The US and the World History since 1945

The description of the cold war, an ideological conflict between Communist and non-Communist countries, started after World War II when the Allies (United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union) disagreed over how to govern occupied Germany.

Рубрика История и исторические личности
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The US and the World History since 1945

Marina Cuzmin

ID U094N0455

Introduction

The Cold War is the name given to event in international politics during 1945-1989, which characterized the relationship that developed primarily between the USA and the USSR after World War Two. But still historians can not reach any agreement on the time in which the Cold War began. I think that the Cold War begins since1947 when President Truman of the United States declared an anti-communist policy. The most important outcome of the Second World War was the emerge of two superpowers - The United States and the Soviet Union. Basically, the Cold War was a rivalry between the United States as leader of the western democracies, and the Soviet Union and the nations that were controlled by the communists. The Cold War also can be characterized as forty-five years of over-all high-level tension and competition between the superpowers but with no direct military conflict. The military force never clashed directly, the superpowers expressed the conflict through military coalitions, strategic conventional force deployments, extensive aid to states deemed vulnerable, espionage, propaganda, conventional and nuclear arms races, appeals to neutral nations, proxy wars, such as in Korea and Vietnam, rivalry at sports events, and technological competitions such as the Space Race. The Cold War have periods of relative calm and of international high tension - the Berlin Blockade (1948-1949), the Korean War (1950-1953), the Berlin Crisis of 1961, the Vietnam War (1959-1975), the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), the Soviet war in Afghanistan (1979-1989) and others. The cold war, an ideological conflict between Communist and non-Communist countries, started after World War II (1939-45) when the Allies (United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union) disagreed over how to govern occupied Germany. Although the Soviet Union and the Western Allies were supposed to rule Germany jointly, the arrangement was beset by the spread of communism. During the war Soviet leaders had joined the United States and Western European countries to fight the Germans, but the Soviets supported communism, a political and economic system that they believed had to combat and overtake capitalism, which was practiced elsewhere in the Western world. By 1947 the United States had formulated policy to prevent the Soviet Union from exporting communism to other country.

The reasons why the Cold War started:

1) Ideological:

The Soviet Union was a Communist country, which was ruled by a dictator and put the needs of the state ahead of personal human rights. The USA was a capitalist democracy which valued freedom and feared Communism

2) Economic:

Britain and the USA wanted to protect democracy, and help Germany to recover. They were worried that large areas of Eastern Europe were falling under Soviet control.

3) Political:

Extension of Russian influence in Europe: Even before the end of the war, the Soviet Union had gradually extended her influence in Europe. By the fall of 1944, the Red Army had liberated and controlled a large part of Eastern Europe. By 1945, at the Yalta Conference, the Soviet Union obtained the Curzon Line as her new boundary line with Poland and also the control of the eastern zone of Germany.

But still historians haven't decided who was to be blamed for the Cold War. Russian historians blamed Truman and Churchill. Thought that Truman and Churchill wanted the collapse of USSR.

The Traditional View

Western writers blamed Russia-Stalin was trying to build up a Soviet empire.

The Revisionist View

Some western historians blamed America-Truman had not understood how much Russia had suffered in the Second World War.

The Post-Revisionists

Historians think BOTH sides were to blame.

Most recently, historians agree that the Cold War was primarily an ideological confrontation.

The Yalta and Potsdam Conferences

Even at the Yalta Conference of February 1945 there were signs of conflict. It was clear that Hitler will be defeated so the allies set a meeting to decide how Europe will be organized after the war. So they decided to divide Germany into four 'zones', occupied by Britain, France, the USA and the USSR. But there were two important things to decide, first the kind of governments that would be set up in Eastern Europe, particularly Poland and the second source of conflict - reparations - was postponed by agreeing to set up a commission to look into the matter. When the three met at Potsdam in July 1945, Hitler had been defeated. Roosevelt (who had liked Stalin) had died and been replaced as US President by Truman, who was aggressively anti-Communist. Stalin had recently ordered the non-communist leaders in Poland arrested. So at Potsdam, the tensions below the surface at Yalta - about Eastern Europe and reparations - came out into open disagreement. The Protocols agreed at Potsdam merely repeated the agreements at Yalta, except that Russia was allowed to take reparations from the Soviet Zone, and also 10% of the industrial equipment of the western zones as reparations. But the USA began to realize that it did not want a weakened Germany in Central Europe, a perfect breeding ground for communism. Truman wanted to rebuild Germany, while Stalin wanted to weaken it further by taking equipment and materials as reparations. The pattern for future conflict between the USA and the USSR had begun.

Communism spread

After the Second World War the Red Soviet's Army had conquered most of central Europe, and installed local Communists to run governments in the countries the Red Army occupied. In 1949, Mao Zedong's Chinese Communist Party completed the conquest of the mainland of China, and established the People's Republic of China. Mao had survived a long civil war against the Chinese Nationalist government, and the three-cornered war between the Communists, Nationalists, and Japanese, all without significant Soviet support. As a result, Mao did not feel compelled to follow the dictates of the Comintern, and would occasionally criticize Soviet foreign policy, and "Red" China began to follow a foreign policy which occasionally put it in conflict with the Soviet Union.

To counter-rest the NATO, the Warsaw pact was established by socialist countries in may 14 1955, Hungary, Albania, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland and the Soviet Union were the founding members. They pledge to defend each other if one member was attacked. This divided the capitalist and the west in a dangerous situation that if one country attacked the other in result, they would create a 3rd world war (with the use of nuclear weapons) Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia formed the so called Eastern/Communist Bloc, or the space "behind the Iron Curtain" in Europe. Albania and Yugoslavia refused to be under the dictatorship of the Soviet Union and were established as separate from the Comintern communist countries. But still Communism quickly spread in many poorly developed countries such as North Korea, Cuba, and Vietnam.

The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan

cold war ideological conflict

The Truman Doctrine was beginning to be formulated in 1946, when George Kennan, US ambassador in Moscow, wrote a 'long telegram' claiming that Soviet power was growing, and that the US should follow a policy of 'containment' to stop Russian tactics. President Truman introduced an idea that if America let one country fall to Communism, all the countries round about would follow. Also he said that the Cold War was a choice between freedom and oppression. So Americans had to take a decision to get involved in European affairs: 'I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. 'In this way Truman did not try to destroy the USSR, but he wanted to stop its territory growing. This was called the 'Truman Doctrine'. This Doctrine led directly to Marshall Plan.

After the Second World War Europe was lying in ruins. European countries had to re-build its cities, economy and to manage with unemployment. So Europe needed financially support. This support came in face of the Marshall Plan. The European Recovery Program started with the United States invited all European countries to put forward plans for economic reconstruction so that the United States would provide the necessary financial aid to them. The Soviet Union refused to accept the American financial aid and in October 1947, Stalin set up Cominform. Every Communist party in Europe had to join it and this allowed Stalin to have the control of the Communists in Europe.

The European Recovery Program had positive effect on Europe: from 1948 to 1952 there were a time of massive economic growth. It also stopped the spread of Communism. With the proclamation of the Truman Doctrine of March 1947 and the launching of the Marshall Plan, the United States was clearly leading the western nations to resist Russian Communist expansionist activities in Europe.

Berlin Blockade, 1948-49

The hostile relations between the Soviet Union and the United States before 1948 had made the Berlin crisis, inevitable. In 1946 the Americans and British had united their occupations zones into Bizone for economical reasons. In 1947 they decided that all the western zones were to receive Marshal Aid. The Americans and the British also intended to cut down the German reparations, expand the German industries and restore the German industrial production to the pre-war level.

This action were seen by Stalin as a direct attack. By contrast to these actions the Soviet Union had been stripping the factories of East Germany of machinery to take as reparations. Stalin decided to squeeze the western powers out of Berlin, because he saw them violating the Potsdam agreements in their zones so he thought to do in his zone the same. Berlin was divided in 4 occupation zones and still was administrated by these four occupying powers: the USSR, USA, France and Britain. The SU stopped to visit regular meetings of the Allied Control Council in Berlin and on 1 April Soviet troops stopped the western trains on their way to Berlin just inside the Soviet zone. This was a form of a limited blockade.

But the Western powers still continued with theirs plan of creating a new West German state by uniting the three occupied zones together. This step would conclude the division of Germany. Soon a new currency of West Germany the Deutschmark will be introduced to the SU and will lead to immediate conflict and further to a blockade. The Soviets reply to this was theirs own currency reform and declared that it applied to whole of Berlin. Because the western currency commanded the public confidence more than eastern currency on 24 June the Soviet occupation forces halted all rail road and water traffic between the three zones and Berlin. This how the Berlin crises begun. There was no access to Berlin only by air corridors. For 318 days, the Americans supplied West Berlin by air. On 12 May 1949, Stalin admitted defeat and reopened the borders. But the contest went on for ten and a half moths and ended suddenly with the Stalin's death without achieving of any of his likely objectives. When Stalin died in 1953 there was a thaw in relations between the superpowers, but when West Germany joined NATO in 1955, Soviet fears were revived and reply to this was the creation of the Warsaw Pact of 1955 - military alliance of all the communist Eastern European countries which were controlled by the Soviet Union.

Europe was now divided economically, politically and militarily into two armed gangs of hostile opponents.

The Korean War

The Korean War is another conflict between two superpowers but still avoiding direct armed conflict. It seems that the Cold War arena moved from Europe to Asia. Japan had occupied Korea since 1910-1945 and by the end of the war Korea should be independent. Soviet forces came to Korea in the North and American forces in the south replaced Japanese soldiers. The Americans and the Soviets had agreed to divide Korea in a similar manner as Germany. Northern Korea became a communist satellite state under the control of Kim Sung, in the south a capitalist state was set up under Syngman Rhee. Both Kim and Rhee were intense Korean nationalists, anxious to unite the country and ready to use a force if an opportunity will be offered. In 19948 the Republic of Korea was set up in the south with Syngman Rhee as a president and in the same month the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was created in the North. The Soviet troops withdraw from South Korea and after some months American's forces left North Korea. The two Koreas then confronted one another and got ready for using military force to unite the country. So in 1949, Kim Sung approached Stalin and Mao Zedong and persuaded them to allow him to attack South Korea. When Syngman Rhee boasted that he would attack North Korea, but the North Koreans attacked first in 25 of June in 1950. They easily defeated the South Korean army and by September 1950 had conquered all South Korea apart from a small area around Pusan in the south. American foreign policy had changed and become more aggressive. In 1953, Eisenhower came to power and by intimidating China to make atomic attack brought the war to the end. Communism had been prevented in South Korea. An armistice was finally signed on 27 July 1953 at the village of Panmunjom. Korea remained divided along a line not far removed from of 38th Parallel. However, the war also revealed that China was no longer weak and was prepared to stand up to the West.

Khrushev. De-Stalinization and the Hungarian rising, 1956

When Stalin died in 1953 a struggle for power ensued almost immediately following his the death. Khrushchev finally became premier in 1958 and remained the Party leader, giving him almost total control over the nation. Khrushchev on 25 February 1956 he shocked the world by declaring on the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union that he wanted to destalinize the communist bloc, because Stalin had been a murderer and a tyrant. Khrushchev launched an astonishing attack on the untouchable figure of Stalin by criticizing his policy and `cult of personality'. Statues of Stalin were pulled down, cities, towns and streets were renamed, the secret police became less active and more consumer goods were produced. This policy was known as destalinization. Also Khrushchev spoke about repairing relations with Yugoslavia, and of the possibility of `different road of socialism'; moreover he put a new emphasis on the concept of `peaceful co-existence', which had long been used in soviet's foreign policy. Khrushchev wanted also to reduce the Cold War tension between the superpowers this process was known as the "thaw".

The possibility of `different roads to socialism' soon had consequences in Poland and Hungary. The communist satellite states of Eastern Europe expected that they too would benefit from destalinization and the thaw. This was a mistake. Khrushchev could not allow the Eastern European states to go through a similar process of destalinization; he sought to reassure the Party Congress that criticism of Stalin did not mean an attack on the system. He believed that these countries might break away from the USSR and it would lose its barrier against the capitalist West. Uprisings against the USSR had broken out in East Germany in 1953 and in Poland in 1956; these had been put down cruelly.

In 1956 the people of Hungary also tried to break free from Soviet control. There were riots in Poland in 1956, because the Polish Communist Party announced that it was going to follow its own road to socialism. So Khrushchev had to send in Russian troops to help the Polish government put them down but no military action was took. Khrushchev and Poles find a compromise whish avoided the use of force. An agreement was signed where Gomulka remained as Polish General Secretary and should maintain socialism and Polish membership of the Warsaw Pact and Poland should not become neutral.

Worse was to follow in Hungary. In 1956 demonstrations and protests in Budapest which wanted the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary and this led to the election of Imre Nagy as Prime Minister. From 29 October to 3 November 1956, the new government brought in democracy, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion. The Hungarians were encouraged by words of support from America and On 31 October Nagy requested the United Nations to recognize Hungary new status as a neutral state. Finally, Nagy announced that Hungary was going to leave the Warsaw Pact. Khrushchev could not allow this to happen, because this could lead to break-up of the whole Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe. The USSR invaded Hungary in November 1956 and re-established Soviet rule. 25 000 Hungarians and 7000 soviet troops were killed. Western Europe was horrified, and western leaders became even more determined to stop Communism.

In 1953 Ike Eisenhower became President of America. He brought the Korean War to an end by threatening to use the atomic bomb if China did not stop fighting. Everyone hoped that these two men Khrushev and Eisenhower could give an end of the Cold War, but in fact, it got worse. The SU began an `arms race' and a `space race' with America. In 1953 Russia develops the hydrogen bomb, in 1957 launches Sputnik, the first satellite, and in 1961 Yuri Gagarin became the first astronaut to orbit the earth. The USA becomes more aggressive too. So the USA joined the `arms race' with the SU and in 1955, NATO set up a West German Army of million men. The Americans used U2 planes to spy on Russia.

As a result, 1955-1963 was the time of Greatest tension in the Cold War.

Cuban missile crises

In 1898 Cuba becoming independent from Spain, but Cuba had remained very much under the influence of the United States and economic domination of its exports. In 1959, the Communist leader Fidel Castro took power in Cuba. He was anti-American and that's why preferred communism rather than pro-American regime. The Americans deliberately sought to push the Castro regime into closer relations with the USSR. Since Cuba was only 100 miles away from Florida, this was as much a problem for them as West Berlin was for the Russians. While Cuba, by the end of 1960, was a part of the Soviet camp and was receiving military assistance, Americans tried to find a way to overthrow Castro out of the government to prevent the consolidation of a socialist regime. In 1961, the Americans elected a new President, John F Kennedy, who promised to get tough on Communism. This led to the most serious event of the Cold War occurred in 1962. The Cuban Missile Crisis brought the USA and the USSR to the brink of nuclear war. The crisis was over the deployment of Soviet missiles on Cuba, a very near neighbor of the USA.

That was done as a reaction to the Bay of Pigs in April 1961.The attack was a disaster for USA and failed dismally. American aircrafts with Cuban marking made bombing attack on Cuban airfields, but didn't find any rebellion support. Many of the invaders were taken prisoner. The fiasco convinced Castro that the USA was enemy; he now turned to the USSR for protection. The Cuban missile crisis began on October 15, 1962 and ended 13 days later. The incident was that American U-2 spy planes fly over Cuba and brought back photographs revealing that sites for medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles were under construction. Khrushchev states that it was done for the Americans feel the same threat as the Russians with the Jupiter missiles in Turkey. Castro says that it was done to create solidarity between communist countries. Other theories state that it was done to test Kennedy. Because Khrushchev buoyed up the success in space and the Caribbean thought that Kennedy is a weak president.

But American president showed the opposite. On 22nd October Kennedy announced a 500-mile naval blockade of Cuba to prevent nuclear missiles being delivered. Khrushchev was not prepared to go to war, but he did not want to back down either. During the next few days a U2 plane was shot down over Cuba and a Soviet cargo ship was boarded. The world held its breath. During the night of 25-26 October Khrushchev thought the idea that the Americans should remove their missiles from Turkey to balance the withdrawal of the Soviets' missiles from Cuba. Also the two sides agreed in private that the United States will not invade Cuba if the missiles will be removed. On 28th October the USSR agreed to remove its missiles from Cuba; in return the USA ended its blockade on 20th November. Americans made a blockade to keep out 25 ships bringing missiles, they demanded the dismantling of the missiles sites and the ones established at a brink of war. With this, both sides realized how easy a nuclear war could have been established. Although no shots were fired, it nearly caused a 1st nuclear world war.

Conclusion

The early stage in the Cold War was characterized by confrontation of two ideologies: communism and capitalism. The two superpowers tried to avoid direct conflict but still were getting in dangerous situation that could led to a Third World War, the conflicts were unsafe in many parts of the world such as the Korean War and Vietnam War the resulted of which was the death of thousands of people. This led to more dangerous event such as the Cuban missile Crisis of 1962 which was the peak point of the confrontation as it nearly activates a nuclear war and was evaded by very little. Both the USA and the USSR realized that they had a narrow escape. Relations between the two sides had to improve. In 1963 a Test Ban Treaty was signed, banning the testing of nuclear weapons in the air or under water. A much greater spirit of co-operation existed between the superpowers after the Cuban Missile Crisis, although there were a number of setbacks e.g. the Prague Spring of 1968. In Europe western countries enjoyed political stability and status quo. But in such eastern countries as Hungary, Poland and East Germany were not content with status quo but still attained a degree of stability. In the 1970s the period of a thaw between the SU and the USA was called as Detente. Relations worsened after the USSR's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, but in 1989 communism collapsed in Eastern Europe and in Russia in 1991. Since then relations between the USA and Russia have improved, although a clear pattern has yet to emerge.

Bibliography

1. Washington, D.C. May 1993. Working Paper N.6. Khrushchev and the Berlin Crisis (1958-1962). Vladislav M. Zubok

2.

http://www.funfront.net/hist/europe/coldwar.htm#The%20Berlin%20Crisis%20-%20the%20Climax%20of%20the%20Conflict%20between%20the%20East%20and%20the%20West%20in%20Europe , web-site "Cold War 1945-1960"

3. The Global Spread of Communism. David Allan Rivera

4. The Marshall Plan. America, Britain, and the reconstruction of Western Europe, 1947-1952. Michael J. Hogan. 14-16 p.

5. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/COLDhungarianU.htm

6. http://www.russianlife.com/article.cfm?Number=174

7. http://www.marxists.org/history/cuba/subject/missile-crisis/ch02.htm

8. The world since 1945. An international history. P.M.H. Bell

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