The Cold War

John Lewis Gaddis

Chapter 1: The Return of Fear

The United States had been born out of struggle against tyranny, and had embraced a
sociopolitical ideology that constrained power and held individual liberty as its highest virtue.
The Soviet Union had been founded to unite the working classes under a highly centralized
government to overthrow the exploitative capitalists.
Both the U.S. and USSR believed that their ideologies were supreme and would spread to all
corners of the Earth in due time.
Karl Marx (in The Communist Manifesto) had theorized that capitalism would, by its nature,
cause the world’s working classes to grow in size and resentment until they inevitably rebelled
against their masters and seized control of the planet. However, Marx believed that capitalism
was a necessary, if cruel, phase that all societies had to go through to build up the state’s
technology and infrastructure to a level that would allow a peasant takeover.
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin wanted the Communist revolution to happen sooner rather than later to
end the suffering of the masses. Hence, he and his comrades seized control of Russia, which
would serve as a base from which Communism would radiate across the world. But in reality,
Russia was not ideally suited for sustaining a Communist system because it was technologically
and industrially underdeveloped and remained a primarily agrarian society.
Stalin attempted to correct this through massive socioeconomic reorganization programs in
which factories were built and agriculture modernized.
The USSR suffered 90 times as many deaths in WWII as the U.S.
For the West, things still looked uncertain in late 1945:
-No one knew if the Great Depression would return
-Americans remained reluctant to take a permanent role in European or world affairs and many
just wanted to bring their troops home
-Though fascism had been crushed, totalitarianism remained strong, best exemplified by the
USSR.
-The Red Army was massive and couldn’t be withdrawn from Europe since the USSR was part
of Europe.
-The USSR had managed to provide full employment during the prewar years—a feat that had
obviously eluded the Depression-racked Western nations: It was still unclear whether
Communism or Capitalism was the superior economic system.
-Marxism enjoyed strong support in Europe; in large part due to the contributions Communist
partisans had made fighting the Nazis.
Stalin’s small stature and (5’ 4”) and unpretentious demeanor hid a deeply psychopathic and
highly intelligent mind. By 1945, he had long since eliminated all of his rivals within the USSR
and was firmly in control.
While Communist doctrine stressed the unity of all Communists worldwide, Stalin was
concerned with his own power above all else and saw foreign Communist movements as helpful,
yet distant in importance behind the Soviet Union’s interests.
Stalin and the Soviet people had the shared mentality that they were owed disproportionate
postwar concessions to compensate for their disproportionate wartime contributions. The Soviets
wanted to absorb Finland, the Baltic States, Poland, and Romania into the USSR. They also

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wanted a strong “sphere of influence” among the ring of states bordering this. Furthermore, they
wanted territorial concessions from Turkey and Iran that would give them access to warm water
ports, among other things.
However, Stalin did not want a new war to secure these gains and wasn’t sure that the Soviet
Union could withstand such an operation anyway. He therefore needed to cooperation of the
West to secure these gains and therefore focused on diplomacy following WWII to get his ends.
The USSR also needed American loans to rebuild itself.
Stalin’s assessments of probable postwar Western intentions were clouded by his negative
misjudgments of the Capitalist mindset. Communist doctrine held that Capitalists were greedy,
self-centered, and unable to cooperate for long. Communists, therefore, needed only to patiently
wait for the right moment to overpower their divided enemies. History had even given this theory
some vindication: WWI had been a war between Capitalists, and had given rise to the USSR.
The Capitalists had pursued self-serving economic policies to try and solve the Great Depression
instead of working together, and Nazi Germany rose as a result.
Communism also posited that Capitalism was an inherently unstable system that needed to
constantly expand its reach to find new markets to purchase its excess production (hence
colonialism). Stalin believed that the Great Depression would resume following WWII, and that
the Americans would give him loans in a selfish effort to open a new market.
Stalin also believed that the Western powers would begin quarreling with each other soon,
leaving them divided and ripe for internal Communist revolution.
However, Stalin failed to appreciate the evolving postwar objectives of the U.S.
The U.S. had historically championed liberal democracy while remaining isolationist. President
Wilson attempted to change this relationship after WWI with the League of Nations and its
mandate for greater world governance and justice, but the idea was too far ahead of its time.
Roosevelt had several strategic wartime objectives:
-Keep the Allied Powers unified at least until the end of the fighting
-Get the Allies to agree to a postwar order that balanced power in a way designed to preserve
world security. Roosevelt imagined a collective security organization that would punish nations
for acts of aggression and an international economic system that would coordinate national
policies to prevent another Depression.
The British simply aimed to survive WWII at all costs. They accepted that this would mean
subservience to the U.S., as America was Britain’s key to salvation. Further, they accepted that
this relationship would need to continue after the war. They had no interest in starting a rivalry
with the Americans as Stalin assumed they would.
The seeds of the Cold War were sown during WWII as the Allies failed to reconcile serious
disagreements:
-The Second Front
Early on in the war, Britain and later the U.S. were afraid that the USSR might cut a deal with
the Nazis, which would have left virtually all of continental Europe under the control of hostile
authoritarianism. The Western Allies thus found it in their interest to keep the Soviets supplied
with enough equipment to keep fighting and avoid being forced to sue for peace. The Anglo-
Americans also had to satisfy the Soviets with various concessions, for instance agreeing to not
challenge their eventual re-annexation of lost Soviet republics or territories gained through the
Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. The Anglo-Americans also agreed to open a second front against the
Nazis to relieve pressure on the Russians, though the Russians seethed at the seemingly
insufficient and delayed efforts at such. The Allies also recognized the basic importance of

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liberating European territories with their own forces since it would ensure them a postwar
military presence. The Russians had already made it clear that the Western Allies would have no
role in administering Eastern European countries. As the war drew to a close, Stalin became
paranoid that the West would settle a truce with the Nazis that would allow Germany to continue
fighting against the USSR.
-Spheres of influence
Roosevelt wanted the nations of Europe to determine their own destinies after the war, which
meant that Stalin would have to allow them to hold elections. Stalin acquiesced, but had no
intention of honoring his promises. Instead, he wanted to create pro-Soviet satellite regimes that
would form a Soviet sphere of influence. Russo-Polish animosity was especially bad because of
the Soviet invasion in 1939, the Katyn Wood massacre, the failure of the Red Army to support
the 1944 Warsaw uprising, and the Soviet-mandated postwar shifting of Poland’s borders. There,
Stalin had to impose a friendly government.
-Defeated enemies
The Soviets felt cheated by the Anglo-Americans, who only started fighting in continental
Europe at the eleventh hour, yet who made large territorial gains. Nowhere was this most
apparent in Germany, where the Allies took the majority of the country’s land along with its most
industry- and resource rich areas. The Soviets ran East Germany in a brutal manner and indulged
in the mass rape of 2 million German women by 1947. East Germans quickly grew to hate their
own government by association. The U.S. refused to allow the Soviets to occupy part of postwar
Japan in light of the USSR’s actions in Germany.
-The atom bomb
The advent of nuclear weapons skewed the balance of military power in favor of the U.S., which
made Stalin more paranoid and committed to hardline politics so as not to appear intimidated.
[End]
The Western powers were willing to allow the Soviet Union to continue to exist, but wanted self-
determination among nations and international cooperation as means to avert another World War.
Stalin, on the other hand, wanted eventual Communist domination of the globe, and felt that
infighting among Capitalist nations would be an inevitable part of that.
A series of crises immediately following WWII initiated the Cold War:
-Iran, Turkey, the Mediterranean—and containment
Stalin demanded favorable adjustments to Turkey’s border with the USSR, control of the Turkish
straits, control over some ex-Italian Mediterranean colonial ports, and refused to pull its troops
out of northern Iran where they had jointly occupied the country with the British. The West
refused all of Stalin’s demands and took the Iran issue to the UN Security Council. American
naval forces were also deployed offshore of Iran. Stalin backed down, and it was clear that he
had reached the limits of what his demands alone could accomplish. Moscow Foreign Service
officer George Kennan authored a seminal letter in 1946 that found aggression and expansion to
be characteristic of the Soviets, and called for an American response of containment.
-The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan
In 1947, the U.S. took over direct military and economic assistance to Greece and Turkey as the
British could no longer afford it. Truman announced that this would begin a policy of active U.S.
assistance to countries that were facing [Communist] insurrection, since violence undermined the
ability to pursue self-determination. Secretary of State George C. Marshall also developed the
Marshall Plan that same year, which offered American reconstruction aid to all of the countries
of Europe as a way to keep them from succumbing to indigenous Communism thanks to hunger

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and poverty, and as a way to give the U.S. moral authority over the USSR. Stalin forbade the
leaders of the ostensibly “free” eastern European nations from meeting Marshall to work out aid
arrangements.
-Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and the Berlin Blockade
In September 1947, Stalin formed Cominform, which was an organization meant to enforce
Communist orthodoxy in eastern Europe: In reality, it ensured allegiance to Moscow and to the
USSR’s interpretation of Marxism. In 1948, Stalin had Czech communists forcefully subvert
their government, which was the only remaining democracy in eastern Europe. In Yugoslavia,
Marshall Tito ran a Communist government that was wildly popular and that had purely
indigenous roots. He resented Russian intervention in his affairs and openly broke with the
Soviets in 1948. He was soon receiving American economic assistance. Stalin also instituted the
Berlin Blockade in 1948 to try and strangle West Berlin (which was rebuilding much faster than
the eastern part of the city) and maybe force the Western powers out. But the West was able to
ship in supplies by air, and this operation gained the admiration and trust of the Germans.
Overall, Stalin’s actions badly backfired: The events in Czechoslovakia persuaded European
countries that they needed a collective security network to protect against Soviet aggression, and
NATO was formed. Tito showed that Communism without Soviet domination was possible. The
failed Berlin Blockade made Stalin look brutal and incompetent.
However, during the same period, a number of apparent setbacks to the West occurred:
-The Marshall Plan and America’s entire postwar European doctrine rested on the assumption
that nuclear weapons would deter the Soviets, obviate the need for an American conventional
forces buildup, and allow a focus on reconstruction. The Soviet detonation of a fission bomb in
1949 happened years ahead of schedule and shattered American weapons supremacy. An arms
race thus ensued: the U.S. had to increase conventional forces in Europe, build more fission
bombs, and build an even more powerful fusion bomb to keep the lead.
In 1949
-Mao Zedong won the Chinese civil war in 1949, and the Nationalists fled to Taiwan. Neither
Stalin nor Truman had anticipated such a victory so soon. Mao failed to realize that the
Americans had given up on Chiang Kai-shek long ago and were willing to deal with Communist
China so long as it followed a nonaligned path like Yugoslavia. Mao instead feared a U.S.
invasion of his country (impossible given America’s weakened military, commitments in Europe,
and domestic attitudes) and closely allied himself with Stalin for protection and out of
ideological admiration (Mao was a pure Marxist-Leninist). In late 1949, Stalin and Mao
concluded a mutual self-defense treaty and, to the fears of the West, agreed to work together to
spread Communism in their different regions of the world.
-At exactly the same time, several high-profile cases of Communist espionage became public in
America, and Senator Eugene McCarthy began his crusade.
The Korean War
-U.S. and Soviet troops simultaneously moved into the Korean peninsula from opposite ends
during the closing weeks of WWII. The two superpowers agreed to divide the country at the 38th
parallel and both honored promises to pull their own forces out by 1949. Both installed puppet
governments that claimed the right to rule the entire peninsula and that threatened each other
with forceful reunification.
-The leaders of North and South Korea were Kim Il-sung and Syngman Rhee, respectively.
-Both pressed their superpower patrons to give them the necessary support to conquer the other,
and both were repeatedly turned down out of fear of starting an unnecessary and expanding war

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until 1950, when Stalin became emboldened and convinced that America would not support
South Korea in a war.
*The U.S. had done nothing to stop the Chinese Nationalists from losing the year before.
*A recently announced American “defensive perimeter” in East Asia conspicuously excluded
South Korea.
*Stalin realized that proxies could be used to fight the Capitalist states without directly
endangering the USSR.
-The U.S. response to the invasion was swift and was heavily influenced by the fact that exactly
this type of naked aggression had led to WWII.
-Moscow had not anticipated fast deployment of the American army in Japan to Korea and had
forgotten that its own ambassador to the UN was absent in protest over the refusal to admit
Communist China as a member. A Security Council resolution for action was thus easily
approved.
The end of WWII did not bring security to anyone and in fact merely recast the old players as
new enemies.

Chapter 2: Deathboats and lifeboats

Some called for the use of nuclear weapons in Korea to halt the Chinese advance, but Truman
rejected the idea because it risked widening the conflict and subjecting American allies to Soviet
nuclear counterattack.
Nuclear weapons changed the whole concept of war since a nuclear exchange could destroy
entire states, leaving a horrendously damaged victor or no victor at all. Even without nuclear
weapons, the World Wars had clearly shown that modern technology was making warfare
increasingly destructive.
Truman realized that nuclear weapons were radically different from past weapons in their effects
and ramifications, so he did not allow the military to have unfettered control over their use: Only
the President would be able to authorize a nuclear attack.
Truman erred in keeping nuclear planning and doctrine out of the hands of the generals for so
long—this interfered with the ability to create a cohesive, rational, credible nuclear strategy to
deter the Soviets.
The Soviet nuclear program put greater strain on the USSR than the Manhattan Project did on the
U.S. The Soviets routinely used forced labor and disregarded health and environmental standards
to make progress.
Even though the U.S. had 300+ nukes in 1951 and Russia only had 5 at best, there were
numerous reasons why we didn’t nuke Chinese forces in Korea:
-The Chinese armies were spread out in the wilderness and weren’t concentrated anywhere.
Nuclear blasts would therefore have had disappointing tactical effects.
-Bombing Chinese cities would have had a bigger impact on Mao, but the political costs would
have been severe, and the USSR might have been provoked into entering the fighting. If a U.S.-
Soviet war broke out over Korea, Europe would probably also become a battleground. Western
Europe knew this and protested against possible escalation in Korea.
-By spring of 1951, the Chinese had outrun their supply lines and were being driven back by
improved UN tactics.
Stalin was willing to concede all of Korea to America rather than get involved.

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Both the U.S. and USSR covered up the presence of Soviet fighter pilots over Korea, who battled
against American planes.
The hydrogen bomb was projected to be so powerful that military planners could not conceive of
a practical use for it. Truman only authorized its construction because he feared the Soviets
would get it first.
The Soviets had actually started their H-bomb development before the Americans and relied on
their own talents instead of espionage. The first American and Soviet H-bomb tests occurred in
1952 and 1953, respectively.
In early 1953, Truman left office and Stalin died. New leaders took over the reins of power.
Eisenhower viewed nuclear weapons differently than Truman, and he stated that he had no
qualms using them in war, even against weak adversaries like the North Koreans in distant
corners of the globe. He wanted credible nuclear attack to be a cornerstone of U.S. deterrence.
However, the 1954 American BRAVO test exploded a 15-megaton H-bomb that produced a huge
amount of fallout that was detected around the world. It gave analysts an appreciation of the
global effects of nuclear weapons, and forced them to consider the consequences of an all-out
exchange of said weapons. Leaders began to realize that nuclear weapons could bring about the
end of humanity, and therefore couldn’t be used.
Stalin was replaced by Nikita Khrushchev. Like Eisenhower, Khrushchev was a lifelong military
man who had seen combat and been of high rank during WWII. Both understood the horrors of
war better than their advisors and developed an instinctive aversion to using nuclear weapons.
After BRAVO, Eisenhower came to understand that nuclear war would mean the end of human
life. However, he also understood that nuclear weapons could deter the USSR, so he designed the
American nuclear arsenal around a doctrine of massive, non-gradated use. The Communists,
whom we believed to be superior in conventional military terms, would overrun Western forces
in a standard war. The only protection was to threaten massive nuclear retaliation for any attack,
however minor.
By 1957, Russia had long-range bombers and ICBM’s capable of reaching the U.S. They
inspired great anxiety in the West, in large part because of Khrushchev’s constant declarations of
their capabilities and numbers. But unbeknownst to the West, during this period, the Russians
had very few bombers, and they could only reach the U.S. on one-way missions. Soviet ICBM’s
were also very inaccurate and limited in number.
Khrushchev was a boisterous, crude, insecure man whose own power was uncertain.
During the 1956 Suez Crisis, Khrushchev publicly threatened to destroy the French/English
forces with “rocket weapons” [Nasser had previously broken with the British over the long-
running Suez Canal ownership dispute and was buying huge quantities of weapons from the
Warsaw Pact] unless they withdrew. Eisenhower had publicly told the French and British to
withdraw or face economic sanctions. The Franco-Anglo forces did withdraw, but due to U.S. as
opposed to Soviet pressure. However, it appeared to everyone else that Khrushchev’s words had
done the deed. This emboldened Khrushchev, who became even more bellicose as a result and
who threatened nuclear annihilation even more frequently.
In truth, Khrushchev was all talk, and he was smart enough to understand that a nuclear war
would wreck his own country.
Khrushchev visited the U.S. for the first and only time in 1959.
In 1956, the U.S. fielded the U2 spy plane, which could fly higher than the Soviets could
intercept with planes or missiles. It was an invaluable tool and allowed the U.S. to finally

6
determine the sadly underdeveloped nature of the Soviet nuclear arsenal. The Soviets were so
embarrassed by their own inability to shoot down the U2’s that they kept their protests quiet.
The USSR only had six ICBM launching pads, and each ICBM took 20 hours to fuel. Therefore,
assuming a Soviet first strike, Khrushchev would have been able to hit his enemies with 6
ICBM’s at best before his missile capabilities were destroyed in kind.
The USSR developed an antiaircraft missile capable of hitting the U2, and used it in 1960 to
shoot down Gary Powers’ spy plane. It was probably to have been the last U2 flight anyway,
since the U.S. was preparing to launch its first spy satellite into orbit.
Kennedy popped Khrushchev’s bubble in 1961 by making public the classified findings about
the USSR’s inflated nuclear claims. The “missile gap” had never existed. Khrushchev’s leverage
over the West largely evaporated once his lies were exposed.
Fidel Castro’s takeover of Cuba was unexpected in both the U.S. and USSR.
Soviet academics saw the spontaneous nature of the revolution as proof that the class struggle
elucidated by Marx was indeed inevitable and part of the natural human condition.
Washington’s “counterrevolutionary” efforts exemplified by the Bay of Pigs invasion, the
attempts to assassinate Castro, and the economic embargo convinced the Soviets that the U.S.
would stop at nothing to prevent Communism from spreading in the Caribbean. Khrushchev
believed that he had to show a strong presence in that part of the world to combat American
efforts and encourage more domestic uprisings. This could be accomplished by installing nuclear
missiles in Cuba. This also had the practical effect of doubling the number of Soviet missiles
capable of hitting America.
The U.S. had installed similar nuclear missiles in Britain, Italy and Turkey during the late 1950’s
to target the Soviets.
Kennedy believed that allowing the nukes to stay in Cuba would have destabilized the Western
Hemisphere by emboldening Communist groups and intimidating pro-U.S. governments.
Medium-range missiles were in place to hit the U.S. mainland, along with short-range ones to
stop amphibious landings. Local commanders were also authorized to fire the nukes to repel an
invasion.
Kennedy agreed never to invade Cuba again and to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey if the
Soviet missiles were extracted from Cuba. So, while Khrushchev’s ill-thought-out gamble had
failed to accomplish its strategic objective of fomenting Communist revolution in Latin America,
it did produce some gains.
Upon assuming office, Kennedy was shocked to find that Eisenhower’s sole nuclear war doctrine
called for the simultaneous use of 3,000 nukes against all Communist countries. Kennedy
ordered McNamara to devise a gradated and more humane strategy. McNamara believed that he
could negotiate with the Soviets to create advance “ground rules” for the use of nuclear weapons
against military targets only. But this was an ill-fated effort since nukes are so powerful and
military facilities so frequently located near civilian populations that a nuclear exchange would
inevitably kill millions of innocent people. Misses (a real concern given the poor automated
guidance systems of the time) and “cheating” were also problematic considerations.
McNamara gave up on his original idea and instead reverted to Eisenhower’s doctrine of
guaranteed massive attack, coining it “mutually assured destruction” (MAD). This strategy was
the most likely to avert a nuclear war.
“War could no longer be an instrument of statecraft [‘War is the continuation of politics by other
means.’]—rather, the survival of states required that there be no war at all.”

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Both sides came to understand that nuclear war had to be prevented at all costs, and after the
Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), various treaties were signed to pursue this end. The two came to the
same logical conclusions and were united by fear more than they were divided by ideology.

Chapter 3: Command versus spontaneity

Of course, the Cold War was also a war of ideas, chiefly concerning the organization of society
and the rights of individuals.
Khrushchev often admitted that the Eastern Bloc lagged behind the West in terms of technology
and standards of living, but always boasted that Communism would lead his side to inevitably
surpass its enemies. This is best encapsulated in his famous statement: “We will bury you.”
But by 1971, the Eastern Bloc economies had stagnated. By 1981, their life expectancies had
declined, which was totally aberrant for industrialized nations outside of wartime.
Karl Marx lived in England and observed the ill social effects caused by highly unequal
distributions of wealth. Marx believed that Capitalism sowed the seeds of its own destruction in
the form of masses of suffering, embittered workers (the proletariat) who would one day arise
against their masters and divide all property equally, permanently eliminating class divisions and
the resentment they caused and inaugurating a new age of human happiness.
Whether they listened to Marx or not, by the turn of the century, most governments also
recognized the dangers posed by such inequalities, and they chose to mitigate them by following
moderate paths and creating welfare states. [All citizens are entitled to certain government
services and benefits, meaning none can fall below a certain standard of living.]
But WWI cast doubts on the ability of capitalist, progressive nations to preserve the peace for the
sake of their citizens.
Lenin differed from Marx and Engels in his determination to move from theory to action, and to
accelerate the course of history. Lenin took the ongoing example of WWI as proof that
Capitalism caused injustice and war. He demanded the use of authoritarianism to defeat
Communism’s enemies in Russia and free the Russian proletariat from bondage.
President Wilson, who was a staunch international critic of Communism from the 1917
Revolution, favored a different approach. He recognized that democracy and Capitalism, as they
were practiced at the time, we unfair to many people and led to irresponsible governance and
warfare. However, rather than forsaking both systems entirely as Marx desired, Wilson wanted to
reform them:
-Future wars could be prevented by creating an international security organization that would
allow nations to work out disputes peacefully, and that would marshal many nations together to
put down individuals behaving aggressively.
-More people across the world could be freed from oppression through de-colonialism and
democracy.
-New economic policies that prevented worker abuse, unfair wages, monopolies, protectionism,
and other bad practices would ease the agonies of the proletariat and make economies more
stable.
With these new rules in place, the worldwide proletariat would gradually gain the means to
socially, economically, and politically liberate themselves rather than relying on an authoritarian
government to free them.
After WWI, it was unclear which system would prevail in bringing about social justice in
modern industrial societies.

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The events of the 1919-1945 period seemingly proved Wilson’s ideas fanciful and Marx’s more
realist, and the USSR became a world power, weathered the Great Depression with full
employment and economic expansion, and world totalitarianism grew stronger.
The New Deal had helped ease the Depression, but only the military expenditures of WWII had
ended it. As the war closed, there were real fears the economic problems would return.
The pivotal event that shaped the second half of the 20th century was the bombing of Pearl
Harbor. Not only did it lead to America’s entry into WWII, but it forever convinced Americans—
a formerly isolationist people—that geographical distance no longer guaranteed security, and that
the status of the rest of the world could affect the U.S. directly. Dictatorships thus had to be
resisted everywhere.
After WWII, people understood the logic of Wilson’s ideas. Capitalism had to be protected from
its own self-destructive influences, which led to wealth disparities and attendant social problems,
followed by economic instability and collapse, which led to the discrediting of democratic
governments and the search for authoritarian alternatives. To ensure stability was to obviate
WWIII.
Roosevelt planned to create three international bodies to ensure economic liberalization and to
prevent interstate aggression: the World Bank, IMF, and U.N. Stalin was initially invited to join
all three. These fulfilled two of the three main principles of Wilson’s revived Fourteen Points.
The third—self-determination—would proceed in colonized areas where the U.S. had influence,
but Roosevelt conceded that it would have to stall in Soviet-dominated areas to placate the
USSR.
Stalin joined the UN because of the Security Council vote, but didn’t want to be a part of the
others once he discovered that they were meant to save capitalism and not just fund USSR
recovery.
Major speeches given by Stalin, Truman, and Churchill in the 2 years after WWII laid the
groundwork for an ideological struggle in which the two sides demonized the other. It was made
clear by high government officials that America was taking on permanent global responsibilities
to fight Communism, and that assuring a stable world economy was central to keeping the
masses from supporting Communism.
Both capitalism and communism promised better lives for adherents. The key difference was that
only the second relied upon instilling fear in the populace to maintain power and to enact
changes.
Europeans living in Nazi-occupied Europe were thankful for Soviet liberation, but were also
made uneasy by Stalin’s reputation and by the behavior of the Red Army.
Stalin wanted to instill Communist governments in Eastern Europe, but he knew that this could
only be accomplished through force. At the same time, it couldn’t appear as if Communism were
being forced on the people because such a thing would be bad for appearances: Pains would have
to be taken to make sure that the Eastern European countries at least appeared to support
indigenous Communist movements. Communism would take over Western Europe through
internal movements that would seize upon capitalist disunity.
Stalin did not start to calm down in old age and after the defeat of Hitler: When he died, Soviet
prisons were fuller than ever, mass executions were ongoing, and Stalin had plans to deport all
Russian Jews to Siberia.
Post-WWII, the plan to make Germany and Japan into democracies seemed unlikely to succeed
given the nature of their recent governments and the fact that democratic culture had never taken

9
root (democratic governments had briefly ruled both countries in the early 20th century, but failed
in part because the people didn’t appreciate what they stood for).
The U.S. realized that successfully rebuilding these nations would require huge infusions of
American money.
Soviet leaders after Stalin attempted to extricate Stalinism from Marxism, believing that
Communism was fundamentally viable yet had been corrupted by Stalin.
The first post-Stalin leader was Beria. While a very unsavory character, he was a definite
improvement upon his predecessor.
Stalin resisted the idea of formally splitting Germany into two nations, and he repeatedly sought
to reunify the country on favorable terms. The formation of West Germany in 1949 dashed those
hopes.
East Germany was disadvantaged since it had always been an agricultural area and most of what
little industry it had had been taken by the Russians as reparations. Ulbricht, the leader of East
Germany, set about correcting this through a harsh and intense industrialization program, which
caused highly embarrassing riots in the country and caused thousands of Germans to flee west.
Beria actually proposed the idea of cutting ties with East Germany and allowing the country to
reunify under a capitalist government, but he was arrested and then executed by Khrushchev for
betraying Communism first. Soviet troops were then sent into East Germany to forcefully put
down the riots.
Khrushchev pushed aside Malenkov and Molotov to take supreme command of the USSR.
In 1956, Khrushchev shocked the world by candidly denouncing Stalin and his crimes before the
20th Soviet Congress. Khrushchev honestly hoped to revive Soviet Marxism, but realized that this
required the admission of past errors first. However, doing such also meant admitting that Soviet
ideology could be imperfect, which was at odds with the pronouncements of Lenin and Marx.
Khrushchev implied that Communism would require popular support to succeed and to rule
morally, but his later actions showed a lack of commitment to this ideal.
In 1956, the Poles restored an old leader who had been purged under Stalin. Khrushchev was
furious, but begrudgingly accepted. Hungary next became emboldened and went into open
rebellion against Moscow. The USSR responded by sending in troops, killing 20,000 Hungarians
and suffering 1,500 friendly deaths.
China played a major role in making Khrushchev put down the Hungarian rebellion instead of
allowing them to leave the Warsaw Pact.
Mao in many ways admired Stalin, though he was not subservient to him. Mao had a different
take on Marxist ideology, which later combined with a cult of personality to form Maoism.
Maoism did not emphasize industrialization as Stalinism did, and instead viewed the farmer
peasant as the basic societal unit.
Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” was an attempt both to collectivize farmers and to industrialize
through cottage industries. The resulting famine killed at least 30 million people—far more than
those killed by Stalin’s failed agricultural reforms. Of course, none of this was known at the time
since Mao, like Stalin, censored all of his censuses and had his country closed off to outsiders
and the free press.
While the failures of Communism could be hidden in the USSR and China, they could not in
Berlin, where the two systems were directly contrasted. West Berlin thrived thanks to generous
subsidies from West Germany and America. It was surrounded by several hundred thousand
Soviet troops and could have been cut off by land at any time. Airborne resupply became
impossible later on thanks to growth in the city’s size.

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The 1953 East German riots were largely caused by the fact that, at that time, they could travel
into West Germany and view the differences in living standards for themselves. Many East
Germans became angry at the failures of Communism as a result.
From 1949 to 1961, 2.7 million East Germans fled west, causing the population to decline to 17
million. Most of these people were well-educated and highly skilled, and they left because of
economic as much as political reasons.
The idea to build the Berlin Wall had been floated by Ulbricht as early as 1952, but it was
resisted by Khrushchev and other Communist leaders on the grounds that it would look terrible
to the world and would hurt morale in East Germany. However, the loss of people was
threatening to destroy the East German economy, and on the night of August 12-13 1961, the
wall went up as a barbed wire enclosure surrounding West Berlin.
While the wall was problematic, it at least solved the embarrassing emigration issue and lessened
the threat from another Cold War hotspot.
The 15 years following WWII were critical because they dispelled the old fears and showed that
democratic capitalism had in fact been intelligently and deliberately reformed. The democratic
powers were united, and their economies were booming, with no signs of instability. The lessons
of history had been learned.
The fundamental failure of Communism thus lies in its presumption that the original theory—of
the inevitable class struggle, of the necessity for dictatorship to achieve revolutionary ends—is
perfect and overrides all later considerations and developments. The system is inflexible and
does not learn from its own mistakes, whereas democratic capitalism evolves with time.
Communism was clearly losing the worldwide competition by 1960.

Chapter 4: The emergence of autonomy

Khrushchev was overthrown in a bloodless coup on October 13th, 1964. He had become a
megalomaniac, was ruling incompetently, and had embarrassed the Soviet Union before the
world.
While the period from the late 1950’s-early 1970’s appeared to be one of bipolarity, in fact the
U.S. and USSR were finding it increasingly difficult to maintain control over upstart
independence movements in the Third World, and on internal factions within their nations.
European colonialism was begun by the Spanish and Portuguese in the 1400’s when they found
ways to transport men, guns, and (unwittingly) germs to the rest of the world.
The 1905 Russo-Japanese War shattered the myth of European racial superiority.
The First World War gave birth to Bolshevism and Wilson’s calls for self-determination in the
colonized world. Both unleashed powerful forces in the Third World.
The end of colonialism was inevitable: There was no way a group of small countries could
indefinitely subjugate many times their number elsewhere. The process accelerated after WWII,
when Europe was economically and militarily devastated and unable to fight independence
movements.
Both the U.S. and USSR wanted decolonialization.
Stalin was focused on Europe and had no master plan to spread Communism across the Third
World. Khrushchev was more engaged.
The Korean War showed that seemingly unimportant, undeveloped emerging countries were
becoming battlegrounds between Communism and Capitalism, and that, at the very least, areas

11
had to be defended from Communism because losing them was bad for Western morale and for
world perceptions of the West’s resolve.
The importance of the Third World empowered Third World leaders.
The non-alignment strategy/movement meant that a country kept its allegiance ambiguous so that
both superpowers would give it aid in the hopes of swaying it, and the country could threaten to
switch sides if one side became too demanding.
Tito pioneered this in 1948: When the U.S. offered him economic aid and dispatched a carrier
group to the Adriatic as a veiled guarantee of protection, he gambled that accepting it and
rejecting Stalin would pay off since Stalin wouldn’t conquer Yugoslavia for fear of dragging
America into a war. The gamble worked. Thenceforth, Tito walked a tightrope, having relations
with both sides, yet keeping them at a distance.
In the Indian subcontinent, Pakistan—fearful of Indian ambitions—maneuvered itself into
SEATO and CENTO for protection. It curried U.S. favor by being anti-communist and by
offering bases on the USSR’s southern border. India chose non-alignment.
China also joined the non-aligned movement.
In April 1955, representatives from these nations along with Nasser of Egypt met for the first
conference of non-aligned nations.
Colonel Nasser had seized power from Egypt’s puppet government monarchy and had ambitions
of ruling the entire Arab world (the Pan-Arab movement). He hated the Europeans and wanted
control over the Suez Canal, but he was more favorable to the Americans, who were new. The
U.S. funded construction of the Aswan High Dam, but cut the money to protest Nasser’s
purchase of a huge volume of Czech-made arms (this somehow threatened to bring him under
Soviet influence). Nasser then turned to the Soviet Union for the rest of the dam money.
The 1956 Suez War broke out as the British and French sought to depose Nasser and keep the
Suez Canal under their control. Eisenhower had not been told beforehand, and he was furious
over how it gave the appearance of resurgent European colonialism and coincided with the
Hungarian uprising, destroying Western moral superiority. The U.S. forced the invasion to end
by threatening harsh economic sanctions against its allies.
The real winner was Nasser, who kept the Canal, forced the outsiders to withdraw forever, and
established himself as the Arab world’s most powerful player.
Third World regimes that were staunchly anti-Communist or –Capitalist (like the two Koreas,
Vietnam, or Taiwan) could not plausibly threaten to defect to the other side, but could still
manipulate their superpower patrons by emphasizing that their governments might collapse or be
subverted by the enemy. The U.S. was thus forced to support Syngman Rhee of South Korea
after the war with money, arms, American troops, and a bilateral defense treaty even though he
was a brutal autocrat—there was simply no alternative. Rhee could govern as he liked because he
knew the Americans would only push him so far since they needed his government to be stable.
The USSR had a similar experience with North Korea, where Khrushchev had to tolerate the cult
of personality even though he had officially denounced it as a perversion of Communist
ideology.
In 1954, Chiang Kai-Shek insisted on retaining control over several small islands right off of the
mainland’s coast, as potential staging areas for a future offensive to recapture the country from
the Communists. He claimed that, if the islands were lost, it would discredit his regime and cause
its collapse, which would lead to an uncertain future. In response, the U.S. tried to shore up his
popularity with a bilateral defense treaty that covered only Taiwan itself. Mao decided to call this
bluff by invading one of the islands and shelling the others. The U.S. was forced to respond by

12
threatening to use nukes if the biggest islands—Quemoy and Matsu—were invaded. Again, the
superpower was forced to act against its interests (using nukes to protect some random islands is
definitely a bad option for us) to protect a weak client state.
Mao was later able to “punish” the U.S. for its 1958 Lebanon invasion by shelling the Taiwan
islands, which again brought the threat of a nuclear response.
The leader of South Vietnam was an American-picked puppet named Ngo Dinh Diem. Like
Rhee, he was an autocrat, though even more corrupt and brutal. His rule became an
embarrassment to the U.S. and led to instability within South Vietnam. Accordingly, Kennedy
authorized a South Vietnamese military coup in 1963 that led to Diem’s death.
America was responsible for playing up the importance of South Vietnam not falling to
Communism. The U.S. was thus dragged into a broader commitment.
In the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis, Khrushchev had wanted to improve relations with
the U.S., but the Vietnam War obliged him to help the North in light of ideological
commonalities and to gain influence in Southeast Asia at the expense of China. The USSR
therefore had to put its ambitions on hold because of events in the Third World.
East Germany warned the USSR of its own collapse to extort raw materials and consumer goods.
France and China were the biggest thorns in the sides of their superpower patrons.
Both the U.S. and USSR had given France and China, respectively, generous funding to rebuild
their postwar economies and had allowed them to develop nuclear weapons. But during the late
1950’s and 60’s, de Gaulle and Mao destroyed the old alliances.
The French Fourth Republic (itself a revival of the fractious Third Republic) have overseen the
postwar expansion of the French economy yet was incredibly unstable, with constant changes in
leadership and shifts in coalitions. Clearly, a new constitution was needed to provide a new
government structure that would centralize authority and make the government more decisive.
De Gaulle was France’s wartime hero and the only man capable of creating such a Fifth
Republic. He ended French colonialism by withdrawing from Algeria and Indochina—a move
Washington applauded—but he thwarted U.S. European policies.
-He refused to coordinate French nuclear doctrine with the U.S. and Britain
-He vetoed British inclusion into the European Economic Community (now the EU)
-He urged the Germanies towards unification even if it meant withdrawal from NATO and
neutrality in the Cold War
-He withdrew France from NATO and kicked out all U.S. troops.
De Gaulle correctly gambled that he could rekindle France’s pride and bolster his own popularity
by opposing the U.S. at little political cost since America would not forsake him as an ally
considering the Soviet threat.
China and Russia had historic animosities predating the rise of Communism.
Mao respected Stalin and was offended when Khrushchev denounced such cults of personality.
Mao and Khrushchev had a poor personal relationship.
Mao thought the Soviets had lost their revolutionary edge and were not behaving aggressively
enough on the world stage. He felt that the Sino-Soviet alliance had outlived its usefulness by the
1960’s, but the Soviets kept trying to keep it going.
One reason the French and Chinese behaved badly was because they had become powerful
enough not to need superpower support.
By 1967, in both blocs, traditional authority structures were under vicious internal assault. Both
Mao and de Gaulle had their palaces surrounded by young protestors and had to temporarily flee
their enclaves. Never did either regain as much authority or boldness as before. Throughout

13
Western Europe and America, massive student protests occurred against the Vietnam War and
perceptions of lingering Western imperialism.
Nixon won the 1968 election because the Democrats were divided.
The student protestors were of the Baby Boom generation: They were a prolific cohort.
Economic prosperity and government-subsidized higher education also meant that huge numbers
of them went to college where they absorbed ideas that often conflicted with authority. The
massive student actions were thus to be expected.
This demographic group rose in both the U.S., Europe and USSR.
In China, Mao launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966 in an effort to keep the sociopolitical
structure from ossifying as he thought it had in the USSR. The Red Guards—China’s young,
educated elite—spearheaded the effort to reshape Chinese society. It was a disaster, millions of
people died of famine, and the government ceased to function until 1969.
However, none of these revolutionaries accomplished anything in the end: Old power structures
stayed intact.
In March of 1969, China and Russia had a border war that looked as if it might escalate to a
massive confrontation. Mao realized that he was surrounded by powerful enemies (USSR, India,
and Japan), and resolved to make overtures to the U.S. for an alliance.
At that same time, the U.S.-Soviet missile gap closed and Brezhnev announced a new Soviet
doctrine that upheld the right to intervene anywhere in the world where Communism and
Capitalism were fighting for control of a country. There were real fears that the Soviets might use
nukes against China in a widened war and take the country over.
Nixon and Mao met in 1972 and formed an unofficial alliance against the Soviets.
The 1968 Soviet operation to put down the “Prague Spring” was seen from the outside as a
crushing military success, but in fact it deeply unsettled the Russians: The Soviet troops had been
jeered by the Czechs and it had been very difficult to find locals willing to staff the new puppet
government. Demonstrations elsewhere in the Communist world against the operation were also
signs that Soviet power was diminishing.
The Soviet leadership was afraid that further Czech-like operations within the Eastern Bloc
would at some future point expose Soviet weakness and lead to critical levels of dissent.
Furthermore, by now it realized the fundamental weakness of Communist economic policy, as
evidenced by Eastern Bloc stagnation. Conflict within the Communist nations had to be avoided.
Western economic sanctions as punishment for Soviet misbehavior would be crippling.
Détente was necessary to maintain a stable Soviet sphere of influence.
West Germany originated the idea of Ostpolitik: The carefully structured flow of ideas, people,
and goods between the Communist and Capitalist spheres in the hopes that it would establish
gradually increasing peace, unity, and democracy.
Western leaders realized that greater engagement with the Soviets would placate many of the
young protestors who had been so troublesome.
The USSR, facing a hostile China and a socially and economically delicate reality within its
sphere of influence, found it advantageous to seek détente and reduce military tensions with the
West. (Détente would lead to arms reduction treaties)
Nixon’s ending of the draft and draw downs of U.S. troops from Vietnam took much steam out of
anti-war protestors. Nixon’s efforts led to a crushing victory in the 1972 elections.

Chapter 5: The Recovery of Equity

14
Nixon was forced to resign from office because of the June 1972 Watergate break-in. The turn of
events shocked him and the Soviets for its apparent disproportion, and also demonstrated that
Americans valued the rule of law above all else.
Both the U.S. and USSR during this period met increasing resistance to their authoritarian
policies and more demands for legal rights.
While it was initially hoped that the UN would function as a just and effective pseudo-world
government, the veto powers given to the five Security Council members meant that justice
could be preempted by power.
The different ideologies (capitalist, communist, colonialist) present in the Security Council
guaranteed that no common rules or principles for international conduct would be upheld.
The UN was not an effective organ for constraining the great powers from acting as they pleased
against their own citizens or against sovereign states. Restraint would have to instead come from
the states and be self-imposed.
In the postwar era, the U.S. publicly proclaimed that, since its own system was inherently
superior, America need only behave well and serve as a good example to bring about the fall of
Communism. But real-world exigencies demanded U.S. actions that were not in accordance with
liberty, honesty, and respect for self-determination: Right after the war, the CIA organized a
secret campaign to fund anticommunist politicians in Italy to ensure capitalists would maintain
power over the country. Thus began a long-term, worldwide secret American campaign to fight
Communism.
Between 1949 and 1952, the CIA exploded in size. Common operations included secret funding
of ostensibly independent, anticommunist radio stations, political groups, labor unions,
organizations, publications, etc. across the world. The CIA also worked with the Air Force to fly
illegal reconnaissance missions over the USSR. Legitimately elected governments were
overthrown if they were suspected of being pro-communist.
The seminal review of national security strategy—NSC-68—was conducted in 1950 and outlined
America’s covert war against Communism worldwide. It was established that Western principles
could be temporarily suspended in foreign operations a way to defend the West itself. It was also
understood that these emergency measures would be proportionate and would be discontinued
once the Soviet threat disappeared. The stakes were too high to tie our hands honorably.
However, CIA operations to fight communism often had unforeseen side effects. The 1954 CIA-
backed coup against Guatemala’s popular reformist President inspired Che Guevara and Fidel
Castro to take over Cuba.
CIA support for Mohammad Reza Shah also so enraged the Iranian people that they overthrew
him in 1979 and installed an Islamic fundamentalist government.
However, there were also noteworthy successes: A lot of valuable information was captured from
the Soviets and published worldwide, to the latter’s embarrassment. American free radio
broadcasts were also highly effective.
Johnson promised during the 1964 election that he would not escalate the Vietnam War, and he
won as a result. He then immediately went back on his word, thinking that it would be
inconsequential since the war would be quickly won and soon everyone would forget. Johnson
continued to lie about the war’s probable costs and progress because he believed an honest
assessment would be unpalatable to the American people, and winning the Vietnam War was
something he viewed as crucial to surviving the Cold War. His dishonest rhetoric (“credibility
gap”) disillusioned the American people and initiated the era of widespread mistrust for the
government.

15
Nixon took this Executive prerogative to behave dishonestly (and illegally) to safeguard America
to a new extreme, and he had to resign as a result.
Of course, secrecy is integral to diplomacy and military success, both within and outside of the
Cold War. Even average people recognize this, and will therefore forgive transgressions so long
as they are defensible (i.e.—secretly bombing North Vietnam to put pressure on them to sign a
truce). Where Nixon erred was in applying dishonest means to indefensible causes.
-Nixon lied about bombing Cambodia for months, and ordered falsification of Air Force records.
-Nixon lied about ongoing CIA operations to oust Salvador Allende of Chile.
-Nixon had the phones of White House staffers tapped because he thought some of them were
leaking secrets to the press.
-After the Pentagon Papers were leaked, Nixon ordered the formation of “the Plumbers”—a gang
of ex-law enforcement and government agents who could commit crimes (burglaries, wiretaps,
surveillance) to stop future leaks.
The Watergate Crisis reasserted legal and Constitutional authority over the Presidency.
In January 1973, Nixon had forced North Vietnam to accept a peace treaty, which allowed
American troops to leave. While he expected the North to inevitably violate the agreement and
resume the war, Nixon and Kissinger believed that there was a fair chance the North could be
held at bay indefinitely by South Vietnamese ground defenses and massive American airstrikes—
which would resume in the event of an attack.
But Watergate destroyed Nixon’s power. In summer of 1973, Congress cancelled all funding for
the Vietnam War and passed the War Powers Act. Ford was consequently unable to do anything
at all in 1975 when South Vietnam was overrun.
While the U.S. government had looked the other way on questionable CIA practices for 20 years
—even when they hit the mainstream press—the use of ex-CIA agents among the Plumbers and
unrelated media exposees about covert CIA operations during the same period led to
Congressional inquiries into the CIA.
The CIA overthrows of democratically elected governments in Guatemala, Iran and Chile all
came to light. While the leaders of these nations were left-leaning, they were indisputably well-
intentioned and no one could establish whether they definitely or even probably would have
entered into the Soviet sphere of influence if left in power. This led some to believe that the CIA
was behaving recklessly in its fight against Communism.
Congressional suspicion of the Executive led to the passage of a 1975 law that forbade the use of
CIA funds to help the anticommunist faction in the Angolan Civil War. The lapse proved
inconsequential since the Soviets gained nothing from supporting the communist Angolans.
Support of right-wing dictatorships and mass “hostage taking” as exemplified by MAD were
highly immoral, yet necessary to American survival during the Cold War. Over time, these
arrangements were accepted, and the geopolitical relationship between east and west stabilized.
Of course, the Communist regimes were guilty of human rights violations far more heinous.
Pursing a completely consistent and moral path would have required going to war with the
Soviets at some point. This would have led to millions of deaths. It was not moral to sacrifice so
many people for, say, the lives of a couple hundred people being killed by Soviet troops in
Czechoslovakia.
At the same time, American Cold War policy could not be entirely pragmatic because that would
eliminate progress and any claim to the moral high ground. All elements had to be kept in careful
balance.

16
In 1972, Congress passed an amendment to the Trade Reform Act that cut Eximbank credits and
most favored nation status to the USSR because of the latter’s enactment of a steep emigration
tax to keep its residents from fleeing, and due to mistreatment of Russian Jews. Kissinger
protested, saying that stable trade relations had been a condition of the delicate negotiations
Nixon had concluded with the Soviets to pass SALT I. Kissinger insisted that secret diplomacy
would accomplish more towards helping the Russian Jews and dealing with the tax. But
Congress ignored this on moralistic grounds and due to underestimations of Soviet
trustworthiness. The Act passed in 1975 and caused the end of détente.
The 1968 Prague Spring and its brutal end marked the beginning of a crackdown within the
Soviet sphere against liberalizing agents. It, along with the obvious economic failures, also made
it clear to many on both sides of the Iron Curtain that the Marxist-Leninist idea that Communism
would be naturally and inevitably supported by people the world over was wrong: Instead, it
could only be applied through force. Many people began to hate Communism privately, yet
outwardly were smart enough to feign approval.
Brezhnev recognized that Soviet legitimacy rested on its claimed infallibility. When real-world
events shattered this, the government ran into trouble. On July 30th, 1975, Brezhnev and Ford
signed a document called the “Helsinki Accords” that affirmed the then-current borders of
Europe. [Badly explained] Brezhnev believed that this would guarantee Soviet hegemony over
Eastern Europe. He made a number of important concessions, including the promise to forewarn
client states of upcoming military movements, allowing states to move in and out of alliances,
and recognizing the importance of human rights.
American liberals criticized the agreement as an abdication of America’s moral duty to advance
freedom in Eastern Europe. This issue partly led to Ford’s election loss to Jimmy Carter in 1976.
However, the impact was also large in the Soviet Union. Once it was made known that Brezhnev
had promised to respect human rights in Eastern Europe, the government could be held to a
standard of conduct independent of its faithfulness to Communist ideology.
All across Eastern Europe, groups formed to monitor adherence to the Helsinki Accords.
Czech intellectual Vaclav Havel emerged as a leader of the peaceful resistance movement in
Eastern Europe. He and others didn’t advocate violence or direct opposition to Communist
regimes since recent history had proven that completely hopeless. Instead, they called for subtle
resistance in the form of individualism and deliberate nonconformity.
In 1978, the Catholic Church assigned Karol Wojtyla—a Pole who had practiced in Poland with
the Communist regime’s approval—the Papacy.
Brezhnev and head Communists were immediately very fearful of the effect an Eastern European
native Pope would have on his people.
Pope John Paul II was wildly popular in Eastern Europe and he inspired them to maintain their
faith in God and to seek peace and justice—powerful antiestablishment messages for people
living under Communism.

Chapter 6: Actors

In the 1980’s, powerful individuals on both sides of the Iron Curtain shaped events like never
before.
By 1980, the world had seemingly settled into a set order in which MAD enforced stability.
Détente might keep the world safe forever by fostering mutual respect for the other superpower’s

17
sphere of influence, banning direct warfare, and even permitting each side to verify the other’s
military capabilities in the interests of trust.
But détente conceded large parts of the world to authoritarianism, poverty and suffering. Many
people were unwilling to continue such an existence, and the Communists found it increasingly
difficult to control them and their supporters.
The centerpiece of détente was the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I). Signed in 1972, it
capped the number of ICBM’s and SLBM’s and forbade serious missile defense systems. This
legitimated the concept that security came from MAD. However, SALT I was an incomplete
agreement:
-While the number of missiles was capped, there was no restriction on the number of warheads
that could be loaded onto each missile. Plane-delivered nuclear bombs were also not restricted.
-Many Americans were upset that SALT I allowed the Soviets to keep more missiles than the
U.S.
-Short-range missiles and the nuclear arsenals of Britain and France were exempted.
A dissatisfied Congress passed a law mandating nuclear weapons parity in any future reduction
agreements.
This demand, along with calls for a more open process of negotiation (Kissinger was very
secretive with his dealings with the Soviets) crippled efforts at getting SALT II during Carter’s
Presidency.
Carter also angered the Soviets with his persistent demands that they respect human rights—
something previous Presidents had avoided.
Brezhnev was in poor health and turned over much of the SALT II negotiation and nuclear policy
in general to the military. They were aggressive and shortsighted, disturbing the MAD-assured
balance of power by starting new civil defense programs and deploying SS-20 IRBM’s against
Western Europe. The latter responded by asking for deployments of Pershing IRBM’s.
Carter and Brezhnev signed SALT II in June, 1979. Ratification of the treaty stalled in the Senate
over Carter’s announced presence of a Soviet brigade in Cuba (embarrassingly, this had been
permitted under the secret Kennedy-Khrushchev agreement that ended the Cuban missile crisis
—Carter just didn’t know about it), and then REALLY stalled after the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan in December.
Nixon and Brezhnev had agreed not to interfere in each others’ spheres of influence and to tamp
down proxy wars in the Third World.
Anwar Sadat, angered by this seeming Soviet abandonment of his nation (also exemplified by
Soviet inaction during the 1967 war) terminated his country’s relationship with the USSR and
sought American patronage. Ignored, he waged the 1973 war—which he expected to lose—to get
attention and to force America to act on his behalf rather than led Israel destroy him. Rather than
let an anti-Soviet major Arab leader be humiliated, the U.S. indeed intervened by negotiating an
immediate end to the war. During the 1979 Camp David Accords, Sadat’s plan came to fruition
when he got the Sinai back along with generous American support and friendship into the
indefinite future. The Soviets totally lost all influence on Egypt.
The Egypt example showed the fragility of détente: One superpower could still be pressured by a
third party to behave in ways that gained it a unilateral advantage in the Third World.
After the Vietnam War, the Soviet Union thus continued to violate détente in places like Angola,
Somalia, Ethiopia, and Afghanistan. However, these places were strategically unimportant, and
their Communist factions were only supported by the USSR for ideological and propaganda
reasons. But this policy of supporting Communism wherever it arose was problematic because it

18
dragged the USSR into conflicts and internal affairs within far-flung countries it had no practical
interest in protecting.
In 1977, the Soviet client state of Somalia attacked Marxist Ethiopia. The USSR had to switch
sides for ideological reasons in the pointless conflict between two impoverished countries. The
U.S. gained from this by allying itself with Somalia and obtaining access to naval bases.
Furthermore, the Soviet interference damaged relations with America, which were far more
important than having a stake in the Somali-Ethiopian War.
Coupled with USSR-Cuban support for the Angolan Communists, Soviet actions gave the
appearance of a major initiative against Africa.
The 1978 Marxist takeover of Afghanistan was a surprise for Moscow. But the new Afghan
government was unpopular from the start, and came under assault from Islamic fundamentalism
following the Iranian Revolution. The USSR became increasingly responsible for propping up
the hated Afghan regime. Even though they knew the timing was incredibly bad (SALT II was
pending approval, the 1980 Moscow Olympics were upcoming, nuclear tensions in Europe were
high over the IRBM’s), and that the international community would surely respond harshly, the
Soviets invaded Afghanistan on Christmas, 1979 after the Marxist government fell and there
were fears that its replacement would be pro-American.
Carter responded by withdrawing SALT II from Senate consideration, cutting most trade with the
USSR, increasing military spending, and boycotting the 1980 Olympics.
The 1970’s were certainly bad for America:
-The Vietnam War was lost.
-Nixon resigned in disgrace and faith in the government was deeply shaken.
-The oil embargos because of the 1973 War occurred.
-The economy was generally very bad.
-U.S.-allied governments in Afghanistan, Iran, Latin America, and Africa were either replaced or
came under assault by Communists.
-The USSR surpassed the U.S. in the size of its nuclear arsenal.
Many analysts believed that this marked the start of America’s decline vis-à-vis the Soviet
Union.
However, the Eastern Bloc was experiencing even more serious problems that it was trying
desperately to cover up:
-All of their economies and living standards had stagnated and even started declining by the
1960’s. Making matters worse was the fact that the Combloc economies were much smaller than
their Western counterparts’.
-Discontent with Communism was widespread and growing in the Eastern Bloc.
-The Soviet Union was forced to permit extension of Western credits and trade into Eastern
Europe to stave off economic collapse—Soviet aid was no longer sufficient.
-The Soviets had to spend three times as great a percentage of their GDP on defense as the U.S.
just to keep up.
-Much of the Soviet economic/military power of the 1970’s and 80’s stemmed from revenues off
of high oil prices. Cyclical variations in the price of oil meant their cashflow would inevitably
decline.
On balance then, the Eastern Bloc was declining in power relative to the West during the 1970’s.
The Soviets also lacked any cohesive, long-term foreign policy strategy:
-They had become economically dependent upon the West, yet continually offended it with
provocative actions.

19
-They knew their economy was heading for disaster in the long term, yet did nothing to correct
it.
-They had promised to respect human rights, but refused to follow through.
Deng Xiaoping
-Was sent into exile twice by Mao during the 1970’s.
-Mao died in 1976, and Deng consolidated power by 1978.
-Like Khrushchev after Stalin, Deng proclaimed that Mao had done both good and bad things as
leader: Building up the nation’s military, keeping the Communist monopoly on power, and
opening relations with the U.S. were good, while Mao’s administration of the economy had been
bad.
-Deng allowed experimentation with Capitalism at regional levels, which in turn lead to an
explosion in the size of the Chinese economy and greatly improved living standards. This
contrasted with the Soviet economy (which shrank during the 1980’s) and lent popular support to
the Chinese Communist Party, allowing it to survive the end of the Cold War.
Margaret Thatcher
-Throughout her career as Prime Minister, she dismantled various aspects of the Social welfare
state: Taxes were cut, state-owned industries were reformed or privatized, labor unions were
opposed, and regulations were cut.
-Her popularity and the success of her policies showed that Capitalism was still a very valid
system.
-Thatcher publicly opposed the Soviets and was a critic of détente.
Ronald Reagan
-Already famous as a film actor, and consistently underestimated as a result of this: Reagan was
in fact a brilliant politician and a master strategist.
-He could balance the simple and the complex. Détente was designed to prolong the Cold War.
Ending the Cold War therefore required ending détente.
-“Communism is a temporary aberration which will one day disappear from the earth because it
is contrary to human nature.” –1975
-Reagan’s view: Democratic capitalism will triumph over communism in the long run, unless and
nuclear war first destroys the human race.
Lech Walesa
-In 1980, he organized the first independent, self-governing union (of shipyard workers) in the
Communist world.
-His move was wildly popular among fellow Poles, and immediately gained public support from
the Pope.
In 1981, Bulgarian intelligence—almost certainly at the behest of the Soviet leadership—hired
Turk Mehmet Ali Agca to kill Walesa and the Pope. He wounded the Pope and was captured.
There were concerns that Poland was slipping out of Soviet control.
Though the Soviets pressured Poland to shut down Solidarity, the Polish government continued
to tolerate its existence. There were fears this would inspire other labor movements and popular
resistance elsewhere in the Soviet sphere.
The Soviets could not simply invade Poland as they had done to Czechoslovakia in 1968:
-Their military was bogged down in Afghanistan, and a second occupation wasn’t affordable.
-If Carter responded harshly to the Afghan invasion, Reagan was be even worse in response to a
Polish invasion.

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This shift in Soviet strategy marked the end of their willingness to use force to preserve their
sphere of influence per the Brezhnev Doctrine. Solidarity also showed to the world that
Communism had utterly failed to advance workers’ rights.
On December 13th, 1981, the President of Poland imprisoned Solidarity’s leaders out of fear the
USSR was about to invade.
Reagan understood that the Soviet advantage was largely psychological, and that, through words
and symbolic actions, he could call attention to their weaknesses and bring them down. While
previous leaders had emphasized perpetual, peaceful coexistence with the Soviets, Reagan
espoused the message that Communism was bound to collapse and had failed its citizens.
Brezhnev died in 1982, and his successor, Andropov, died in 1983. This symbolized the ailing
health of the entire Soviet system.
Reagan began invoking religion against the USSR: The West was bound by God to fight evil.
The Soviets were evil because they held the state supreme over all, including human rights, and
because they openly pursued world domination.
Reagan held that the Soviet regime was morally illegitimate, and therefore unrespectable in some
degree.
In spite of a growing anti-nuclear movement in the U.S. and Europe, Reagan put Pershing II
IRBM’s in Europe to counter Soviet SS-20’s. He also began development of the SDI, in defiance
of MAD. In part, this was done because he knew the Soviets were woefully behind with respect
to computer technologies required for missile defense.
Reagan’s commitment to SDI—which would have rendered nukes obsolete—his proposal for
START I, and many of his public statements show he actually wanted to abolish nuclear
weapons.
Reagan knew that missile defenses were decades away, but the Soviets didn’t know how
advanced our technology was, so they bought into Reagan’s SDI bluff: SDI became a bargaining
chip Reagan could use as leverage against the Soviets.
Andropov was intimidated by Reagan’s military buildup and firm rhetoric, and was convinced
the U.S. might attempt a first strike.
The Soviets were also scared when a NATO military exercise (“Able Archer”) involved higher
leadership than normal and seemed to simulate an invasion of the USSR.
Andropov’s successor, Chernenko, was a borderline senile geriatric who died in 1985.
Mikhail Gorbachev was elected by the Politburo to next head to USSR. He was of a different
character from past Soviet leaders: He was university-educated to be a lawyer, openly admitted
the faults of Communism, and was warm towards foreign leaders. Gorbachev was also only 54—
the youngest leader since Stalin.
Gorbachev wanted to change the Soviet Union, but lacked the strength of personality and vision
of Reagan, and so was often pushed around by the latter.
Gorbachev, unlike Andropov, trusted that the U.S. would not attack him.
The 1986 Chernobyl meltdown and the subsequent investigation showed that Soviet society was
a façade where slipshod work, unprofessionalism, internal criticism (however constructive), and
inferior technology had formed the rotten core of an outwardly stable system. Resulting from the
disaster, Gorbachev instituted glasnost (publicity) and perestroika (restructuring).
At Reykjavik in 1987, Gorbachev and Reagan met to discuss nuclear arms control. Both were
willing to remove all IRBM’s from Europe and to make drastic cuts in ICBM’s, but the two
differed over SDI. The meeting broke up when Reagan refused to give up SDI.
Later in 1987, the two agreed to destroy all IRBM’s in Europe.

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Gorbachev was also strongly influenced by Secretary of State Shultz—a former Stanford
economics professor—who repeatedly went to Moscow to lecture Gorbachev and his top
advisors about the need for greater Soviet openness and Capitalist reforms, lest they completely
fall behind the curve economically and technologically.
Gorbachev realized that Communism had to be moderated and blended with Capitalism to
succeed, but he was unwilling to make the same scale of changes that Deng Xiaopeng had.
The state cannot influence efficient labor anywhere near as well as markets.
In the late 1980’s, the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan and cancelled support for worldwide
Communist movements. In private, the Soviet leadership had also relinquished any real claim on
Eastern Europe and was unwilling to use military force against them, yet it preserved the façade
of domination, which the West believed.
Gorbachev’s 1988 speech to the UN General Assembly that the Soviet forces in Eastern Europe
would be cut by 500,000 men openly signaled the USSR’s concession of power over the region.

Chapter 7: The Triumph of Hope

1989-1991 saw the end of the Cold War.

George Bush took office that year. His and Gorbachev’s administrations were very wary of each
other, and did not foresee the Cold War ending anytime soon.
However, the events of the 1980’s had so weakened Communism that it would only take minute
changes from seemingly unimportant leaders and individuals to bring the entire Soviet system
down.
Hungary had always pursued independence from the USSR. By 1989, its economy was partially
liberalized and was the most advanced in Eastern Europe.
Hungarian Prime Minister Nemeth visited Moscow and discussed the 1956 uprising with
Gorbachev, who openly admitted that leaders should be accountable to their people and that the
uprising had been a popular one.
The Hungarians then initiated a public inquiry into the 1956 uprising and concluded that it had
been a popular revolt against unfair rule, and its leaders were exonerated of crimes. Gorbachev
did not intervene. The Hungarians were elated and went a step further by dismantling their
border fence with Austria on the grounds that it was obsolete and a health hazard. Though East
Germany protested, the USSR did nothing.
In 1989, facing an economic crisis, the Polish prime minister allowed Solidarity to compete in
elections. Everyone expected them to be rigged, but they were fair, and Solidarity actually won
the majority of seats, turning control of Poland over to a non-Communist government.
Gorbachev also allowed elections for the Soviet Congress of People’s Deputies.
In the same year, the Tiananmen Square Massacre occurred as Chinese people inspired by events
in Europe pressured Deng Xiaopeng to make democratic reforms. Part of what kept the
Communists in power after the Cold War was their willingness to use force against their own
people, something the Eastern European regimes lost stomach for. [Capitalism and a historical
Chinese fear of internal disorder’s consequences were also major factors]
East Germany remained the most repressive Communist regime up until the end, and in 1989,
hundreds of thousands of East Germans fled across the newly opened Austro-Hungarian border.
Many thousands also requested asylum at West German embassies in Prague.
East Germans secretly cheered on their countrymen who escaped.

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Gorbachev was popular in East Germany because of his reputation as a reformer, and during his
1989 visit to commemorate the country’s 40 anniversary, protests broke out in the country in an
attempt to attract his attention.
Egon Krenz—leader of East Germany—authorized the easing of some travel restrictions into
West Berlin. A subordinate instructed to deliver the news to the media misunderstood Krenz’
message and instead announced that unfettered travel was authorized. Huge crowds of East
Germans gathered at the border posts immediately. The guards had not received instructions, and
in the confusion, opened the gates. Krenz was stuck in meetings at the time, and didn’t realize
what was going on until after thousands of his citizens had already fled into West Berlin, and
people were dancing on and dismantling the Berlin Wall.
In November 1989, the Communist governments of Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia stepped down
and free elections were promised.
In December, Romanian dictator Ceausescu ordered his troops to fire on protestors, killing 97.
His country went into open rebellion, and he was captured and executed on Christmas Day.
Bush and Gorbachev met at Malta. Bush was respectful and promised that it would not humiliate
the USSR as Communism fell in Eastern Europe, but at the same time, Bush affirmed American
support for German reunification under a democratic government. Gorbachev did not argue.
Hemlut Kohl was the West German chancellor at the time, and came out in favor of unification,
as did the majority of Germans on both sides.
Gorbachev accepted Germany’s unification and withdraw from the Warsaw Pact. An independent
Germany would be more dangerous than one tied to NATO.
Bush promised never to extend NATO eastwards, but Clinton broke that since the promise had
been made to a later-defunct USSR.
The Germanies reunified on October 3rd, 1990.
While Gorbachev was wildly popular abroad, within the USSR, he was widely hated for several
reasons:
-The economy had remained stagnant thanks to inadequate reforms.
-The USSR’s newly increased political freedoms were leading to domestic chaos.
-Soviet citizens disliked their nation’s decline in military and foreign power.
The USSR was composed of many different republics, many of which had large degrees of
autonomy and cultural distinctiveness. As Eastern Europe was allowed the right of self-
determination, it became increasingly clear that the same had to be applied to the Soviet
republics. The Baltic states and Transcaucus states had been especially vociferous in their desire
for independence.
Gorbachev had hoped that economic improvements would occur fast enough to placate the
republics and keep them from breaking away.
The Baltic republics—which had been annexed by the USSR in 1940 and still resented it—first
voted by referendum for independence in early 1991. The precedent had been set for other Soviet
republics to secede.
1991 also saw the first democratic election of a Russian prime minister—Boris Yeltsin. He was a
staunch anticommunist and enemy of Gorbachev. Initially, the U.S. disliked him because he
undermined Gorbachev, whom we were trying to support.
The Bush administration had difficulty contemplating a world without the USSR, so it did not
immediately side with Yeltsin and the independence movements because it feared instability.

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On August 18th, 1991, a group of hardline Communists staged a coup against Gorbachev in an
effort to save the USSR. It failed thanks to outside repudiation, Boris Yeltsin’s defiance, and the
lack of support for the coup within the military and among average people.
By the end of 1991, Yeltsin had consolidated power, disbanded the Communist party and the old
authoritarian power structures, and replaced them with a democratic government. Gorbachev was
marginalized.
On Christmas Day 1991, Gorbachev signed a decree officially abolishing the Soviet Union.
Gorbachev was a man who wanted to reform Communism and save the Soviet Union, but he had
no cohesive vision for what it would look like in the end. He allowed himself to be influenced by
Western leaders while not securing any concessions. He was also totally unwilling to use force to
protect his nation or its interests.

Epilogue

Before the Cold War, wars between the major powers were so commonplace that they were
regarded as a normal condition. But during and afterwards, they were never fought. This had
several causes:
-Primarily, the existence of nuclear weapons made it impossible to win major wars.
-The World Wars had shown that even purely conventional wars were becoming increasingly
deadly.
-Satellite reconnaissance made it almost impossible to mount surprise attacks that would in the
past have resulted in success.
The Cold War might perhaps be longest remembered for initiating the current era of peace
between the big powers.
The Cold War also discredited authoritarianism, Marxist-Leninism, and Communism. [Though
Socialist Democracy is still viable]
Democracy also boomed during and after the Cold War thanks to greater education, economic
prosperity, and conscious effort from the West.
The information revolution was also critical since it destroyed the state’s monopoly over the flow
of information: People could learn about forbidden ideas and could also access other news
sources that told them the true condition within their own countries and standing relative to other
nations.
Capitalism and democracy can exist separately, but only with difficulty. In fact, they are
synergistic and reinforcing.
Of course, the Cold War was also full of enormous waste and atrocities.

“Meanwhile, communism had promised a better life but failed to deliver. Marx insisted that the
shifts in the means of production would increase inequality, provoke anger, and thereby fuel
revolutionary consciousness within the ‘working class.’ He failed, though, to anticipate the kinds
of shifts that would take place, for as post-industrial economies evolved they began to reward
lateral over hierarchical forms of organization. Complexity made planning less feasible than
under the earlier, simpler stages of industrialization: only decentralized, largely spontaneous
markets could make the millions of decisions that had to be made each day in a modern economy
if supplies of goods and services were to match the demands for them. As a result, dissatisfaction
with capitalism never reached the point at which ‘prolitetarians of all countries’ felt it necessary
to unite to throw off their ‘chains.’”

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-The Cold War: A New History
Pg. 264

Disproportion between x and y

Motives were too transparent
Intensified those fears
boundary adjustments at Turkey’s expense
Stalin had reached the limit of what he could expect to achieve by invoking the tradition of
wartime cooperation.
The nation had not yet concluded that its security required transplanting its principles.

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