (United Kingdom), and Chiang Kai-Shek (China) which outlined the terms for a Japanese surrender.
• Baruch Plan: 1946. A proposal by the US to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission (UNAEC) to a) extend between all nations the exchange of basic scientific information for peaceful ends; b) implement control of atomic energy to the extent necessary to ensure its use only for peaceful purposes; c) eliminate from national armaments atomic weapons and all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction; and d) establish effective safeguards by way of inspection and other means to protect complying States against the hazards of violations and evasions. When the Soviet Union was the only member State who refused to sign, the US embarked on a massive nuclear weapons testing, development, and deployment program.
• George F. Kennan: 1946/1947. The Long Telegram and The X Article, formally titled "The Sources of Soviet Conduct. The article describes the concepts that would become the bedrock of American Cold War policy and was published in Foreign Affairs in 1947. The article was an expansion of a well-circulated top secret State Department cable called the X Article and became famous for setting forth the doctrine of containment. Though the article was signed pseudonymously by "X," it was well known at the time that the true author was Kennan, the deputy chief of mission of the United States to the Soviet Union from 1944 to 1946, under ambassador W. Averell Harriman.
• Paul Nitze April 14, 1950: NSC-68 was a classified report written by and issued by the United States National Security Council. The report outlined the National Security Strategy of the United States for that time and provided a comprehensive analysis of the capabilities of the Soviet Union and of the United States of America from military, economic, political, and psychological standpoints. NSC-68's principal thesis was that the Soviet Union intended to become the single dominant world power. The report argued that the Soviet Union had a systematic strategy aimed at the spread of Communism across the entire world, and it recommended that the United States government adopt a policy of containment to stop the further spread of Communism. NSC-68 outlined a drastic foreign policy shift from defensive to active containment and advocated aggressive military preparedness. NSC-68 would shape government actions in the Cold War for the next 20 years and has subsequently been labeled the "blueprint" for the Cold War.