The Cold War(1945-1989)RP Pamplona

The Cold War• After World War II

• Obvious concern was avoiding another war

• Before World War II• Relationship of US and Soviet Union had been strained

• During the war (indications of future trouble)• Manhattan Project (US atomic bomb program)• Britain and US decided not share the information with the Soviet Union• Stalin knew about the project through spying

• Disagreements about the postwar fate of Eastern Europe• Declaration on Liberated Europe (1945)

The Cold War Begins: Conflict and Containment• US-Soviet relations deteriorated• Stalin moved to impose communist governments

• No intention of abiding the democratic provisions of Declaration on Liberated Europe

• Policy of containment• US’s policy of resisting the expansion of communist influence during the

Cold War• Marshall Plan

• Program of economic assistance to rebuild the nations of Western Europe in the aftermath of WWII.

• Truman Doctrine• Expansive vision of containment• US to assist foreign gov’t threatened by communist forces

The Cold War Expands• Truman Doctrine was unclear• Expanding the scope of containment well beyond Europe

• Fall of China(1949)• North Korean attack on South Korea (1950)• US decided to take military action

• Domino Theory• The belief and fear that the spread of communism to one

country threatened its expansion to neighboring countries• North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)• Decolonization

• Achievement of political independence by European colonies

Easing the Cold War• Détente• Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger• A policy and period of relaxed tensions between the US

and Soviet Union during 1970s• US possessed tools that could be used as leverage to

moderate Soviet behavior

• The promised benefits of détente FAILED to materialize• Soviet Union’s invasion of Latin America and Afghanistan

The Resurgence and End of Cold War• Ronald Raegan• Was convinced that détente allowed the Soviet Union to

surge ahead of the United States in military power and expand its political influence in the Third World while the US naively waited for Soviet moderation.

• The administration increased assistance to anticommunist governments and insurgency movements

• Leonid Brezhnev died in 1982.

• Mikhail Gorbachev• Impressed Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Great

Britain as someone she could “do business with”• People realized this was a new type of Soviet leader

• Perestroika (restructuring) and Glasnost (openness)

• Late 1980s, Gorbachev faced a dilemma• Glasnost was a smashing success, whereas perestroika

was a dismal failure• Berlin wall was being torn down

• By 1991, the Soviet Union itself joined the list of former communist nations when Boris Yeltsin, Gorbachev’s successor, declared communism dead and the Soviet Union disintegrated.

The Curious Peace of the Cold War• Long peace

• The “peace” or absence of war between the US and Soviet Union during the Cold War

• For more than 40 years, two of the greatest military powers in history, divided by an intense ideological rivalry, struggled against each other across the globe. But despite the intensity of the conflict, they never went to war.

• Why did the Cold War never turn hot?• John Mearsheimer• a) the presence of only two major powers (bipolarity) • b) nuclear weapons

The Post-Cold War WorldWhat changed since the end

of the Cold War?

• Germany was unified again• Former allies of the Soviet

Union are now members of NATO

• Division of Europe has ended• The iron curtain, lifted

What remained unchanged?

• American influence

• Ian Clark• “essential continuity in the role of American power… there are institutions that were created during the Cold War, and which were almost defining attributes of it, [that] still endure into the post-Cold War era.”

• The greatest economic challenge to the US is now more likely to emerge from Asia