t he c old w ar s caled d own 1945-1991. c old w ar : a bitter indirect conflict between the ussr...

THE COLD WARSCALED DOWN 1945-1991

COLD WAR:

a bitter indirect conflict between the USSR & the U.S. that lasted for 4 decades after the end of WWII.

THE HISTORY BEHIND IT:

Russian Revolution of 1917 U.S. says will not recognize USSR as government. Does not recognize them as the government until 1933.

Non-aggression pact with Hitler then they fight on our side

USSR blamed U.S. for delay of western front Atomic bomb project (U.S. kept USSR in dark

but told G.B.)

DIFFERENT VISIONS OR PATHS

U.S. hopes after WWII share democratic ideas with the world. Liberty, Equality, Representative government.

Economic markets USSR Communism predicts through class

struggle the world will eventually triumph USSR= Totalitarian Dictatorship: central

government rules by terror and his complete control over people’s lives

DIFFERENT VISIONS OR PATHS

Dispute over Poland- USSR says they must have biggest influence on Poland- Satellite Nations: Soviet dominated countries, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria

Iron curtain: now dropped divided Europe: Capitalist West --- Communist East this curtain must not be allowed to close around more nations (PIGS STORY 4 walls food) (CUBA story of schools prayer candy story and plant story God and Cuba)

TENSIONS INCREASE

League of Nations has failed 1945 The United Nations (UN): formed

U.S. supports this time. 50 nations agree to join & pledge to settle their different peacefully, try & end wars that do start

Containment: U.S. policy goal to contain the spread of communism in the World. Stop spread of We would apply this.

TENSIONS INCREASE

1947 Greece and Turkey in bad shape economically: G.B. had been supplying economic and military aid they can no longer---Truman afraid they will fall to the communist----U.S. gives Greece & Turkey 400million in aid

Truman Doctrine: cold war policy pledging U.S. support to all free people resisting communism

1947 Marshall Plan: plan to rebuild Europe Economically so it can withstand the threat of communism puts 13 billion dollars in Europe over next 4 years--- benefit to U.S. give strong trade partners----Biggest aid package 3.1 billion Great Britain----32 million Iceland

TENSIONS INCREASE

Yalta Conference: During war GB, US, France, & USSR agree to occupy Germany after war is over---divided into East & West Germany

1948 Berlin Airlift: Stalin tries to force western allies out of Berlin. Closes roads and railroads West response around the clock airlift over 1 year--- USSR finally lifts blockade---- hostility grows---- lasted 10 months

NATO: North Atlantic Treaty organization (collective security)m12 nations in this alliance--- most important U.S.--- attack on one is an attack on all---- U.S now involved in European affairs (USSR responds with Warsaw Pact)

WORRY IN ASIA

1949 Mao Zedong & communist party come to power in China--- spread of communism in Asia?

1949 atomic explosion takes place in USSR now we are not alone [ARMS RACE]

U.S. Military budget increased another containment measure an arms race.

During 1950’s U.S. will continue containment Some want to liberate satellite nations (countries controlled politically & economically by USSR)

EXAMPLES OF CONTAINMENT LEADING TO WAR

Korean War: Japan had controlled Korea for several years. Japan will have to give up Korea @ the end of the war. USSR accepts surrender in North above 38th parallel---USA accepts surrender below 38th South

Both North and South Korea want to be unified

1950 North Korea makes moves across 38th parallel: UN declares North Korea aggressor---UN must restore peace

Truman did not ask Congress to Declare War


UN troops lead by Douglas MacArthur push back North Korean troops back across 38th nearly to China---want to unify on South Korean terms---China says stop

China enters & forces UN troops back to South MacArthur wants to use nuclear weapons , Truman no, fires MacArthur

War finally ends 1953 actually truce signed Korea still divided--- over 50,000 Americans die


Americans unsure about this war this war was not very popular people do question it---1950 PRESIDENT SAID FIGHT o.k.

54,000 Americans die, 100,000 casualties, 2 million Koreans 422,000 Chinese killed

Communism contained Korea same Military build up continues

ASSIGNMENT:

Students write essay on containment---evaluate was it a success in Korea. Smart policy? Why? Middle East?

RED SCARE PART II

Truman administration worries about communism entering the U.S.

Communist party grew during depression 1946 spy rings exposed EST. Fed employee Loyalty Program--- FBI

checks files of suspicious employees--- several 1000 employees dismissed --- hurts many reputations

HVAC---established by congress to investigate Hollywood & others 500 black listed

SPIES AMONG US

Alger Hiss: high ranking government official accused of being a communist spy 1930’s (by a former communist) espionage not proved goes to jail for perjury

Most people believe there is a real communist threat: Proof: knows intimate details about Hiss life Hiss had given old car away 5yrs for perjury

SPIES AMONG US

The Rosenberg’s: accused of being Soviet spies refused to give any information to the government--- executed in 1953 (make example) pled the 5th when asked if communist--- 1st civilians executed for espionage in the U.S. (electric chair)

SPIES AMONG US

McCarthyism background: Senator Joseph McCarthy: republican senator from Wisconsin (worst senator in senate at this time) speaking in West Virginia at a women ‘s club (1950) claims he can point out 2005 “card carrying” communist--- working for government

Why did people believe him? Lied about war service “tail gunner Joe” (really

a secretary) He was an alcoholic (brief case of bourbon) Carried a brief case full of so called documents

against the communist

SPIES AMONG US

Cause scare Join communist party in Texas 20yrs in jail Fluoridation in water? Robin Hood banned Accused the U.S. Army of harboring

communist They say prove it McCarty takes them to trial News catches him yelling, belching, picking

his nose etc… Only “evidence” a dentist who wouldn’t sign a

pledge of dedication to the US govt. McCarthy lost trial

SPIES AMONG US

Never uncovered a single communist McCarthyism definition: (witch hunt) 1950

Brave patriotic stand against communism Today:

A smear campaign of groundless accusations from which the accused could not escape: only confessions accepted people blacklisted accused go to trial

TRUMAN YEARS

Economy: Postwar economy one of the greatest periods of expansion in history---- computers are put into use by factories & business--- TV makes it big---- movement to the suburbs

Truman: #1 job after WWII get soldiers home “no

boats no votes” by 46 most soldiers are home Truman: #2 consumer goods had been limited

during the war (greatest challenge keep inflation in check) war is over consumers want goods have money to spend

Huge demand inflation soars 25% )

TRUMAN YEARS

Wages will not keep up, people not enjoying the fruits of sacrifice

1946 4.6 million workers on strike, more than any time in history, many major industries impacted (Truman wants to draft striking RR workers)

Truman afraid wage increase will drive prices even higher

Taft-Hartley: passed by Congress in 1947 If strike effects National interest, President can order them back to work (80 day cool off) govt. will conduct study (Truman did not support

TRUMAN YEARS

Truman’s Fair Deal: 21 point extension of FDR’s New Deal will promote

Employment More unemployment compensation Higher minimum wage National Health Insurance Control Atomic energy

TRUMAN YEARS

Conservatives: (Democrats and Republicans) oppose & block most Fair Deal Legislation

Most Americans wear about expanding Fair Deal Legislation Did extended Social Security to 10 million

more people Raised minimum wage 40cents to 75 cents Many people see Truman as a bungling

Bureaucrat “To err is Truman”

TRUMAN YEARS

Midterm elections Republicans win majorities in both

46-48 Republicans focus onDecrease taxesReduce size and power of federal

government Block Truman’s liberal goals

TRUMAN YEARS

Truman also hurt by stance he takes on Civil Rights

He supported Civil Rights & hoped for:Gain Federal support for anti-lynching lawAbolish the poll taxCreate a board to prevent discrimination

Congress Refused All

1948 Truman did ban discrimination in hiring of Federal employeesOrdered end to segregation in Armed

forces

THINGS TO REMEMBER

• Germany, and most specifically Berlin is divided after WWII

• The Marshal Plan rebuilds Germany and Japan after the war

• Communist are bad-The Soviet Union and China-(boo)

• Korea is cold in the winter• Harry S. Truman (HST) is still the best

President ever!

THE BERLIN AIRLIFT• The Berlin Blockade was one

of the first major international crises of the Cold War.

• During the multinational occupation of post-World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the three Western powers' railroad and street access to the western sectors of Berlin that they had been controlling.

• Their aim was to force the western powers to allow the Soviet controlled regions to start supplying Berlin with food and fuel, thereby giving them nominal control over the entire city.

• In response, the Western Allies formed the Berlin Airlift to supply the city over pre-arranged air corridors.

• The effort was initially viewed with skepticism even in the countries mounting the attempt, as this sort of logistical effort had never been mounted before.

• The airlift to supply the German 6th Army at Stalingrad required 300 tons per day and rarely came even close to delivering this; the Berlin effort would require at least 5,000 tons a day, well over ten times as much.

• In spite of this, by the spring of 1949 the effort was clearly succeeding, and by April the airlift was delivering more cargo than had previously flowed into the city via rail.

AIR CORRIDORS TO BERLIN

OPERATION LITTLE VITTLES • Gail Halvorsen, one of the many Airlift pilots,

decided to use his off time to fly into Berlin and make movies with his handheld camera.

• As a goodwill gesture, he handed out his only two sticks of Wrigley's Doublemint Gum, and promised that if they did not fight over them, the next time he returned he would drop off more.

• Before he left them, a child asked him how they would know it was him flying over, and he replied, "I'll wiggle my wings."[

• The very next day, on approach to Berlin, he rocked the aircraft and dropped some chocolate bars attached to a handkerchief parachute to the children waiting below.

• Every day after that the number of children would increase and he made several more drops.

• Soon there was a stack of mail in Base Ops addressed to "Uncle Wiggly Wings", "The Chocolate Uncle" and "The Chocolate Flier".

• His commanding officer was upset when the story appeared in the news, but when Tunner heard about it he approved of the gesture and immediately expanded it into "Operation Little Vittles".

• Soon the major candy companies joined in as well. In the end, over three tons of candy were dropped on Berlin,[ and the "operation" became a major propaganda success.

• The candy-dropping aircraft were quickly christened "raisin bombers" by the German children.

THE TRUMAN DOCTRINE• The Truman Doctrine is a

proclamation by Harry S. Truman on March 12, 1947.

• It stated that the U.S. would support the Kingdom of Greece and Turkey economically and militarily to prevent their falling under Soviet control.

• Truman called upon the U.S. to "support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures," which generalized his hopes for Greece and Turkey into a doctrine applicable throughout the world.

• The Soviet Union was clearly at the heart of Truman's thoughts, but the nation was never directly mentioned in his speech.

• Truman was attempting to solve Eastern Europe's instability while making sure the spread of communism would not affect nations like Greece and Turkey.

• The Truman Doctrine represented the hard side of containment policy, while the Marshall Plan constituted the soft side.

THE FORGOTTEN WAR

• The war starts, as you read, in June of 1950 when the North Koreans invade South Korea

• It ends on June 27, 1951 when a cease fire is signed and the 38th Parallel is established as the border

• The Korean Conflict (technically) is still going on

M*A*S*H• The MASH unit was conceived by

Michael E. DeBakey as the "mobile auxiliary surgical hospital".

• It was an alternative to the system of portable surgical hospitals, field hospitals, and general hospitals used during World War II.

• It was designed to get experienced personnel closer to the front, so that the wounded could be treated sooner and with greater success.

• Casualties were first treated at the point of injury through buddy aid, then routed through for emergency stabilizing surgery, and finally routed to the MASH for the most extensive treatment.

• This proved to be highly successful; it was noted that during the Korean War, a seriously wounded soldier that made it to a MASH unit alive had a 97% chance of survival once he received treatment

MAC IN KOREA • MacArthur, as US theater

commander, became commander of the UN forces in South Asia.

• In September, despite lingering concerns from superiors, MacArthur's army and marine troops made a daring and successful combined amphibious landing at Incheon, deep behind North Korean lines.

• Launched with naval and close air support, the daring landing outflanked the North Koreans, forcing them to retreat northward in disarray.

• UN forces pursued the North Korean forces, eventually approaching the Yalu River border with China.

• MacArthur boasted: "The war is over. The Chinese are not coming... The Third Division will be back in Fort Benning for Christmas dinner."[

• In April 1951, MacArthur's habitual disregard of his superiors led to a crisis.

• He also sent an ultimatum to the Chinese Army which destroyed HST’s cease-fire efforts.

• This was seen by HST as a violation of the American constitutional principle that military commanders are subordinate to civilian leadership, and usurpation of the President's authority to make foreign policy.

• By this time HST decided MacArthur was insubordinate, and relieved him of command on April 11, 1951, leading to a storm of controversy.

• HST received criticism from WWII vets as well as his own mother in law

BACK TO HST

During this time HST is also going to enact what he calls the “Fair Deal”

This was designed to strengthen New Deal legislation and create new programs

This legislation never made it through the “Do Nothing” Congress and Truman leaves the Presidency with approval ratings in the 20 to 30% range

1948 ELECTION

Truman decides to run seems like a bad idea he was having problems with his own party

Democrats Split--- Truman will be democratic candidate

Southern Democrats: form a party called “Dixiecrats” choose Strom Thurmond of South Carolina as their candidate----They opposed segregation

Progressive Party: liberal democrats choose Henry Wallace 1 time VP of FDR maybe he could carry out FDR’s plans Split seemed to spell doom for Truman

1948 ELECTION

Republicans nominated: Thomas E. Dewey Truman ran a whistle stop campaign & pulls

biggest upset in history[Truman tactic was to attack the Republican: “Do Nothing Congress”]

Democrats also gain control of Congress Republicans were frustrated push for

22nd amendment that limits a president to 2 terms

1952 ELECTION

Truman Out Democrat Adalai Stevenson Republican Dwight Eisenhower [former

Military General] “I Like IKE”

K1C2 Formula for victory: End Korean War with honor Tough approach to communism Running mate R. Nixon promised to hammer govt.

corruption

1952 ELECTION

Eisenhower was a very popular candidate but his campaign ran into a snagRichard Nixon V.P. Candidate accused of

having a special fund set up by rich republican supporters Nixon Response: The Checkers Speech

Denied any wrong doing Gave personal account of finance

“wife wears a respectable republican cloth coat” Had received a gift he would not return black and

white cocker spaniel little girl named Checkers

Nixon stays V.P. IKE becomes president 55% of popular vote will serve 2 terms

EISENHOWER AS PRESIDENT

Brought with him approach called:Modern Republicanism: conservative

when it comes to money but liberal when it comes to human beings Favored big business Cut government spending, but did not try to reverse

the New Deal (Social Security extended minimum wage increased)

Economy Slumped

THINGS TO REMEMBER

Soviets don’t like us at the point Nukes are powerful General Dwight David Eisenhower (Ike) is the

President after Truman and though he is good he’s no Harry Truman

We would also like to Welcome the Central Intelligence Agency into the picture

BUILDING AN EMPIRE

As we talked about yesterday, after WWII the world broke into two different groups- us (The Free World) and them (The Communist World)

Each set out to collect colonies and out posts to expand their ideals

Whenever one side would gain a colony, the other would struggle to create a colony of their own near it to keep the other from gaining the upper hand

U.S V.S THEM

BUILDING A NUCLEAR FORCE In the back of the

Soviet and American was the idea of developing a colony that was close enough to strike their enemy with a nuke

In 1952 the U.S tested it’s first Hydrogen Bomb

In 1953 the Soviet tested their first H-Bomb

The Hydrogen Bomb was even more effective and deadly than the atom bomb, but hey when you’re wiping whole towns off the map- what’s a few more blocks

ZERO SUM

This arms race, and the Cold War, are often called an exercise in Brinkmenship

Brinkmenship is the idea that both sides have roughly the same weapons and try to gain a upper hand without going over the brink

However, many opponents (to this day) say that building a large nuclear arsenal is a zero sum exercise because in the end no one would win

Your text calls this mutually assured destruction

IKE STEPS IN Ike opposed spending

billions of dollars on regular forces (armies, navies, and air forces-oh my) and favored stockpiling nuclear weapons

His approach did save money

In 1953 the defense budget was $50.5 billion

In 1955 it was only $35.8

THE EISENHOWER DOCTRINE

Ike (in response to then recent events in Egypt) announced that the U.S would use force in any Middle Eastern country that was threatened by Communism

He would use this to justify sending troops into Lebanon

WHO CALLED THE CIA?

The Central Intelligence Agency was working within then Soviet Union as well as countries that would potentially fall to the Communist

After Stalin dies in 1953, the U.S saw an opportunity to stave off Communist Growth

In places like Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia the CIA helped fund and support rebellions against the Soviets

THE CIA IN IRAN & GUATEMALA Ike approves the

CIA to use covert measures to form a coup that over throws the un-friendly governments in Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954

Both were successful but create long standing hatred of the U.S in both countries

Many historians debate why the CIA was involved with a coup in what seemed to be a harmless government in Guatemala, but upon further inspection, you see that the United Fruit Company had lobbied the CIA to over-throw the government that purposed Communist ideals

FINAL QUESTIONS

What methods did the U.S use in its global struggle against the Soviet Union

How was the Eisenhower Doctrine similar to the Truman Doctrine?

COLD WAR CONTINUED

1957 USSR launched Sputnik: 1st artificial satellite to orbit earth, weighed about 185lbs little bigger than basketball

Sputnik II: launched a few months after Sputnik 1---bigger---carried a dog

These Satellites Caused:Fear (Fall Out Shelters)Education failing/ science & math (National

Defense Education Act)NASA (National Aeronautics & Space

Administration) caused Space Race

THE CULTURE OF THE 1950’S

For Bell Work: Get out a piece of paper and write down as many things about the 1950’s American culture you can think of

Items you might know can include: musicians or musical groups, TV shows, famous people, toys, games, ideas, events,

THINGS TO REMEMBER We’re in the same time frame as we have

been Cars were made of metal Paint had lead in it This is, mostly likely, the decade many of

your parents were born in Johnny Cash becomes famous as well as this

guy named Elvis-who names their kid Elvis?

ROLE OF MEN AND WOMEN (50’S STYLE)

Men go to school, find a job, support wife &

familyFor most part they continue to make most

important: political, economic, & social decisions

WomenTake care of home not unusual to be

married at age 16,attend school functions, raise children

ROLE OF MEN AND WOMEN (50’S STYLE)

1950 24% married women work outside the home it did increase 31% by 1960

1963 Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique declared women were frustrated & had a difficult time choosing alternative roles.

THE G.I BILL As World War Two

came to a close, they Federal government had a large problem

What would it do with all the men that had either joined or were drafted into the military

In an attempt to combat the typical post-war economic depression, with high jobless rates, the federal government decided to enact the laws that became known as the Montgomery G.I. Bills or G.I Bill for short

Under the G.I Bill returning veterans were given money and encouraged to enter college.

It also gave money to those who could not find a job

Many veterans took this money and either entered or returned to college, and increased the amount of college degrees drastically

Many modern historians have argued that the G.I Bill is one of the most significant pieces of legislation ever passed-

Partially (my opinion) because it inspired many African Americans to enter what were then segregated college

THE BABY BOOM Another culturally

significant event was the baby boom

As the name suggests it was a large increase of babies born

But as these babies grow up there is going to be an increase demand for everything in life- college degree, homes, job, and now health care

LEAD SLEDS With a growing

number of families moving into suburban homes the need for cars also increased in the post war years

The number of registered cars jumped from 26 million in 1946 to 60 million in 1960

THE INTERSTATE HIGHWAY ACT Ike saw the

increased traffic on America’s roads to be a problem so in 1956 he had Congress pass the Interstate Highway Act

These new roads allowed the average Americans the opportunity to travel to places like Disney World

While this helped the American public it also had military benefits

In the case of a Nuclear Attack or Russian Invasion the military could use the highways to rush forces quickly to where they were needed*

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL

A form of popular music arising from and incorporating a variety of musical styles, especially rhythm and blues, country music, and gospel.

Originating in the United States in the 1950s, it is characterized by electronically amplified instrumentation, a heavily accented beat, and relatively simple phrase structure

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL IN THE ‘50’S

The United States was divided by racial problems during the 1950's, but many people sensed a spirit of equality in Rock and Roll.

With the rise of Rock and Roll's new popularity, black artists were becoming more popular with audiences of all colors.

Chuck Berry was one of the first black Rock and Roll performers to appeal to black and white audiences by combining the popular black Rhythm-and-Blues sound with Rock and Roll. His powerful guitar playing and energetic dancing thrilled audiences.

CHUCK BERRY AND THE DUCK WALK

When Bill Haley's Rock Around the Clock appeared in 1955, America started to swing to a whole new sound.

Rock Around the Clock was used in a popular movie named Blackboard Jungle.

This movie gave Rock and Roll a huge audience and made Bill Haley and the Comets famous overnight.

BUDDY HOLLY

Holly is described by critic Bruce Eder as "the single most influential creative force in early rock and roll.”

His works and innovations were copied by his contemporaries and later musicians, notably The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, and exerted a profound influence on popular music.

In 2004, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked Holly #13 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

Holly’s career only span about a year before he, Richie Valens, and The Big Bopper were killed in a plane crash

In a strange twist of fate a young man by the name of Waylon Jennings was supposed to have had Holly’s seat on the plane that crashed

Holly’s death was the inspiration for Don McLean’s “Bye, Bye Miss American Pie”

MY FAVORITE OF THE 1950’S Johnny Cash was born J. R.

Cash in Kingsland, Arkansas and raised in Dyess, Arkansas

Cash started a band with Luther Perkins and Marshal Grant, and would eventually audition for Sam Phillips at Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee

Sun was famous already for having signed Elvis Presley, and the more popular at the time, Jerry Lee Lewis

Cash and his band the Tennessee Three would spend most of the 1950’s touring with the likes of Elvis, Roy Orbison, and Jerry Lee Lewis

ELVIS

Elvis is by far the popular musician of all times, but in the 1950’s he was just starting out

On July 18, 1953, Presley went to Sun Records' Memphis Recording Service to record "My Happiness" with "That's When Your Heartaches Begin", supposedly a present for his mother

On January 10, Presley made his first recordings for RCA in Nashville, Tennessee. The session produced "Heartbreak Hotel/I Was The One" which was released on January 27.

The public reaction to "Heartbreak Hotel" prompted RCA to release it as a single in its own right (February 11). April it had hit number one in the U.S. charts, selling in excess of one million copies.

After more hectic touring, Presley returned to The Milton Berle Show on June 5 and performed "Hound Dog" (without his guitar).

Singing the song up tempo, he then began a slower version.

Presley's "gyrations" created a storm of controversy—even eclipsing the 'communist threat' headlines prevalent at the time.

The press described his performance as "vulgar" and "obscene".

On March 24, 1958, he was inducted as US Army private #53310761 and completed basic training at Fort Hood, Texas on September 17, 1958, before being posted to Friedberg, Germany with the 3rd Armored Division, where his service took place from October 1, 1958

ELVIS IN THE ARMY

DISSENT AND DISCONTENT Despite the relative

prosperity of the 1950’s Many felt as is the

material conditions had improved during the 1950’s but the quality of life had not

These protest that start in the 1950’s are going to be what plants the seed for the mass protests of the 1960’s..you can’t have Hippies without Beatniks

LITERARY PROTEST The protest would

primarily come from writers like J.D Salinger, Sloan Wilson, Jack Kerouac Truman Capote, and William S. Burroughs

Where writers like Hemmingway, Faulkner, Wolfe, and Fitzgerald made up the “Lost Generation” these writers become the “Beat Generation”

THE MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SUIT The novel about the

American search for purpose in world dominated by business.

Tom and Betsy Rath share a struggle to find contentment in their hectic and material culture.

In the end, it is a story of taking responsibility for one's own life.

The book was largely autobiographical, drawing on Wilson's experiences as assistant director of the US national citizen commission for the public schools.

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE First published in the

United States in 1951, the novel has been frequently challenged in its home country for its liberal use of profanity and portrayal of sexuality and teenage angst.

Originally published for adults, the novel has become a common part of high school and college curricula throughout the English-speaking world; it has also been translated into almost all of the world's major languages.

Written in the first person, The Catcher in the Rye follows a young man’s (Holden Caulfield) experiences in New York City in the days following his expulsion from Pencey Prep, a college preparatory school.

As Holden shares his experiences, it becomes evident that he is talking from a mental facility where he is being psychoanalyzed

Holden spends a total of two days in the city, characterized largely by drunkenness and loneliness.

At one point he ends up at a museum, where he contrasts his life with the statues of Eskimos on display

Holden intends to move out west, in the end he doesn’t go

His voice in the novel's last few pages indicates more perspective, yet he remains lonely and without definite direction

ON THE ROAD It is a largely

autobiographical based on the road trips of Kerouac and his friends across mid-century America.

It is often considered a defining work of the postwar Beat Generation that was inspired by jazz, poetry, and drug experience

The novel was chosen by TIME Magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.

PLOT

The book begins by introducing the catalyst for most of the adventures of the story: Dean Moriarty.

The narrator, Sal Paradise, is fascinated with the idea of humanity, and particularly his eclectic group of friends, jazz, the landscapes of America, and women.

The opening paragraph states that "with the coming of Dean Moriarty began the part of my life you could call my life on the road."

His friend Remi Boncœur has sent an invitation to join him, with hints of worldwide travels aboard a ship.

He sets out with fifty dollars in his pocket. From there he travels across the world and

America Dean comes back to New York to see Sal and

steal Sal’s girl, but it doesn’t work so Dean returns to the West alone.

Sal closes the novel sitting on a pier during sunset, looking west reminiscing on God, America, and the idea that "nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old,"

VIETNAM WAR OVERVIEW

1945 Ho Chi Minh Creates Provisional Government:

Following the surrender of Japan to Allied forces, Ho Chi Minh and his People's Congress create the National Liberation Committee of Vietnam to form a provisional government. Japan transfers all power to Ho's Vietminh.

Ho Declares Independence of Vietnam British Forces Land in Saigon, Return Authority to

French First American Dies in Vietnam: Lt. Col. A. Peter

Dewey, head of American OSS mission, was killed by Vietminh troops while driving a jeep to the airport. Reports later indicated that his death was due to a case of mistaken identity -- he had been mistaken for a Frenchman.


1954 Eisenhower Cites "Domino Theory" Regarding Southeast

Asia: Responding to the defeat of the French by the Vietminh at Dienbienphu, President Eisenhower outlines the Domino Theory: "You have a row of dominoes set up. You knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly."

Geneva Convention Begins: Delegates from nine nations convene in Geneva to start negotiations that will lead to the end of hostilities in Indochina. The idea of partitioning Vietnam is first explored at this forum.

Geneva Convention Agreements Announced: Vietminh General Ta Quang Buu and French General Henri Delteil sign the Agreement on the Cessation of Hostilities in Vietnam. As part of the agreement, a provisional demarcation line is drawn at the 17th parallel which will divide Vietnam until nationwide elections are held in 1956. The United States does not accept the agreement, neither does the government of Bao Dai.


1960 Vietcong Formed: Hanoi forms National Liberation Front for

South Vietnam. Diem government dubs them "Vietcong."

1961 Vice President Johnson Tours Saigon: During a tour of

Asian countries, Vice President Lyndon Johnson visits Diem in Saigon. Johnson assures Diem that he is crucial to US objectives in Vietnam and calls him "the Churchill of Asia."

1962 US Military Employs Agent Orange: US Air Force begins

using Agent Orange -- a defoliant that came in metal orange containers-to expose roads and trails used by Vietcong forces.

1963 Diem Overthrown, Murdered: With tacit approval of the

United States, operatives within the South Vietnamese military overthrow Diem. He and his brother Nhu are shot and killed in the aftermath.

VIETNAM WAR OVERVIEW1964

General Nguyen Khanh Seizes Power in Saigon: In a bloodless coup, General Nguyen Khanh seizes power in Saigon. South Vietnam junta leader, Major General Duong Van Minh, is placed under house arrest, but is allowed to remain as a figurehead chief-of-state.

Gulf of Tonkin Incident: On August 2, three North Vietnamese PT boats allegedly fire torpedoes at the USS Maddox, a destroyer located in the international waters of the Tonkin Gulf, some thirty miles off the coast of North Vietnam. The attack comes after six months of covert US and South Vietnamese naval operations. A second, even more highly disputed attack, is alleged to have taken place on August 4.

Debate on Gulf of Tonkin Resolution: The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution is approved by Congress on August 7 and authorizes President Lyndon Johnson to "take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression." The resolution passes unanimously in the House, and by a margin of 82-2 in the Senate. The Resolution allows Johnson to wage all out war against North Vietnam without ever securing a formal Declaration of War from Congress.


1965 Operation "Rolling Thunder" Deployed: Sustained

American bombing raids of North Vietnam, dubbed Operation Rolling Thunder, begin in February. The nearly continuous air raids would go on for three years.

US Troop Levels Top 200,000

1966 Veterans Stage Anti-War Rally: Veterans from World

Wars I and II, along with veterans from the Korean war stage a protest rally in New York City. Discharge and separation papers are burned in protest of US involvement in Vietnam.

CORE Cites "Burden On Minorities and Poor" in Vietnam: The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) issues a report claiming that the US military draft places "a heavy discriminatory burden on minority groups and the poor." The group also calls for a withdrawal of all US troops from Vietnam.


1968 Launch Tet Offensive: In a show of military might that catches

the US military off guard, North Vietnamese and Vietcong forces sweep down upon several key cities and provinces in South Vietnam, including its capital, Saigon. Within days, American forces turn back the onslaught and recapture most areas. From a military point of view, Tet is a huge defeat for the Communists, but turns out to be a political and psychological victory. The US military's assessment of the war is questioned and the "end of tunnel" seems very far off.

My Lai Massacre: On March 16, the angry and frustrated men of Charlie Company, 11th Brigade, Americal Division entered the village of My Lai. "This is what you've been waiting for -- search and destroy -- and you've got it," said their superior officers. A short time later the killing began. When news of the atrocities surfaced, it sent shockwaves through the US political establishment, the military's chain of command, and an already divided American public.


1968 Continued Paris Peace Talks Begin: Following a lengthy period of debate

and discussion, North Vietnamese and American negotiators agree on a location and start date of peace talks. Talks are slated to begin in Paris on May 10 with W. Averell Harriman representing the United States, and former Foreign Minister Xuan Thuy heading the North Vietnamese delegation.

1969 Nixon Begins Secret Bombing of Cambodia: In an effort to

destroy Communist supply routes and base camps in Cambodia, President Nixon gives the go-ahead to "Operation Breakfast." The covert bombing of Cambodia, conducted without the knowledge of Congress or the American public, will continue for fourteen months.

Policy of "Vietnamization" Announced: Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird describes a policy of "Vietnamization" when discussing a diminishing role for the US military in Vietnam. The objective of the policy is to shift the burden of defeating the Communists onto the South Vietnamese Army and away from the United States.


1969 Continued Ho Chi Minh Dies at Age 79 News of My Lai Massacre Reaches US:

Through the reporting of journalist Seymour Hersh, Americans read for the first time of the atrocities committed by Lt. William Calley and his troops in the village of My Lai. At the time the reports were made public, the Army had already charged Calley with the crime of murder.


1972 Nixon Cuts Troop Levels by 70K: Responding to charges by

Democratic presidential candidates that he is not moving fast enough to end US involvement in Vietnam, President Nixon orders troop strength reduced by seventy thousand.

Secret Peace Talks Revealed

1973 Cease-fire Signed in Paris: A cease-fire agreement that, in the

words of Richard Nixon, "brings peace with honor in Vietnam and Southeast Asia," is signed in Paris by Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho. The agreement is to go into effect on January 28.

End of Draft Announced Last American Troops Leave Vietnam


1975 Ford Calls Vietnam War "Finished": Anticipating the

fall of Saigon to Communist forces, US President Gerald Ford, speaking in New Orleans, announces that as far as the US is concerned, the Vietnam War is "finished."

Last Americans Evacuate as Saigon Falls to Communists: South Vietnamese President Duong Van Minh delivers an unconditional surrender to the Communists in the early hours of April 30. North Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin accepts the surrender and assures Minh that, "...Only the Americans have been beaten. If you are patriots, consider this a moment of joy." As the few remaining Americans evacuate Saigon, the last two US servicemen to die in Vietnam are killed when their helicopter crashes.

KHRUSHCHEV, EISENHOWER AND DE-STALINIZATION

In 1953, changes in political leadership on both sides shifted the dynamic of the Cold War.[71] Dwight D. Eisenhower was inaugurated president that January. During the last 18 months of the Truman administration, the American defense budget had quadrupled, and Eisenhower moved to reduce military spending by a third while continuing to fight the Cold War effectively


After the death of Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev became the Soviet leader following the deposition and execution of Lavrentiy Beria and the pushing aside of rivals Georgy Malenkov and Vyacheslav Molotov. On February 25, 1956, Khrushchev shocked delegates to the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party by cataloguing and denouncing Stalin's crimes.[106] As part of a campaign of de-Stalinization, he declared that the only way to reform and move away from Stalin's policies would be to acknowledge errors made in the past

KHRUSHCHEV, EISENHOWER AND DE-STALINIZATION On November 18, 1956, while addressing Western

ambassadors at a reception at the Polish embassy in Moscow, Khrushchev used his famous "Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you" expression, shocking everyone present.[107] He later claimed that he had not been talking about nuclear war, but rather about the historically determined victory of communism over capitalism.[108] In 1961, Khrushchev declared that even if the USSR was behind the West, within a decade its housing shortage would disappear, consumer goods would be abundant, and within two decades, the "construction of a communist society" in the USSR would be completed "in the main"


Eisenhower's secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, initiated a "New Look" for the containment strategy, calling for a greater reliance on nuclear weapons against US enemies in wartime.[71] Dulles also enunciated the doctrine of "massive retaliation", threatening a severe US response to any Soviet aggression. Possessing nuclear superiority, for example, allowed Eisenhower to face down Soviet threats to intervene in the Middle East during the 1956 Suez Crisis.

WARSAW PACT AND HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION While Stalin's death in 1953 slightly relaxed tensions, the

situation in Europe remained an uneasy armed truce.[110] The Soviets, who had already created a network of mutual assistance treaties in the Eastern Bloc by 1949,[111] established a formal alliance therein, the Warsaw Pact, in 1955.[32]

The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 occurred shortly after Khrushchev arranged the removal of Hungary's Stalinist leader Mátyás Rákosi.[112] In response to a popular uprising,[113] the new regime formally disbanded the secret police, declared its intention to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact and pledged to re-establish free elections. The Soviet army invaded.[114] Thousands of Hungarians were arrested, imprisoned and deported to the Soviet Union,[115] and approximately 200,000 Hungarians fled Hungary in the chaos.[116] Hungarian leader Imre Nagy and others were executed following secret trials

WARSAW PACT AND HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION From 1957 through 1961, Khrushchev openly and repeatedly

threatened the West with nuclear annihilation. He claimed that Soviet missile capabilities were far superior to those of the United States, capable of wiping out any American or European city. However, Khrushchev rejected Stalin's belief in the inevitability of war, and declared his new goal was to be "peaceful coexistence".[118] This formulation modified the Stalin-era Soviet stance, where international class struggle meant the two opposing camps were on an inevitable collision course where Communism would triumph through global war; now, peace would allow capitalism to collapse on its own,[119] as well as giving the Soviets time to boost their military capabilities,[120] which remained for decades until Gorbachev's later "new thinking" envisioning peaceful coexistence as an end in itself rather than a form of class struggle

WARSAW PACT AND HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION The events in Hungary produced ideological fractures

within the Communist parties of the world, particularly in Western Europe, with great decline in membership as many in both western and communist countries felt disillusioned by the brutal Soviet response.[122] The communist parties in the west would never recover from the effect the Hungarian Revolution had on their membership, a fact that was immediately recognized by some, such as the Yugoslavian politician Milovan Djilas who shortly after the revolution was crushed said that "The wound which the Hungarian Revolution inflicted on communism can never be completely healed

WARSAW PACT AND HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION

America's pronouncements concentrated on American strength abroad and the success of liberal capitalism.[123] However, by the late 1960s, the "battle for men's minds" between two systems of social organization that Kennedy spoke of in 1961 was largely over, with tensions henceforth based primarily on clashing geopolitical objectives rather than ideology

BERLIN ULTIMATUM AND EUROPEAN INTEGRATION The maximum territorial extent of countries in the world

under Soviet influence, after the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and before the official Sino-Soviet split of 1961

During November 1958, Khrushchev made an unsuccessful attempt to turn all of Berlin into an independent, demilitarized "free city", giving the United States, Great Britain, and France a six-month ultimatum to withdraw their troops from the sectors they still occupied in West Berlin, or he would transfer control of Western access rights to the East Germans. Khrushchev earlier explained to Mao Zedong that "Berlin is the testicles of the West. Every time I want to make the West scream, I squeeze on Berlin."[125] NATO formally rejected the ultimatum in mid-December and Khrushchev withdrew it in return for a Geneva conference on the German question.

BERLIN ULTIMATUM AND EUROPEAN INTEGRATION

More broadly, one hallmark of the 1950s was the beginning of European integration

a fundamental by-product of the Cold War that Truman and Eisenhower promoted politically, economically, and militarily, but which later administrations viewed ambivalently, fearful that an independent Europe would forge a separate détente with the Soviet Union, which would use this to exacerbate Western disunity

WORLDWIDE COMPETITION 1961 Soviet stamp

commemorating Patrice Lumumba, prime minister of the Republic of the Congo.

1961 Soviet postage stamp demanding freedom for African nations.

WORLDWIDE COMPETITION 1961 Soviet stamp commemorating Patrice Lumumba,

prime minister of the Republic of the Congo. Nationalist movements in some countries and regions,

notably Guatemala, Indonesia and Indochina were often allied with communist groups, or perceived in the West to be allied with communists.[71] In this context, the United States and the Soviet Union increasingly competed for influence by proxy in the Third World as decolonization gained momentum in the 1950s and early 1960s;[128] additionally, the Soviets saw continuing losses by imperial powers as presaging the eventual victory of their ideology

WORLDWIDE COMPETITION The United States made use of the

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to do away with a string of unfriendly Third World governments and to support allied ones.[71] In 1953, President Eisenhower's Central Intelligence Agency implemented Operation Ajax, a covert operation aimed at the overthrow of the Iranian prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh. The popularly-elected and non-aligned Mosaddegh had been a Middle Eastern nemesis of Britain since nationalizing the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951. Churchill told the United States that Mosaddegh was "increasingly turning towards communism" and was moving Iran towards the Soviet sphere.[130][131][132][133] The pro-Western shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, assumed control as an autocratic monarch.[134] The shah's policies included the banning of the communist Tudeh Party and general suppression of political dissent by SAVAK, the shah's domestic security and intelligence agency.

WORLDWIDE COMPETITION In Guatemala, a CIA-backed military coup ousted the left-

wing President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in 1954.[135] The post-Arbenz government, a military junta headed by Carlos Castillo Armas, returned nationalized American property, set up a National Committee of Defense Against Communism, and decreed a Preventive Penal Law Against Communism at the request of the United States.

In the Republic of the Congo, newly independent from Belgium since June 1960, the CIA-cultivated President Joseph Kasa-Vubu ordered the dismissal of the democratically-elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba and the Lumumba cabinet in September; Lumumba called for Kasa-Vubu's dismissal instead.

In the ensuing Congo Crisis, the CIA-backed Colonel Mobutu quickly mobilized his forces to seize power through a military coup d'état

WORLDWIDE COMPETITION In British Guiana, the leftist People's Progressive Party (PPP)

candidate Cheddi Jagan won the position of chief minister in a colonially-administered election in 1953, but was quickly forced to resign from power after Britain's suspension of the still-dependent nation's constitution.[138] Embarrassed by the landslide electoral victory of Jagan's allegedly Marxist party, the British imprisoned the PPP's leadership and maneuvered the organization into a divisive rupture in 1955, engineering a split between Jagan and his PPP colleagues.[139] Jagan again won the colonial elections in 1957 and 1961; despite Britain's shift to a reconsideration of its view of the left-wing Jagan as a Soviet-style communist at this time, the United States pressured the British to withhold Guyana's independence until an alternative to Jagan could be identified, supported, and brought into office

WORLDWIDE COMPETITION Worn down by the

communist guerrilla war for Vietnamese independence and handed a watershed defeat by communist Vietminh rebels at the 1954 Battle of Điện Biên Phủ, the French accepted a negotiated abandonment of their colonial stake in Vietnam. Peace accords signed in Geneva left Vietnam divided between a pro-Soviet administration in North Vietnam and a pro-Western administration in South Vietnam at the 17th parallel north. Between 1954 and 1961, Eisenhower's United States sent economic aid and military advisers to strengthen South Vietnam's pro-Western regime against communist efforts to destabilize it

WORLDWIDE COMPETITION Many emerging nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin

America rejected the pressure to choose sides in the East-West competition. In 1955, at the Bandung Conference in Indonesia, dozens of Third World governments resolved to stay out of the Cold War.[141] The consensus reached at Bandung culminated with the creation of the Belgrade-headquartered Non-Aligned Movement in 1961.[71] Meanwhile, Khrushchev broadened Moscow's policy to establish ties with India and other key neutral states. Independence movements in the Third World transformed the post-war order into a more pluralistic world of decolonized African and Middle Eastern nations and of rising nationalism in Asia and Latin America

SINO-SOVIET SPLIT, SPACE RACE, ICBMS Charting the progress of the Space Race in 1957-

1975.

SINO-SOVIET SPLIT, SPACE RACE, ICBMS

The period after 1956 was marked by serious setbacks for the Soviet Union, most notably the breakdown of the Sino-Soviet alliance, beginning the Sino-Soviet split. Mao had defended Stalin when Khrushchev attacked him after his death in 1956, and treated the new Soviet leader as a superficial upstart, accusing him of having lost his revolutionary edge


After this, Khrushchev made many desperate attempts to reconstitute the Sino-Soviet alliance, but Mao considered it useless and denied any proposal.[142] The Chinese-Soviet animosity spilled out in an intra-communist propaganda war.[143] Further on, the Soviets focused on a bitter rivalry with Mao's China for leadership of the global communist movement,


On the nuclear weapons front, the United States and the USSR pursued nuclear rearmament and developed long-range weapons with which they could strike the territory of the other.[32] In August 1957, the Soviets successfully launched the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM)[145] and in October, launched the first Earth satellite, Sputnik.[146] The launch of Sputnik inaugurated the Space Race. This culminated in the Apollo Moon landings, which astronaut Frank Borman later described as "just a battle in the Cold War.

CUBAN REVOLUTION AND THE BAY OF PIGS In Cuba, the 26th of July Movement seized power in

January 1959, toppling President Fulgencio Batista, whose unpopular regime had been denied arms by the Eisenhower administration.[148]

Diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States continued for some time after Batista's fall, but President Eisenhower deliberately left the capital to avoid meeting Cuba's young revolutionary leader Fidel Castro during the latter's trip to Washington in April, leaving Vice President Richard Nixon to conduct the meeting in his place.[149] Eisenhower's officials were not sure as to whether Castro was a communist, but hostile toward the Cubans' efforts to decrease their economic reliance on the United States

CUBAN REVOLUTION AND THE BAY OF PIGS

n January 1961, just prior to leaving office, Eisenhower formally severed relations with the Cuban government. In April 1961, the administration of newly-elected American President John F. Kennedy mounted an unsuccessful CIA-organized invasion of the island at Playa Girón in the Bay of Pigs — a failure that publicly humiliated the United States.[150] Castro responded by embracing Marxism-Leninism, and the Soviet Union pledged to provide support.

BERLIN CRISIS OF 1961 The Berlin Crisis of 1961 was the last major incident in the Cold War

regarding the status of Berlin and post–World War II Germany. By the early 1950s, the Soviet approach to restricting emigration movement was emulated by most of the rest of the Eastern Bloc.[151] However, hundreds of thousands of East Germans annually emigrated to West Germany through a "loophole" in the system that existed between East and West Berlin, where the four occupying World War II powers governed movement.

The emigration resulted in a massive "brain drain" from East Germany to West Germany of younger educated professionals, such that nearly 20% of East Germany's population had migrated to West Germany by 1961.[153] That June, the Soviet Union issued a new ultimatum demanding the withdrawal of Allied forces from West Berlin.[154] The request was rebuffed, and in August, East Germany erected a barbed-wire barrier that would eventually be expanded through construction into the Berlin Wall, effectively closing the loophole

CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS AND KHRUSHCHEV OUSTER

A U.S. Navy P-2 of VP-18 flying over a Soviet freighter during the Cuban Missile Crisis


Continuing to seek ways to oust Castro following the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy and his administration experimented with various ways of covertly facilitating the overthrow of the Cuban government. Significant hopes were pinned on a covert program named the Cuban Project, devised under the Kennedy administration in 1961.

In February 1962, Khrushchev learned of the American plans regarding Cuba: a "Cuban project" — approved by the CIA and stipulating the overthrow of the Castro government in October, possibly involving the American military — and yet one more Kennedy-ordered operation to assassinate Castro.[156] Preparations to install Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba were undertaken in response.


Alarmed, Kennedy considered various reactions, and ultimately responded to the installation of nuclear missiles in Cuba with a naval blockade and presented an ultimatum to the Soviets. Khrushchev backed down from a confrontation, and the Soviet Union removed the missiles in return for an American pledge not to invade Cuba again.[157]

The Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world closer to nuclear war than ever before.[158] It further demonstrated the concept of mutually assured destruction, that neither nuclear power was prepared to use nuclear weapons fearing total destruction via nuclear retaliation.[159] The aftermath of the crisis led to the first efforts in the nuclear arms race at nuclear disarmament and improving relations,[110] although the Cold War's first arms control agreement, the Antarctic Treaty, had come into force in 1961.[160]

In 1964, Khrushchev's Kremlin colleagues managed to oust him, but allowed him a peaceful retirement.[161] Accused of rudeness and incompetence, he was also credited with ruining Soviet agriculture and bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war.[161] Khrushchev had become an international embarrassment when he authorized construction of the Berlin Wall, a public humiliation for Marxism-Leninism

CONFRONTATION THROUGH DÉTENTE (1962–79)

The United States reached the moon in 1969—a milestone in the space race.


United States Navy F-4 Phantom II intercepts a Soviet Tupolev Tu-95 D aircraft in the early 1970s


In the course of the 1960s and 1970s, Cold War participants struggled to adjust to a new, more complicated pattern of international relations in which the world was no longer divided into two clearly opposed blocs.[71] From the beginning of the post-war period, Western Europe and Japan rapidly recovered from the destruction of World War II and sustained strong economic growth through the 1950s and 1960s, with per capita GDPs approaching those of the United States, while Eastern Bloc economies stagnated.[71][162]

As a result of the 1973 oil crisis, combined with the growing influence of Third World alignments such as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the Non-Aligned Movement, less-powerful countries had more room to assert their independence and often showed themselves resistant to pressure from either superpower.[97] Moscow, meanwhile, was forced to turn its attention inward to deal with the Soviet Union's deep-seated domestic economic problems.[71] During this period, Soviet leaders such as Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin embraced the notion of détente

FRENCH NATO WITHDRAWAL The unity of NATO was breached early in its history, with a

crisis occurring during Charles de Gaulle's presidency of France from 1958 onwards. De Gaulle protested at the United States' strong role in the organization and what he perceived as a special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom. In a memorandum sent to President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan on 17 September 1958, he argued for the creation of a tripartite directorate that would put France on an equal footing with the United States and the United Kingdom, and also for the expansion of NATO's coverage to include geographical areas of interest to France, most notably French Algeria, where France was waging a counter-insurgency and sought NATO assistance

Considering the response given to be unsatisfactory, de Gaulle began the development of an independent French nuclear deterrent and in 1966 withdrew from NATO's military structures and expelled NATO troops from French soil

CZECHOSLOVAKIA INVASION

In 1968, a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia called the Prague Spring took place that included "Action Program" of liberalizations, which described increasing freedom of the press, freedom of speech and freedom of movement, along with an economic emphasis on consumer goods, the possibility of a multiparty government, limiting the power of the secret police[165][166] and potentially withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact.[167]

The Soviet army, together with most of their Warsaw Pact allies, invaded Czechoslovakia.[168] The invasion was followed by a wave of emigration, including an estimated 70,000 Czechs initially fleeing, with the total eventually reaching 300,000.[169] The invasion sparked intense protests from Yugoslavia, Romania and China, and from Western European communist parties

BREZHNEV DOCTRINE Leonid Brezhnev and Richard Nixon during Brezhnev's June 1973

visit to Washington; this was a high-water mark in détente between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Main article: Brezhnev Doctrine In September 1968, during a speech at the Fifth Congress of the

Polish United Workers' Party one month after the invasion of Czechoslovakia, Brezhnev outlined the Brezhnev Doctrine, in which he claimed the right to violate the sovereignty of any country attempting to replace Marxism-Leninism with capitalism. During the speech, Brezhnev stated:[167]

When forces that are hostile to socialism try to turn the development of some socialist country towards capitalism, it becomes not only a problem of the country concerned, but a common problem and concern of all socialist countries.

The doctrine found its origins in the failures of Marxism-Leninism in states like Poland, Hungary and East Germany, which were facing a declining standard of living contrasting with the prosperity of West Germany and the rest of Western Europe

THIRD WORLD ESCALATIONS

Alexei Kosygin (left) next to U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson (right) during the Glassboro Summit Conference

THIRD WORLD ESCALATIONS In late April 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson landed some

22,000 troops in the Dominican Republic for a one-year occupation of the republic in an invasion codenamed Operation Power Pack, citing the threat of the emergence of a Cuban-style revolution in Latin America.[17] Presidential elections held in 1966, during the occupation, handed victory to the conservative Joaquín Balaguer. Although Balaguer enjoyed a real base of support from sectors of the elites as well as peasants, his formally running Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) opponent, former President Juan Bosch, did not actively campaign.[172] The PRD's activists were violently harassed by the Dominican police and armed forces.[172]

In Indonesia, the hardline anti-communist General Suharto wrested control of the state from his predecessor Sukarno in an attempt to establish a "New Order". From 1965 to 1966, the military orchestrated the mass killing of an estimated half-million members and sympathizers of the Indonesian Communist Party and other leftist organizations

THIRD WORLD ESCALATIONS Escalating the scale of American intervention in the ongoing conflict

between Ngô Đình Diệm's South Vietnamese government and the communist National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF) insurgents opposing it, Johnson stationed some 575,000 troops in Southeast Asia to defeat the NLF and their North Vietnamese allies in the Vietnam War, but his costly policy weakened the US economy and, by 1975, ultimately culminated in what most of the world saw as a humiliating defeat of the world's most powerful superpower at the hands of one of the world's poorest nations.[17]

In Chile, the Socialist Party candidate Salvador Allende won the presidential election of 1970, becoming the first democratically elected Marxist to become president of a country in the Americas.[174] Backed by the CIA, General Augusto Pinochet carried out a violent coup against the government on September 11, 1973 and quickly consolidated all political power as a military dictator. Allende's reforms of the economy were rolled back and leftist opponents were killed or detained in internment camps under the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA).

THIRD WORLD ESCALATIONS Additionally, the continent-wide South American

Operation Condor — employed by dictators in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Uruguay, and Paraguay to suppress leftist dissent — was backed by the United States, which (sometimes accurately) perceived Soviet or Cuban support behind these opposition movements.[175]

Displeasing the United States, Jamaica began pursuing closer relations with the Cuban government as a result of Michael Manley's election in 1972.[176] The United States' covert response included financing Manley's political opponents, the instigation of mutiny in the Jamaican army, and the fitting out of a private mercernary army against the Manley government.[139] Violence ensued

THIRD WORLD ESCALATIONS Moreover, the Middle East continued to be a source of

contention. Egypt, which received the bulk of its arms and economic assistance from the USSR, was a troublesome client, with a reluctant Soviet Union feeling obliged to assist in both the 1967 Six-Day War (with advisers and technicians) and the War of Attrition (with pilots and aircraft) against pro-Western Israel.[177] Despite the beginning of an Egyptian shift from a pro-Soviet to a pro-American orientation in 1972 (under Egypt's new leader Anwar El Sadat),[178] rumors of imminent Soviet intervention on the Egyptians' behalf during the 1973 Yom Kippur War brought about a massive American mobilization that threatened to wreck détente.[179] Although pre-Sadat Egypt had been the largest recipient of Soviet aid in the Middle East, the Soviets were also successful in establishing close relations with communist South Yemen, as well as the nationalist governments of Algeria and Iraq.[178] Indirect Soviet assistance to the Palestinian side of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict included support for Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)

THIRD WORLD ESCALATIONS In Africa, Somali army officers led by

Mohamed Siad Barre carried out a bloodless coup in 1969, creating the socialist Somali Democratic Republic. The Soviet Union vowed to support Somalia. Four years later, the pro-American Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie was overthrown in a 1974 coup by the Derg, a radical group of Ethiopian army officers led by the pro-Soviet Mengistu Haile Mariam, who built up relations with the Cubans and Soviets.[181] When fighting between the Somalis and Ethiopians broke out in the 1977-1978 Somali-Ethiopian Ogaden War, Barre lost his Soviet support and allied with the United States. Cuban troops took part in the war on the side of the Ethiopians.[181]

THIRD WORLD ESCALATIONS The 1974 Portuguese Carnation Revolution against the authoritarian

Estado Novo returned Portugal to a multi-party system and facilitated the independence of the Portuguese colonies Angola and East Timor. In Africa, where Angolan rebels had waged a multi-faction independence war against Portuguese rule since 1961, a two-decade civil war replaced the anti-colonial struggle as fighting erupted between the communist People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), backed by the Cubans and Soviets, and the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA), backed by the United States, the People's Republic of China, and Mobutu's government in Zaire. The United States, the apartheid government of South Africa, and several other African governments also supported a third faction, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). Without bothering to consult the Soviets in advance, the Cuban government sent its troops to fight alongside the MPLA.[181] Apartheid South Africa sent troops to support the UNITA, but the MPLA, bolstered by Cuban personnel and Soviet assistance, eventually gained the upper hand

THIRD WORLD ESCALATIONS

In southeast Asia, the colony of East Timor unilaterally declared independence under the left-wing Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (Fretilin) in November 1975. Supported by Australia and the United States, Suharto's Indonesia invaded in December — the beginning of an occupation that would last a quarter-century

SINO-AMERICAN RAPPROACHMENT 1972 Nixon with Mao Ze Dong on his visit to China

SINO-AMERICAN RAPPROACHMENT As a result of the Sino-Soviet split, tensions along the

Chinese-Soviet border reached their peak in 1969, and United States President Richard Nixon decided to use the conflict to shift the balance of power towards the West in the Cold War.[183] The Chinese had sought improved relations with the Americans in order to gain advantage over the Soviets as well.

In February 1972, Nixon announced a stunning rapprochement with Mao's China[184] by traveling to Beijing and meeting with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. At this time, the USSR achieved rough nuclear parity with the United States; meanwhile, the Vietnam War both weakened America's influence in the Third World and cooled relations with Western Europe.[185] Although indirect conflict between Cold War powers continued through the late 1960s and early 1970s, tensions were beginning to ease

NIXON, BREZHNEV, AND DÉTENTE Following his China visit, Nixon met with Soviet leaders, including

Brezhnev in Moscow.[186] These Strategic Arms Limitation Talks resulted in two landmark arms control treaties: SALT I, the first comprehensive limitation pact signed by the two superpowers,[187] and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which banned the development of systems designed to intercept incoming missiles. These aimed to limit the development of costly anti-ballistic missiles and nuclear missiles.[71]

Nixon and Brezhnev proclaimed a new era of "peaceful coexistence" and established the groundbreaking new policy of détente (or cooperation) between the two superpowers. Meanwhile, Brezhnev attempted to revive the Soviet economy, which was declining in part because of heavy military expenditures.[17] Between 1972 and 1974, the two sides also agreed to strengthen their economic ties,[17] including agreements for increased trade. As a result of their meetings, détente would replace the hostility of the Cold War and the two countries would live mutually.[186]

Meanwhile, these developments coincided with the "Ostpolitik" of West German Chancellor Willy Brandt.[170] Other agreements were concluded to stabilize the situation in Europe, culminating in the Helsinki Accords signed at the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe in 1975

LATE 1970S DETERIORATION OF RELATIONS

Leonid Brezhnev and Jimmy Carter sign SALT II treaty, June 18, 1979, in Vienna

NIXON, BREZHNEV, AND DÉTENTE In the 1970s, the KGB, led by Yuri Andropov, continued

to persecute distinguished Soviet personalities such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov, who were criticising the Soviet leadership in harsh terms.[189] Indirect conflict between the superpowers continued through this period of détente in the Third World, particularly during political crises in the Middle East, Chile, Ethiopia, and Anglo.[190]

Although President Jimmy Carter tried to place another limit on the arms race with a SALT II agreement in 1979,[191] his efforts were undermined by the other events that year, including the Iranian Revolution and the Nicaraguan Revolution, which both ousted pro-US regimes, and his retaliation against Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in December

SECOND COLD WAR (1979–85)

The term second Cold War has been used by some historians to refer to the period of intensive reawakening of Cold War tensions and conflicts in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Tensions greatly increased between the major powers with both sides becoming more militaristic

WAR IN AFGHANISTAN During December 1979, approximately 75,000 Soviet troops

invaded Afghanistan in order to support the Marxist government formed by ex-Prime-minister Nur Muhammad Taraki, assassinated that September by one of his party rivals.[192]

In a post-Afghan War interview conducted by French weekly newsmagazine Le Nouvel Observateur, President Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski stated that the president had already signed a directive to provide aid to the anti-communist mujahideen insurgency against the pro-Soviet PDPA government of Afghanistan in July, some six months prior to the Soviet military intervention.[193] Asked by the interviewer if he had regrets, given that "the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan" and that "people didn't believe them," Brzezinski responded:

WAR IN AFGHANISTAN “Regret what? The secret operation was an excellent idea. It

had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: we now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam...”

Carter responded to the Soviet intervention by withdrawing the SALT II treaty from the Senate, imposing embargoes on grain and technology shipments to the USSR, and demanding a significant increase in military spending, and further announced that the United States would boycott the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics. He described the Soviet incursion as "the most serious threat to the peace since the Second World War

REAGAN AND THATCHER

Thatcher's Ministry meets with Reagan's Cabinet at the White House, 1981

REAGAN AND THATCHER In January 1977, four years prior to becoming

president, Ronald Reagan bluntly stated, in a conversation with Richard V. Allen, his basic expectation in relation to the Cold War. "My idea of American policy toward the Soviet Union is simple, and some would say simplistic," he said. "It is this: We win and they lose. What do you think of that?"[196] In 1980, Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter in the 1980 presidential election, vowing to increase military spending and confront the Soviets everywhere.[197] Both Reagan and new British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher denounced the Soviet Union and its ideology. Reagan labeled the Soviet Union an "evil empire" and predicted that Communism would be left on the "ash heap of history"

REAGAN AND THATCHER Despite anti-American sentiment in Iran as a result of the

1979 Iranian Revolution against the pro-American shah and an accompanying breakdown in relations with the new Ayatollah Khomeini government over the Iran hostage crisis, the Reagan administration reached out to the anti-communist Khomeini in an effort to recruit the theocracy into the American camp in the early 1980s. Then-CIA director William Casey described the Khomeini government as "faltering and [possibly] moving toward a moment of truth... The U.S. has almost no cards to play; the USSR has many."[199] One mode of American support for the Iranians consisted of secret arms sales. In 1983, the CIA passed an extensive list of Iranian communists and other leftists secretly working in the Iranian government to Khomeini's administration.[200] A Tower Commission report later observed that the list was utilized to take "measures, including mass executions, that virtually eliminated the pro-Soviet infrastructure in Iran."

REAGAN AND THATCHER By early 1985, Reagan's anti-communist position had

developed into a stance known as the new Reagan Doctrine — which, in addition to containment, formulated an additional right to subvert existing communist governments.[201] Besides continuing Carters' policy of supporting the Islamic opponents of the Soviet Union and the Soviet-backed PDPA government in Afghanistan, the CIA also sought to weaken the Soviet Union itself by promoting political Islam in the majority-Muslim Central Asian Soviet Union.[202] Additionally, the CIA encouraged anti-communist Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency to train Muslims from around the world to participate in the jihad against the Soviet Union

POLISH SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT AND MARTIAL LAW

Pope John Paul II provided a moral focus for anti-communism; a visit to his native Poland in 1979 stimulated a religious and nationalist resurgence centered on the Solidarity movement that galvanized opposition and may have led to his attempted assassination two years later.[203]

In December 1981, Poland's Wojciech Jaruzelski reacted to the crisis by imposing a period of martial law. Reagan imposed economic sanctions on Poland in response.[204] Mikhail Suslov, the Kremlin's top ideologist, advised Soviet leaders not to intervene if Poland fell under the control of Solidarity, for fear it might lead to heavy economic sanctions, representing a catastrophe for the Soviet economy

SOVIET AND US MILITARY AND ECONOMIC ISSUES

Delta 183 launch vehicle lifts off, carrying the Strategic Defense Initiative sensor experiment "Delta Star".


Moscow had built up a military that consumed as much as 25 percent of the Soviet Union's gross national product at the expense of consumer goods and investment in civilian sectors.[205] Soviet spending on the arms race and other Cold War commitments both caused and exacerbated deep-seated structural problems in the Soviet system, which saw at least a decade of economic stagnation during the late Brezhnev years.

Soviet investment in the defense sector was not driven by military necessity, but in large part by the interests of massive party and state bureaucracies dependent on the sector for their own power and privileges.[206] The Soviet Armed Forces became the largest in the world in terms of the numbers and types of weapons they possessed, in the number of troops in their ranks, and in the sheer size of their military–industrial base.[207] However, the quantitative advantages held by the Soviet military often concealed areas where the Eastern Bloc dramatically lagged behind the West


By the early 1980s, the USSR had built up a military arsenal and army surpassing that of the United States. Soon after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, president Carter began massively building up the United States military. This buildup was accelerated by the Reagan administration, which increased the military spending from 5.3 percent of GNP in 1981 to 6.5 percent in 1986,[209] the largest peacetime defense buildup in United States history.[210]

Tensions continued intensifying in the early 1980s when Reagan revived the B-1 Lancer program that was canceled by the Carter administration, produced LGM-118 Peacekeepers,[211] installed US cruise missiles in Europe, and announced his experimental Strategic Defense Initiative, dubbed "Star Wars" by the media, a defense program to shoot down missiles in mid-flight


With the background of a buildup in tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States, and the deployment of Soviet RSD-10 Pioneer ballistic missiles targeting Western Europe, NATO decided, under the impetus of the Carter presidency, to deploy MGM-31 Pershing and cruise missiles in Europe, primarily West Germany.[213] This deployment would have placed missiles just 10 minutes' striking distance from Moscow.[214]

After Reagan's military buildup, the Soviet Union did not respond by further building its military[215] because the enormous military expenses, along with inefficient planned manufacturing and collectivized agriculture, were already a heavy burden for the Soviet economy.[216] At the same time, Reagan persuaded Saudi Arabia to increase oil production,[217] even as other non-OPEC nations were increasing production.[218] These developments contributed to the 1980s oil glut, which affected the Soviet Union, as oil was the main source of Soviet export revenues.[205][216] Issues with command economics,[219] oil prices decreases and large military expenditures gradually brought the Soviet economy to stagnation


On September 1, 1983, the Soviet Union shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, a Boeing 747 with 269 people aboard, including sitting Congressman Larry McDonald, when it violated Soviet airspace just past the west coast of Sakhalin Island near Moneron Island —an act which Reagan characterized as a "massacre". This act increased support for military deployment, overseen by Reagan, which stood in place until the later accords between Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev.[220] The Able Archer 83 exercise in November 1983, a realistic simulation of a coordinated NATO nuclear release, has been called most dangerous moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis, as the Soviet leadership keeping a close watch on it considered a nuclear attack to be imminent.[221]

US domestic public concerns about intervening in foreign conflicts persisted from the end of the Vietnam War.[222] The Reagan administration emphasized the use of quick, low-cost counter-insurgency tactics to intervene in foreign conflicts.[222] In 1983, the Reagan administration intervened in the multisided Lebanese Civil War, invaded Grenada, bombed Libya and backed the Central American Contras, anti-communist paramilitaries seeking to overthrow the Soviet-aligned Sandinista government in Nicaragua.[97] While Reagan's interventions against Grenada and Libya were popular in the United States, his backing of the Contra rebels was mired in controversy


Meanwhile, the Soviets incurred high costs for their own foreign interventions. Although Brezhnev was convinced in 1979 that the Soviet war in Afghanistan would be brief, Muslim guerrillas, aided by the US and other countries, waged a fierce resistance against the invasion.[224] The Kremlin sent nearly 100,000 troops to support its puppet regime in Afghanistan, leading many outside observers to dub the war "the Soviets' Vietnam".[224] However, Moscow's quagmire in Afghanistan was far more disastrous for the Soviets than Vietnam had been for the Americans because the conflict coincided with a period of internal decay and domestic crisis in the Soviet system.


A senior US State Department official predicted such an outcome as early as 1980, positing that the invasion resulted in part from a "domestic crisis within the Soviet system. ... It may be that the thermodynamic law of entropy has ... caught up with the Soviet system, which now seems to expend more energy on simply maintaining its equilibrium than on improving itself. We could be seeing a period of foreign movement at a time of internal decay".[225][226] The Soviets were not helped by their aged and sclerotic leadership either: Brezhnev, virtually incapacitated in his last years, was succeeded by Andropov and Chernenko, neither of whom lasted long. After Chernenko's death, Reagan was asked why he had not negotiated with Soviet leaders. Reagan quipped, "They keep dying on me".

FINAL YEARS (1985–91)

Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan sign the INF Treaty at the White House, 1987

FINAL YEARS (1985–91)

Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1988

FINAL YEARS (1985–91)GORBACHEV REFORMS: By the time the comparatively youthful Mikhail Gorbachev

became General Secretary in 1985,[198] the Soviet economy was stagnant and faced a sharp fall in foreign currency earnings as a result of the downward slide in oil prices in the 1980s.[228] These issues prompted Gorbachev to investigate measures to revive the ailing state.[228]

An ineffectual start led to the conclusion that deeper structural changes were necessary and in June 1987 Gorbachev announced an agenda of economic reform called perestroika, or restructuring.[229] Perestroika relaxed the production quota system, allowed private ownership of businesses and paved the way for foreign investment. These measures were intended to redirect the country's resources from costly Cold War military commitments to more productive areas in the civilian sector

FINAL YEARS (1985–91) GORBACHEV REFORMS: Despite initial skepticism in the West, the new Soviet

leader proved to be committed to reversing the Soviet Union's deteriorating economic condition instead of continuing the arms race with the West.[110][230] Partly as a way to fight off internal opposition from party cliques to his reforms, Gorbachev simultaneously introduced glasnost, or openness, which increased freedom of the press and the transparency of state institutions.[231] Glasnost was intended to reduce the corruption at the top of the Communist Party and moderate the abuse of power in the Central Committee.[232] Glasnost also enabled increased contact between Soviet citizens and the western world, particularly with the United States, contributing to the accelerating détente between the two nations

FINAL YEARS (1985–91) THAW IN RELATIONS: In response to the Kremlin's military and political

concessions, Reagan agreed to renew talks on economic issues and the scaling-back of the arms race.[234] The first was held in November 1985 in Geneva, Switzerland.[234] At one stage the two men, accompanied only by an interpreter, agreed in principle to reduce each country's nuclear arsenal by 50 percent.[235] A second Reykjavík Summit was held in Iceland. Talks went well until the focus shifted to Reagan's proposed Strategic Defense Initiative, which Gorbachev wanted eliminated: Reagan refused.[236] The negotiations failed, but the third summit in 1987 led to a breakthrough with the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). The INF treaty eliminated all nuclear-armed, ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers (300 to 3,400 miles) and their infrastructure

FINAL YEARS (1985–91) THAW IN RELATIONS: East–West tensions rapidly subsided through the mid-

to-late 1980s, culminating with the final summit in Moscow in 1989, when Gorbachev and George H. W. Bush signed the START I arms control treaty.[238] During the following year it became apparent to the Soviets that oil and gas subsidies, along with the cost of maintaining massive troops levels, represented a substantial economic drain.[239] In addition, the security advantage of a buffer zone was recognised as irrelevant and the Soviets officially declared that they would no longer intervene in the affairs of allied states in Eastern Europe

FINAL YEARS (1985–91) THAW IN RELATIONS:

In 1989, Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan[241] and by 1990 Gorbachev consented to German reunification,[239] the only alternative being a Tiananmen scenario.[242] When the Berlin Wall came down, Gorbachev's "Common European Home" concept began to take shape.[243]

On December 3, 1989, Gorbachev and Reagan's successor, George H. W. Bush, declared the Cold War over at the Malta Summit;[244] a year later, the two former rivals were partners in the Gulf War against Iraq

FINAL YEARS (1985–91) FALTERING SOVIET SYSTEM:

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

FINAL YEARS (1985–91) FALTERING SOVIET SYSTEM: By 1989, the Soviet alliance system was on the brink of

collapse, and, deprived of Soviet military support, the Communist leaders of the Warsaw Pact states were losing power.[241] In the USSR itself, glasnost weakened the bonds that held the Soviet Union together[240] and by February 1990, with the dissolution of the USSR looming, the Communist Party was forced to surrender its 73-year-old monopoly on state power.[246]

At the same time freedom of press and dissent allowed by glasnost and the festering "nationalities question" increasingly led the Union's component republics to declare their autonomy from Moscow, with the Baltic states withdrawing from the Union entirely.[247] The 1989 revolutionary wave that swept across Central and Eastern Europe overthrew the Soviet-style communist states, such as Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria,[248] Romania being the only Eastern-bloc country to topple its communist regime violently and execute its head of state

FINAL YEARS (1985–91) SOVIET DISSOLUTION: Gorbachev's permissive attitude toward Eastern

Europe did not initially extend to Soviet territory; even Bush, who strove to maintain friendly relations, condemned the January 1991 killings in Latvia and Lithuania, privately warning that economic ties would be frozen if the violence continued.[250] The USSR was fatally weakened by a failed coup and a growing number of Soviet republics, particularly Russia, who threatened to secede from the USSR. The Commonwealth of Independent States, created on December 21, 1991, is viewed as a successor entity to the Soviet Union but, according to Russia's leaders, its purpose was to "allow a civilized divorce" between the Soviet Republics and is comparable to a loose confederation.[251] The USSR was declared officially dissolved on December 25, 1991

AFTERMATH OF THE COLD WAR NATO has expanded eastwards into the former Warsaw Pact

and former parts of the Soviet Union since the end of the Cold War.

Following the Cold War, Russia cut military spending dramatically, creating a wrenching adjustment as the military-industrial sector had previously employed one of every five Soviet adults,[253] meaning its dismantling left millions throughout the former Soviet Union unemployed.[253] After Russia embarked on capitalist economic reforms in the 1990s, it suffered a financial crisis and a recession more severe than the US and Germany had experienced during the Great Depression.[254] Russian living standards have worsened overall in the post–Cold War years, although the economy has resumed growth since 1999

AFTERMATH OF THE COLD WAR The aftermath of the Cold War continues to influence world

affairs.[13] After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the post–Cold War world is widely considered as unipolar, with the United States the sole remaining superpower.[255][256][257] The Cold War defined the political role of the United States in the post–World War II world: by 1989 the US held military alliances with 50 countries, and had 526,000[258] troops posted abroad in dozens of countries, with 326,000 in Europe (two-thirds of which in west Germany)[259] and about 130,000 in Asia (mainly Japan and South Korea).[258] The Cold War also marked the apex of peacetime military-industrial complexes, especially in the USA, and large-scale military funding of science.[260] These complexes, though their origins may be found as early as the 19th century, have grown considerably during the Cold War. The military-industrial complexes have great impact on their countries and help shape their society, policy and foreign relations

AFTERMATH OF THE COLD WAR Military expenditures by the US during the Cold War

years were estimated to have been $8 trillion, while nearly 100,000 Americans lost their lives in the Korean War and Vietnam War.[262] Although the loss of life among Soviet soldiers is difficult to estimate, as a share of their gross national product the financial cost for the Soviet Union was far higher than that incurred by the United States.[263]

In addition to the loss of life by uniformed soldiers, millions died in the superpowers' proxy wars around the globe, most notably in Southeast Asia.[264] Most of the proxy wars and subsidies for local conflicts ended along with the Cold War; interstate wars, ethnic wars, revolutionary wars, as well as refugee and displaced persons crises have declined sharply in the post–Cold War years

AFTERMATH OF THE COLD WAR The aftermath of Cold War conflict, however, is not

always easily erased, as many of the economic and social tensions that were exploited to fuel Cold War competition in parts of the Third World remain acute.[13] The breakdown of state control in a number of areas formerly ruled by Communist governments has produced new civil and ethnic conflicts, particularly in the former Yugoslavia.[13]

In Eastern Europe, the end of the Cold War has ushered in an era of economic growth and a large increase in the number of liberal democracies, while in other parts of the world, such as Afghanistan, independence was accompanied by state failure

HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE COLD WAR As soon as the term "Cold War" was popularized to refer to

post-war tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, interpreting the course and origins of the conflict has been a source of heated controversy among historians, political scientists, and journalists.[266] In particular, historians have sharply disagreed as to who was responsible for the breakdown of Soviet–US relations after the Second World War; and whether the conflict between the two superpowers was inevitable, or could have been avoided.[267] Historians have also disagreed on what exactly the Cold War was, what the sources of the conflict were, and how to disentangle patterns of action and reaction between the two sides.[13]

Although explanations of the origins of the conflict in academic discussions are complex and diverse, several general schools of thought on the subject can be identified. Historians commonly speak of three differing approaches to the study of the Cold War: "orthodox" accounts, "revisionism", and "post-revisionism

HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE COLD WAR "Orthodox" accounts place responsibility for the Cold War on

the Soviet Union and its expansion into Eastern Europe.[260] "Revisionist" writers place more responsibility for the

breakdown of post-war peace on the United States, citing a range of US efforts to isolate and confront the Soviet Union well before the end of World War II.[260]

"Post-revisionists" see the events of the Cold War as more nuanced, and attempt to be more balanced in determining what occurred during the Cold War.[260] Much of the historiography on the Cold War weaves together two or even all three of these broad categories

PRESIDENTS OF THE COLD WAR Harry S Truman 33rd President 1945-1953 Democratic

Accomplishments Atomic Bomb United Nations Truman Doctrine Marshall Plan Containment National Security Act 1947 Berlin Airlift NATO NSC-68 Desegergated the military outlawed discriminational hiring in civil

service positions Bussiness with Government Contracts were

forbidden to hire on a basis of race. Korean War Israel becomes a Nation

PRESIDENTS OF THE COLD WAR Dwight D. Eisenhower 34th President 1953-1961 Republican

Accomplishments Armistace in Korea Interstate Highway System Civil Rights Act 1957 Civil Rights Act 1960 NASA FAA Vietnam War

PRESIDENTS OF THE COLD WAR John f. Kennedy 35th President 1961-1963 Democratic

Accomplishments Bay of Pigs Cuban Missle Crisis Peace Corps Nuclear Test Ban Treaty New Frontier Vietnam War

PRESIDENTS OF THE COLD WAR Lyndon B. Johnson 36th President 1963-1969 Democratic

Accomplishments Warren Commission Great Society “War on Poverty” Federal Funding for Education Medicare/Medicaid Head Start Gun Control Gulf of Tonkin Resoultion Vietnam War Six Day War

PRESIDENTS OF THE COLD WAR Richard M. Nixon 37th President

1969-1974

Republican

Accomplishments Ended Vietnam War Ended the Gold Standard EPA OSHA War on Drugs Title IX Title X Equal Employment Opportunity Act Comprehensive Child Development Act Roe v. Wade 3 Man mooned nnissions (including first landing) Indo Pakistani War Visited Communist China SALT I Anti Ballistic Missle Treaty Détente Appeared on five presidential tickets (tied for most with FDR) Yom Kippur War Oil Crisis of 1973 Maximum Speed Limit of 55 (lasted until Bill Clinton) Watergate

PRESIDENTS OF THE COLD WAR

Gerald R. Ford 38th President 1974-1977 Republican Accomplishments

Pardoned Nixon Only President to never be elected to

the office (appointed to both VP & Pres)

Helsenki Accords Education for All Handicapped Children

Act of 1975


Jimmy E. Carter 39th President 1977-1981 Democratic Accomplishments

Chrysler Loan Act of 1979 Moscow 1980 Olympics Boycott Signed the Torrijos-Carter Treaties. SALT II Iran Hostage Crisis


Ronald W. Reagan 40th President 1981-1989 Republican Accomplishments

Reagonomics INF Treaty Iran Contra Affair Operation Urgent Fury Reagan Doctrine Strategic Defense Initiative (STAR Wars) 525 electorial votes (1984 record) Challenger Explosion War on Drugs (Just Say No) Gulf of Sidra incident in 1981 Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986 Iran-Contra affair Cold War ends 1989


George H.W. Bush 41st President 1989-1993 Republican Accomplishments

Fall of Berlin Wall Collapse of Soviet Union Space Station Freedom Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 reauthorized the Clean Air Act Immigration Act of 1990, Persian Gulf War Proposed North American Free Trade

Agreement (NAFTA) (signed by Bill Clinton

t he c old w ar s caled d own 1945-1991. c old w ar : a bitter indirect conflict between the ussr...

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