Confrontation between east and west:
The conquest of power by the Russian Bolsheviks made the conflict between Western pluralism
and Eastern authoritarianism a question of international politics. The events of the Second World
War, the destruction of the old European state system and the emergence of the USA and the
Soviet Union as superpowers meant that this conflict came to dominate international relations. It
led to the division of Europe, the creation of blocs and the arms race. The Cold War became a
question not just of competing ideologies but of life and death. Yet this conflict was relativised
by the voices of those who feared nuclear war and those who suffered as a result of the
confrontation. The fears of both sides were exaggerated and rested on false perceptions of the
antagonist, though they were always tempered by a realistic assessment of vital interests. On the
one hand the threat of annihilation argued caution; on the other two separate security systems
made co-operation difficult. The end of the Cold War was brought about not by the policies of
the West but by the penetration of Western values into the East through politicians such as
Gorbachev.
Cold war
During World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union fought together as allies against the
Axis powers. However, the relationship between the two nations was a tense one. Americans had
long been wary of Soviet communism and concerned about Russian leader Joseph Stalin’s
tyrannical rule of his own country. For their part, the Soviets resented the Americans’ decades-
long refusal to treat the USSR as a legitimate part of the international community as well as
their delayed entry into World War II, which resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of
Russians. After the war ended, these grievances ripened into an overwhelming sense of mutual
distrust and enmity.
Postwar Soviet expansionism in Eastern Europe fueled many Americans’ fears of a Russian plan
to control the world. Meanwhile, the USSR came to resent what they perceived as American
officials’ bellicose rhetoric, arms buildup and interventionist approach to international relations.
In such a hostile atmosphere, no single party was entirely to blame for the Cold War; in fact,
some historians believe it was inevitable.
The Cold War: Containment
By the time World War II ended, most American officials agreed that the best defense against
the Soviet threat was a strategy called “containment.” In his famous “Long Telegram,” the
diplomat George Kennan (1904-2005) explained the policy: The Soviet Union, he wrote, was “a
political force committed fanatically to the belief that with the U.S. there can be no permanent
modus vivendi [agreement between parties that disagree].” As a result, America’s only choice
was the “long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.”
“It must be the policy of the United States,” he declared before Congress in 1947, “to support
free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation…by outside pressures.” This way of
thinking would shape American foreign policy for the next four decades.
Did you know? The term 'cold war' first appeared in a 1945 essay by the English writer George
Orwell called 'You and the Atomic Bomb.'
The Cold War: The Atomic Age
The containment strategy also provided the rationale for an unprecedented arms buildup in the
United States. In 1950, a National Security Council Report known as NSC–68 had echoed
Truman’s recommendation that the country use military force to contain communist
expansionism anywhere it seemed to be occurring. To that end, the report called for a four-fold
increase in defense spending.
In particular, American officials encouraged the development of atomic weapons like the ones
that had ended World War II. Thus began a deadly “arms race.” In 1949, the Soviets tested
an atom bomb of their own. In response, President Truman announced that the United States
would build an even more destructive atomic weapon: the hydrogen bomb, or “superbomb.”
Stalin followed suit.
As a result, the stakes of the Cold War were perilously high. The first H-bomb test, in the
Eniwetok atoll in the Marshall Islands, showed just how fearsome the nuclear age could be. It
created a 25-square-mile fireball that vaporized an island, blew a huge hole in the ocean floor
and had the power to destroy half of Manhattan. Subsequent American and Soviet tests spewed
radioactive waste into the atmosphere.
The ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation had a great impact on American domestic life as
well. People built bomb shelters in their backyards. They practiced attack drills in schools and
other public places. The 1950s and 1960s saw an epidemic of popular films that horrified
moviegoers with depictions of nuclear devastation and mutant creatures. In these and other ways,
the Cold War was a constant presence in Americans’ everyday lives.
The Close of the Cold War
Almost as soon as he took office, President Richard Nixon (1913-1994) began to implement a
new approach to international relations. Instead of viewing the world as a hostile, “bi-polar”
place, he suggested, why not use diplomacy instead of military action to create more poles? To
that end, he encouraged the United Nations to recognize the communist Chinese government
and, after a trip there in 1972, began to establish diplomatic relations with Beijing. At the same
time, he adopted a policy of “détente”–”relaxation”–toward the Soviet Union. In 1972, he and
Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev (1906-1982) signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty
(SALT I), which prohibited the manufacture of nuclear missiles by both sides and took a step
toward reducing the decades-old threat of nuclear war.
Despite Nixon’s efforts, the Cold War heated up again under President Ronald Reagan (1911-
2004). Like many leaders of his generation, Reagan believed that the spread of communism
anywhere threatened freedom everywhere. As a result, he worked to provide financial and
military aid to anticommunist governments and insurgencies around the world. This policy,
particularly as it was applied in the developing world in places like Grenada and El Salvador,
was known as the Reagan Doctrine.
Even as Reagan fought communism in Central America, however, the Soviet Union was
disintegrating. In response to severe economic problems and growing political ferment in the
USSR, Premier Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-) took office in 1985 and introduced two policies that
redefined Russia’s relationship to the rest of the world: “glasnost,” or political openness, and
“perestroika,” or economic reform.
Soviet influence in Eastern Europe waned. In 1989, every other communist state in the region
replaced its government with a noncommunist one. In November of that year, the Berlin Wall–
the most visible symbol of the decades-long Cold War–was finally destroyed, just over two years
after Reagan had challenged the Soviet premier in a speech at Brandenburg Gate in Berlin: “Mr.
Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” By 1991, the Soviet Union itself had fallen apart. The Cold
War was over.
