The Cold War (1945–1991)

Introduction The Cold War was a lengthy struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union that
began in the aftermath of the surrender of Hitler’s Germany. In 1941, Nazi aggression against the USSR
turned the Soviet regime into an ally of the Western democracies. But in the post-war world,
increasingly divergent viewpoints created rifts between those who had once been allies. The United
States and the USSR gradually built up their own zones of influence, dividing the world into two
opposing camps. The Cold War was therefore not exclusively a struggle between the US and the USSR
but a global conflict that affected many countries, particularly the continent of Europe. Indeed, Europe,
divided into two blocs, became one of the main theatres of the war. In Western Europe, the European
integration process began with the support of the United States, while the countries of Eastern Europe
became satellites of the USSR. From 1947 onwards, the two adversaries, employing all the resources at
their disposal for intimidation and subversion, clashed in a lengthy strategic and ideological conflict
punctuated by crises of varying intensity. Although the two Great Powers never fought directly, they
pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war on several occasions. Nuclear deterrence was the only
effective means of preventing a military confrontation. Ironically, this ‘balance of terror’ actually served
as a stimulus for the arms race. Periods of tension alternated between moments of détente or improved
relations between the two camps. Political expert Raymond Aron perfectly defined the Cold War system
with a phrase that hits the nail on the head: ‘impossible peace, improbable war’. The Cold War finally
came to an end in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Communist regimes in
Eastern Europe.

Towards a bipolar world (1945–1953)

The end of the Second World War did not signal a return to normality; on the contrary, it resulted in a
new conflict. The major European powers that had been at the forefront of the international stage in the
1930s were left exhausted and ruined by the war, setting the scene for the emergence of two new
global superpowers. Two blocs developed around the Soviet Union and the United States, with other
countries being forced to choose between the two camps. The USSR came out of the war territorially
enlarged and with an aura of prestige from having fought Hitler’s Germany. The country was given a
new lease of life by its heroic resistance to the enemy, exemplified by the victory at Stalingrad. The USSR
also offered an ideological, economic and social model extending as never before to the rest of Europe.
Furthermore, the Red Army, unlike the US army, was not demobilised at the end of the war. The Soviet
Union thus had a real numerical superiority in terms of men and heavy weapons. The United States was
the great victor of the Second World War. Its human and material losses were relatively low, and even
though the US Army was almost completely demobilised a few months after the end of hostilities, the
United States remained the world’s leading military power. Its navy and air force were unrivalled, and
until 1949 it was the only country with the capacity to produce nuclear weapons. It also confirmed its
status as the world’s leading economic power, in terms of both the volume of trade and industrial and
agricultural production. The US now owned more than two thirds of the world’s gold reserves and the
dollar 4/28 became the primary international currency. The conflicts of interest between the new world
powers gradually multiplied, and a climate of fear and suspicion reigned. Each country feared the
newfound power of the other. The Soviets felt surrounded and threatened by the West and accused the
United States of spearheading ‘imperialist expansion’. For their part, the Americans were concerned at
Communist expansion and accused Stalin of breaching the Yalta Agreement on the right of free peoples
to selfdetermination. The result was a long period of international tension interspersed with dramatic
crises which, from time to time, led to localised armed conflicts without actually causing a fullscale war
between the United States and the USSR. From 1947, Europe, divided into two blocs, was at the heart of
the struggle between the two superpowers. The Cold War reached its first climax with the Soviet
blockade of Berlin. The explosion of the first Soviet atomic bomb in the summer of 1949 reinforced the
USSR in its role as a world power. This situation confirmed the predictions of Winston Churchill, who, in
March 1946, had been the first Western statesman to speak of an ‘Iron Curtain’ that now divided Europe
in two.

A missed opportunity for peace

The Second World War completely changed the face of the world. The toll in both human and material
terms was the heaviest that mankind had ever known. Europe was on its knees; it was in ruins and
reduced to total confusion: factories and transport links had been destroyed, traditional trade links had
been cut off and shortages in raw materials and foodstuffs were prevalent. Even before the Axis
countries surrendered, the three Great Powers — the United States, the British and the Russians — got
together to address the question of how to organise the world after the war. The Teheran Conference
that ran from 28 November to 2 December 1943 was the first summit meeting between Winston
Churchill, Joseph Stalin and Franklin D. Roosevelt. It set out the major guidelines for post-war
international politics. The leaders discussed the Normandy invasion, which at that point was scheduled
to take place on 1 May 1944, as well as the fate of Germany and its possible dismemberment and how
the world should be organised after the conflict. They decided to entrust the study of the German
question to a European Consultative Commission. Two other Allied conferences were subsequently held,
one in Yalta (from 4 to 11 February 1945) and the other in Potsdam (from 17 July to 2 August 1945).
However, the close wartime alliance soon gave way to a climate of mistrust. At the peace conferences,
the three Great Powers quickly realised that the Western and Soviet spheres were divided by
increasingly divergent views. Age-old antagonisms that had been buried during the war resurfaced, and
the Allied powers were unable to reach agreement on a peace treaty.

War time diplomacy

The Yalta Conference From 4 to 11 February 1945
Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin and Franklin D. Roosevelt met in Yalta, in the Crimea on the Black Sea,
to settle the questions raised by the inevitable German defeat. Roosevelt was particularly anxious to
secure the cooperation of Stalin, while Churchill was apprehensive of the Soviet power. He wanted to
avoid the Red Army exerting too widespread an influence over Central Europe. At this time, the Soviet
troops had already reached the centre of Europe, whereas the British and Americans had not yet
crossed the Rhine. 5/28 The three Great Powers first of all agreed on the arrangements for the
occupation of Germany: the country would be divided into four zones of occupation, with France
allocated a zone of occupation to be carved out in part from the British and US zones. Berlin, situated in
the Soviet zone, would also be divided into four sectors. The USSR secured the extension of the eastern
German border to the Oder-Neisse line, placing nearly all of Silesia, part of Pomerania, part of eastern
Brandenburg and a small area of Saxony within Poland. The northern part of East Prussia, around the
city of Königsberg (renamed Kaliningrad), was incorporated into the USSR. Stalin managed to secure use
of the Curzon line as the eastern border of Poland, thereby keeping all Ukrainian and Belorussian
territories within Moscow’s sphere of influence. The three Heads of Government also signed a
‘Declaration on the policy to be followed in the liberated regions’, a text which envisaged free elections
being held and democratic governments taking office. The United States obtained the USSR’s agreement
to enter the fight against Japan, and Roosevelt saw the successful conclusion of his plan for the
formation of a United Nations organisation, which was to be created on 25 April 1945. Yalta seemed to
be the final attempt to reorganise the world on a basis of cooperation and agreement. The world was
not yet divided into two hemispheres of influence, but the Western Powers were obliged to accept
Stalin’s role in the territories liberated by Soviet tanks. Central and Eastern Europe were henceforth
under the exclusive control of the Red Army.

The Potsdam Conference The last of the Allied conferences took place from 17 July to 2 August
1945 in Potsdam, near Berlin. Six months earlier, in the Crimea, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin had laid
the preparations for the post-war period, but the promises made in Yalta were unable to stand up to the
balance of power on the ground. The climate had changed significantly in the intervening period:
Germany had surrendered on 8 May 1945 and the war in Europe had come to an end. Japan stubbornly
resisted US bomb attacks but the United States had a final trump card: on 16 July, the first atomic bomb
test explosion took place in the desert in New Mexico. At the Potsdam Conference, Harry Truman
replaced Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had died on 12 April 1945, and Clement Attlee took over as head of
the British delegation after Winston Churchill’s defeat in the general elections of 26 July. Only Joseph
Stalin was personally present at all the Allied conferences. The atmosphere was much more tense than
at Yalta. A few weeks before the surrender of the Reich, the Red Army had quickly occupied the eastern
part of Germany, part of Austria and all of Central Europe. Stalin, aware of this territorial advantage,
took the opportunity to install Communist governments in the countries liberated by the Soviets. With
the Western powers protesting at their lack of control over the elections held in the countries occupied
by the Red Army, Stalin completely redrew the map of Eastern Europe. Pending the conclusion of peace
treaties, the British and Americans provisionally accepted the Soviet annexations and the new borders
set at the Oder-Neisse line. The Potsdam Agreements also endorsed vast movements of population. The
three Heads of State did nonetheless agree on the practical arrangements for Germany’s complete
disarmament, the abolition of the National Socialist Party, the trial of war criminals 6/28 and the
amount that should be paid in reparations. Negotiations also confirmed the need to dismantle German
industry and the sequestration of the powerful Konzerns, which were to be broken up into smaller
independent companies. Previous agreements on the occupation regimes for Germany and Austria were
confirmed. At Potsdam, the three Great Powers were divided by their increasingly contradictory
viewpoints. The overriding aim was no longer to unite to defeat Nazism, but rather to prepare for the
post-war era and to divide up the ‘spoils’. Just a few months after the Yalta communiqué that had
promised so much, deep divisions were already beginning to form between the West and the Soviets.

The United States and the Western bloc From 1947 onwards, the Western powers were
increasingly concerned at the advance of Communism: in several European countries, Communist
parties played an active role in coalition governments (for example in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria,
Poland, France, Belgium and Italy), sometimes even excluding other parties from power. Greece was in
the midst of a civil war since the autumn of 1946, and Turkey was threatened in turn.

The Truman Doctrine In this tense international atmosphere, US President Harry S. Truman broke with
the policy of his predecessor Franklin D. Roosevelt and redefined the country’s foreign policy guidelines.
On 12 March 1947, in a speech to the US Congress, the President presented his doctrine of containment,
which aimed to provide financial and military aid to the countries threatened by Soviet expansion.
Clearly aimed at stopping the spread of Communism, the Truman Doctrine positioned the United States
as the defender of a free world in the face of Soviet aggression. An aid package of around 400 million
dollars was granted to Greece and Turkey. This new doctrine provided a legitimate basis for the United
States’ activism during the Cold War. Applying the doctrine of containment, the Americans encouraged
Turkey to resist Soviet claims to rights over naval bases in the Bosphorus. They also secured the
withdrawal of Russian troops from Iran. In the meantime, since March 1947, efforts to crack down on
Soviet espionage had been coordinated and the United States set up its Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA). These changes to external policy marked a real turnaround in the history of the United States,
which had previously remained on the sidelines of European disputes. For the US, isolationism was no
longer an option.

The USSR and the Eastern bloc In August 1949, the USSR exploded its first atomic bomb, then, in
1953, its first hydrogen bomb. Its claim to be a world power could no longer be disputed. In the Soviet
Union, Stalin continued to govern alone. Liberalising tendencies which had appeared during the war
disappeared once again, and Stalin’s personality cult reached its height. A further wave of repression
was interrupted, however, by the death of Stalin on 5 March 1953.

The creation of the Soviet buffer zone Territorially enlarged, the USSR came out of the war with an
aura of prestige from having fought Hitler’s Germany. Although in 1945 the Communist world was
limited to the Soviet Union, it rapidly spread to Central and Eastern Europe, forming a protective buffer
zone for the USSR. Communist propaganda was greatly helped by the presence of the Soviet army in the
countries that it had liberated in Central and Eastern Europe. The leaders of non-Communist parties
were progressively removed: they were either discredited, intimidated or subjected to show trials
leading to their imprisonment or even execution. Three years was enough for the USSR to establish
people’s democracies ruled by Communist parties. Poland, Hungary, Romania and Czechoslovakia were
more or less brutally forced into the Soviet embrace. Nevertheless, the refusal in 1948 of the Yugoslav
Communists to follow the line decreed by the Cominform showed that the USSR had some difficulty
keeping control of all its satellite countries.

The division of Germany During 1945, the Allies began organising their respective occupation zones
in Germany. The Americans occupied the South, the British the West and North, France the South-West,
and the Soviets Central Germany. The Eastern part was administered by Poland, except the town of
Königsberg (renamed Kaliningrad) and its surrounding area, which were annexed by the USSR. On 30
August 1945, the Inter-Allied Control Council was founded. Berlin was divided into four sectors and
placed under the administrative control of the Allied Kommandatura. In 1946, the main war criminals
were tried in Nuremberg by Allied judges. In the same year, the fate of the German satellite states and
of Italy, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Finland was determined in Paris by separate peace treaties. On
28 July 1946, the United States proposed a plan for economic unification of the occupied zones. Faced
with the refusal of France and the Soviet Union, the British and Americans decided to unite their zones
economically and, in December of the same year, created the Bizone. On 1 August 1948, the French
occupation zone joined the Bizone, which then became the Trizone. Gradually, relations between the
Allies deteriorated, and the quadripartite structures became unmanageable. In March 1948, the Inter-
Allied Control Council ceased to operate, as did, in June 1948, the Kommandatura.

The Berlin Blockade Germany rapidly became a sparring ground for the Cold War. After having
politically reorganised their occupation zones in defeated Germany, the British and Americans wanted
to revive the German economy, which implied radical monetary reform. On 20 June 1948, the Western
Allies introduced a new unit of account. The German mark, the Deutsche Mark (DM), was introduced in
all the Western zones and replaced the Reichsmark, which had lost all its value. This monetary reform
enabled the shops to be filled once again with goods that had, until then, only been obtainable on the
black market. While the Communists took over nearly all the command posts in the Eastern zone, the
ideas of the former Allies about the economic and political organisation of Germany became more at
odds with each other every day. Hoping to keep Berlin united in the heart of the Soviet zone, and
denouncing what it called the Anglo-American policy of acting without consultation, the USSR reacted to
this initiative on 24 June 1948 by imposing a total blockade of the Western sectors of Berlin. The city lay
in the Soviet zone, but the Americans, the British and the French were established in their respective
occupation zones. Access to Berlin by road, rail and water was impossible until 12 May 1949. Food
supplies and electricity were cut. The introduction of the DM in the Western sectors of Berlin was the
official cause, but the Soviet Union probably wanted to capture the capitalist island in its occupation
zone by making the British, French and Americans leave Berlin. The latter reacted swiftly: the Allied
airlift, introduced by General Lucius D. Clay, was to be the appropriate American counter-measure. Each
day, thousands of aircraft (more than 270 000 flights in total) brought food, fuel and other essential
goods to the beleaguered city. In all, over 13 000 tonnes of goods were delivered every day. Berlin
became one of the main theatres of confrontation between East and West. The division of Europe into
two blocs was confirmed. The city became a symbol of freedom for the West. The inhabitants of the city
were no longer thought of as former Nazis to be punished but as victims of the Soviet threat. When
Stalin decided to lift the blockade on 12 May 1949, the political division of the city was firmly
established. Two municipal administrations were put in place, and the Soviets began to merge the Social
Democratic and Communist Parties. In contrast, democratic elections were held in West Berlin in
December 1948. The outcome was a victory for the anti-Communist Social Democratic Party. The
success of the Berlin Airlift enabled Western opinion to accept the inevitable partition of Germany. On
either side of the Iron Curtain, the divided city of Berlin became the showcase for the Western and
Soviet models. Confronted with the Soviet threat, the idea of German rearmament and the country’s
integration into a united European structure became more and more vital in Western eyes.

The strengthening of alliances On 22 January 1948, Ernest Bevin, British Foreign Secretary, gave an
address in the House of Commons in which he denounced the Soviet threat. He affirmed his resolve to
develop Britain’s cooperation with France and the Benelux countries within a Western Union. A few
days later, the coup d’état in Prague on 25 February 1948, in which the Communists took power in
Czechoslovakia by force, heightened the climate of international tension and danger that prevailed
during the Cold War. On 17 March 1948, in Brussels, five countries signed the Treaty establishing
Western Union, which aimed no longer merely to guard against a potential German threat but to
prevent any armed aggression in Europe. This treaty was amended by the Paris Agreements of 23
October 1954, founding Western European Union (WEU) shortly after the failure of the proposed
European Defence Community (EDC). The five European signatories to the Brussels Pact soon realised
that alone they would be incapable of mounting any effective resistance to an attack from the USSR. On
11 June 1948, the US Congress passed the Vandenberg resolution, which put an end to American
isolationism by authorising the United States to be involved in international alliances 12/28 even in
peacetime. This paved the way for the Atlantic Alliance. On 4 April 1949, twelve Foreign Ministers signed
the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington, thereby establishing the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
(NATO). The Five of Western Union were joined by the United States, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Italy,
Norway and Portugal. The creation of a Euro-American alliance was strongly contested by Communists
across the world. Negotiations on the North Atlantic Treaty were marred by threats and barely veiled
intimidation from the Kremlin towards the Western powers. But the climate of fear surrounding the
ratification of the accession treaties by the Western Parliaments only served to speed up the process.
The North Atlantic Treaty came into force on 23 August 1949 and established a transatlantic framework
for the defence of Western Europe. In 1953, the new US President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles extended the Truman Doctrine by introducing the ‘rollback’ policy,
which aimed not merely to contain Communism but to actively drive it back. This required the formation
of military alliances with countries threatened by Communist expansion. The early 1950s were
characterised by a phenomenon termed ‘pactomania’. Several treaties similar to the North Atlantic
Treaty were signed: the ANZUS Treaty (Australia, New Zealand and the United States) in 1951, SEATO
(the Southeast Asia Treaty Organisation) in 1954 and the Baghdad Pact in 1955. The USSR responded in
1955 with the creation of the Warsaw Pact. Following the FRG’s accession to the North Atlantic Treaty
on 9 May 1955, the Socialist countries of Eastern Europe also united to form a military alliance. The
members of this mutual defence pact to counter aggression were the USSR, Albania, Bulgaria,
Czechoslovakia, the GDR, Hungary, Poland and Romania.

The Civil War in Greece In the years following the Second World War in Greece, the Communists
engaged in violent conflicts against the government forces who were receiving massive military and
financial aid from Britain and, later, from the USA. These countries feared that Greece, the last of the
Balkan states to resist Soviet domination, would in turn fall to the Communists. As a neighbour of
Turkey, Greece was an area of prime importance from an economic and strategic viewpoint for 13/28
preventing Soviet domination of the Eastern Mediterranean and protecting Middle East oil supplies. The
United States was therefore committed to preserving the independence and territorial integrity of the
kingdom and encouraged the authorities to establish a government of national unity and to undertake a
series of economic reforms. By launching a campaign that would culminate in victory for the royalist
armies within two years, the United States assumed the position of undisputed leader of the ‘free
world’. Greece enjoyed the benefits of the Marshall Plan and gradually became part of the Western
system, joining the Council of Europe in 1949 and NATO in 1951. The defeat of the Communist revolt in
Greece, in which more than 50 000 people died, marked the end of the spread of Soviet influence in
Europe.

The Revolution in China In the spring of 1946, civil war broke out in China. The Communists led by
Mao Tse-tung, hardened by resistance to the Japanese, promised to redistribute land to the peasants. In
spite of American aid, which had by now begun to focus more on Europe, the National Government of
General Chiang Kai-shek had to leave the mainland in 1950 and take refuge on the island of Formosa. On
1 October 1949, the People’s Republic of China was proclaimed, and Mao became President. The
Communists held all the key jobs in the government. Opponents were systematically arrested or
executed. This victory greatly strengthened the position of world Communism, which now spread from
the China Sea to the Elbe. But Communist China, which had certainly needed Soviet economic aid in the
early years of the People’s Republic, was not a mere satellite of the Soviet Union. It joined forces with
the USSR in some Cold War conflicts but did not become part of the Soviet bloc.

The Korean War On 25 June 1950, Communist troops from North Korea crossed the 38th parallel,
which since 1945 had been the military demarcation line between the North of the country (under
Soviet influence) and the South (under US influence). The confrontations along the border and the
invasion of the South of the peninsula would mark the beginning of the Korean War. The United States,
determined to support the authorities in the South, were able to take advantage of a moment when the
Soviet delegate was temporarily absent from a United Nations Security Council meeting to commit the
United Nations (UN) to defending South Korea. They called on the UN to apply the principle of collective
security and to vote for sanctions against North Korea. In June 1950, US air and naval forces landed on
the peninsula. Sixteen countries, including the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium and
Luxembourg, were involved in the creation of an international force under US command. North Korea,
on the other hand, enjoyed the diplomatic support of the Soviet Union and military aid from Communist
China. Although his forces had been able to drive the North Korean troops back to the Chinese border,
US General Douglas MacArthur was confronted by a massive counter-attack led by Chinese
reinforcements from the beginning of 1951. He therefore put to the US President, Harry Truman, a
proposal to bomb Communist China, resorting to atomic weapons if need be. The situation became truly
dramatic — a new world conflict seemed imminent. But Truman refused to use the atomic bomb and
the war continued, despite constant diplomatic efforts to broker a ceasefire. An armistice was finally
signed in July 1953 in the climate of international détente brought about by the death of Stalin four
months earlier. However, as the United States continued to offer substantial economic aid to South
Korea, whilst the Soviet Union supported 14/28 North Korea, the reunification of the country would
clearly be impossible for some time to come. There is little doubt that the Cold War reached its apogee
during this conflict. Indeed, it led to an obsessive fear of Communism in the United States and also had
an effect on Western Europe, which felt increasingly weak compared with the two Great Powers on the
international stage.

From peaceful coexistence to the paroxysms of the Cold War (1953–1962) After the death of
Stalin in March 1953, his successors adopted a more conciliatory attitude to the West. From 1955, Nikita
Khrushchev, the new First Secretary of the CPSU, developed a policy of peaceful coexistence. Boosted by
the advances that it had made in thermonuclear power and the space race, the USSR wanted to use the
new climate of peace in the world to take the rivalry between itself and the United States onto a purely
ideological and economic level. In the United States, President Eisenhower had to make allowance for
the risk of escalation and the hazards of direct nuclear confrontation with the Soviets. In 1953 he opted
for the so-called ‘new look’ strategy. This combined diplomacy with the threat of massive retaliation. To
complicate matters further, the United States was no longer the only country with nuclear weapons. It
had to come to terms with technological progress made by the Soviet Union, which tested its first
atomic weapon in 1949, with the first hydrogen bomb following in 1953. The first tangible consequence
of the new Soviet policy was the agreement on Austria in May 1955. The Austrian State Treaty officially
put an end to the war in the Alpine country and gave it back its independence, subject to its permanent
neutrality. But despite certain encouraging signs, the distrust and ideological opposition between the
two blocs continued. In Central and Eastern Europe, the populations of several satellite states
attempted to cast off the Russian yoke, and the Cold War reached its peak in the early 1960s. In Europe,
the status of the city of Berlin remained a major stumbling block for the two superpowers. The
construction of the Berlin Wall in the summer of 1961 closed the last crossing point between West and
East. Elsewhere in the world, the tension surrounding Cuba culminated in a trial of strength played out
between John F. Kennedy and Nikita S. Khrushchev in October 1962 over the stationing of Soviet nuclear
missiles on the island. By the mid-1950s, East-West relations had certainly evolved and were
characterised by the principle of peaceful coexistence, but the Cold War was not over and the
ideological tensions between the two blocs prevailed.

From détente to renewed tensions (1962–1985) Having narrowly avoided nuclear war, the United
States and the USSR drew conclusions from the Cuban Crisis. This direct clash between the two
superpowers brought about a sort of truce in the Cold War. In 1963, a direct line — the famous ‘red
telephone’ — was established between Washington and Moscow and the two Great Powers opened
discussions on limiting the arms race. There were other reasons behind the moderate approach adopted
by the two parties. The United States was finding it increasingly difficult to finance its global military
presence, and its growing involvement in the Vietnam War from 1964 onwards met with strong criticism
from the general public. In Europe, all eyes now turned to the Ostpolitik: the Federal Republic of
Germany was developing closer relations with the German Democratic Republic, Poland, Czechoslovakia
and the USSR. As Europe remained at the heart of the East-West confrontation, 18/28 it sought to
promote détente between the two military blocs. It also contributed to the maintenance of world peace
and raised hopes of a reunification of the continent at the Helsinki Summit in 1975. However, the
attempt by Alexander Dubček to liberalise the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia was crushed in
August 1968 by the troops of the Warsaw Pact. In the late 1970s, the two superpowers sought to extend
their respective influence. The Soviet policy in Africa and the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan led to a
cooling of relations between the US and the USSR. In the United States, the ‘America is back’ rhetoric
adopted by new President Ronald Reagan set the tone for the Cold War in the 1980s. This period was
marked by a new arms race., a new trial of strength unfolded in Cuba: for two weeks, the world teetered
on the brink of nuclear war. Since the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista’s military dictatorship in January
1959, Cuba had been ruled by Fidel Castro. In the course of agricultural reform, Castro nationalised the
Cuban property of American undertakings on the island, thereby incurring the wrath of Washington. In
response, the pro-Communist Cuban leader moved closer to the USSR, which was delighted to find a
new ally in the western hemisphere and inside the American security zone. The Cuban and Soviet
regimes signed successive agreements on trade and military cooperation. In April 1961, the United
States attempted to overthrow the new regime by arranging for anti-Castro exiles to land in the Bay of
Pigs. The operation failed and ultimately only strengthened Castro’s position. He enticed many Latin
American revolutionaries to Cuba, which was the only Communist country in the Americas, and
threatened the United States’ prestige in the region. Khrushchev decided to secretly provide the Cubans
with intermediate-range offensive missiles that could pose a direct threat to the territory of the United
States. On 14 October 1962, after Soviet freighters carrying missiles had been identified on their way to
Cuba, American spy planes also photographed launchers for Soviet intermediate-range rockets. The US
President, John F. Kennedy, therefore decided to impose a naval blockade, closing off access to Cuba.
Any attempt by Soviet ships to force their way through could have ignited the powder keg, provoking
open conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. Europe, and in particular Germany,
would inevitably have then become a theatre of war. However, at the eleventh hour, and after repeated
contact between Moscow and Washington, largely through the intermediary of the United Nations, a
compromise emerged: the Soviet ships agreed to turn back, and the Americans undertook not to invade
Cuba and to remove their rockets from Turkey. On 28 October, the world avoided nuclear war by a
whisker and the two Great Powers returned to disarmament negotiations. In Europe, Franco-German
links were strengthened by the crisis.

Soviet expansionism Although the improved relations between the two superpowers resulted in a
strategic U-turn, the United States continued to defend their zones of influence throughout the world.
Through the Camp David Agreements of 17 September 1978, which provided for Israel’s withdrawal
from the Sinai Peninsula, US President Jimmy Carter was able to bring Egypt back into the American fold.
Meanwhile, the USSR was benefiting from the decolonisation process and gaining its own new spheres
of influence. Since the time of James Monroe, President of the United States from 1817 to 1825, the
Central American country of Nicaragua had been a zone of American influence. The Sandinista
Liberation Front took advantage of President Carter’s lack of interest in Nicaragua to overthrow the
dictator Anastasio Somoza. Very rapidly, Cuba and the USSR became the Sandinista regime’s new allies.
The USSR also profited from the settlement of the Vietnam conflict in 1975 to gain a foothold in Africa,
particularly in Guinea, Mozambique and Angola. The fall of the Ethiopian imperial regime of Haile
Selassie in September 1974 and the immediate establishment of a Communist dictatorship in the oldest
African state only emphasised the Soviet hold over Africa, at China’s expense. Initially, the United States’
response to the Soviet advance in a series of Socialistoriented States was restrained and sporadic. For
example, the United States supported the antiCommunist guerrillas in Angola. However, the invasion of
Afghanistan by the Soviet army on 24 December 1979 provoked a much more vigorous reaction from
the Western world. The USSR was seeking to support the ruling Communists against increasingly
threatening counter-revolutionary guerrillas. President Carter ordered a boycott of the 1980 Olympic
Games in Moscow and an embargo on grain exports to the USSR. The UN adopted a resolution
condemning this military invasion. The United States’ response did not stop at diplomatic
condemnation. During the ten years of the conflict, the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
offered assistance and financial support to the Afghan resistance, or Mujahideen.

The arms race and ‘Star Wars’ In the United States, the Watergate scandal led to the resignation
of President Richard Nixon on 8 August 1974. This affair discredited the institution of the Presidency in a
country that was already traumatised by defeat in the Vietnam War and a loss of international influence.
Five years later, on 4 November 1979, in an Iran led by Ayatollah Khomeini, Iranian students occupied
the US Embassy in Tehran and held more than 50 people hostage. The United States seemed incapable
of settling the matter, and in April 1980 the US military operation to save the hostages ended in fiasco,
discrediting President Carter further still. On top of this came the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in
December 1979, which had a major impact on US public opinion. In 1980, after all these failures and
humiliations, the Americans voted in a man who was determined to restore the image of the United
States in the world. New President Ronald Reagan used the term ‘evil empire’ to describe the USSR and
relaunched the arms race. Reagan’s Presidency was particularly marked by a rise in military spending
and a significant increase in the budget for the armed forces. The arms race reached such a scale that
the term ‘balance of terror’ was coined to describe the global situation. Détente was forgotten and the
number of direct and indirect interventions increased: the United States supported the United Kingdom
in the Falklands War (1982), offered its support to counter-revolutionaries in Latin America (for example
the Contras in Nicaragua) and overthrew the pro-Soviet regime in Grenada (1983). The late 1970s saw
the start of the Euromissile crisis. The focus of this tense diplomatic battle was the installation by the
United States of Pershing II cruise missiles and rockets in Europe as a counterbalance to the threat
posed by the deployment of Soviet SS-20. On 28 October 1977, the West German Chancellor Helmut
Schmidt gave an address at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London in which he
deplored the threat hanging over Western Europe as a result of the deployment of Soviet SS-20s, which
put all the NATO countries and Western bases at risk. The USSR was seeking to establish its regional
superiority over Europe. Moreover, the military consolidation of the Warsaw Pact and its superiority
over NATO in terms of equipment and manpower raised doubts as to the Atlantic Alliance’s ability to
implement a strong traditional defence. Helmut Schmidt’s address therefore called for a reassessment
of US nuclear involvement in Europe. Once again, the Old Continent became the focus of the struggle
between the two blocs. The Soviet SS-20s increased the potential of the Warsaw Pact’s nuclear forces
and was one element that led to NATO’s decision on 12 December 1979 to install 572 US missiles (108
Pershing II and 464 cruise missiles) in Europe. The actual deployment of US missiles in some countries in
Western Europe from 1983 onwards (the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and the FRG)
led to the failure of the disarmament negotiations in Geneva, which had been under way since June
1982, following a decision from Moscow. The Euromissile crisis gave rise to large-scale campaigns by
European pacifists demonstrating against the deployment of nuclear weapons. This period of tension
between East and West fuelled the arms race, the focus of which was the ‘Star Wars’ programme
devised by US President Reagan. On 23 March 1983, Ronald Reagan announced the launch of a vast
technological programme known as the ‘Strategic Defense Initiative’ (SDI), or ‘Star Wars’: the United
States would be 23/28 protected from enemy nuclear weapons by a space-based shield that would
detect and destroy enemy ballistic missiles as soon as they were launched. The US project (which would
never come to fruition) drew the USSR into a frenzied arms race which led the country to the brink of
financial and economic collapse. It was only in 1985, with the arrival of Mikhail Gorbachev in power in
the USSR and his domestic reforms to democratise the Soviet regime, that Moscow decided to put an
end to this reckless arms race that was ruining the country. Gorbachev openly displayed his wish to
develop closer relations with the West and to resume talks with the United States. On 8 December 1987,
the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty,
which provided for the destruction of all nuclear and conventional ground-launched missiles with ranges
between 500 and 5 500 km, including the famous SS-20s and Pershing IIs, within three years. This treaty
is seen as the first real nuclear disarmament agreement and marked the end of the arms race between
the two superpowers.

Towards the end of the Cold War (1985–1989) The late 20th century was a time of major
geopolitical upheaval in Eastern Europe. The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 put an end to the
Cold War and its divisions, which dated back to the Second World War. The fall of the Communist bloc
brought about the end of a bipolar world built around the rivalry between the United States and the
Soviet Union. Economic and military structures such as Comecon (the Council for Mutual Economic
Assistance) and the Warsaw Pact were dissolved in 1991. The events of the late 1980s marked the
beginning of improved relations between two parts of the continent that had long been divided.

The Eastern bloc in the throes of change The political events and economic changes in Eastern
Europe at the end of the 1980s radically altered the geopolitical situation in Europe and transformed
existing institutions and structures. Aspirations to freedom, democracy and the defence of human
rights, which had long been stifled by the authoritarian regimes of the Soviet bloc, were expressed more
and more openly, thanks in particular to the reforms introduced in the Soviet Union by Mikhail
Gorbachev and his policy of gradually opening up to the West. Communist governments, already
weakened, quickly collapsed, encouraging the reawakening of national identities and minorities in the
USSR’s satellite states and then in the Soviet Union itself. Demonstrations and strikes in support of
political and economic reform became increasingly frequent. The fall of the Berlin Wall in November
1989 further accelerated the removal of the Communist regimes. After Poland and Hungary,
authoritarian governments gave way to elected multi-party coalitions in Czechoslovakia, the German
Democratic Republic (GDR), Romania and Bulgaria. The democratic revolutions also put an end to the
Warsaw Pact and the Comecon planned economy system. The Soviet Union imploded and was unable to
prevent the wave of national independence in the Baltic states and in most of the republics making up
the USSR. In 1991, a group of conservative Communists, fiercely opposed to the turn of events, mounted
an unsuccessful coup to overthrow President Gorbachev. The Commonwealth of Independent States
(CIS), incorporating some of the former republics, replaced the old Soviet Union. The former satellite
states of the Soviet Union, keen to defend human rights and adopt the principles of the market
economy, immediately turned to Western structures.

The collapse of the Communist bloc Mikhail Gorbachev’s reformist policies in the Soviet Union
fuelled opposition movements to the Communist regimes in the Soviet bloc countries. Demonstrations
became more frequent. Governments were forced to accept measures — recommended, moreover, by
Gorbachev — towards liberalisation. However, these measures were not deemed to be sufficient. Hopes
of freedom, long suppressed by the Communist regimes in the countries of the Soviet bloc and in the
USSR itself, were inevitably fuelled by Mikhail Gorbachev’s attempted reforms in the Soviet Union and
his conciliatory policy towards the West. It proved impossible to maintain reformed Communist regimes.
They were entirely swept away by the desire for political democracy and economic liberty. Within three
years, the Communist regimes collapsed and individual nations gained freedom, initially in the USSR’s
satellite countries and then within the Soviet Union itself. The structures of the Eastern bloc
disintegrated with the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and Comecon. The Soviet Union broke up into
independent republics. In Poland, economic reforms led to strikes in the spring and summer of 1988.
The Solidarity movement (‘Solidarność’) called for trade union pluralism. During the Round Table
negotiations, which enabled the gradual creation of the Third Polish Republic, the Polish Communist
leaders recognised the social movement in April 1989. Solidarność was therefore able to take part in the
first semi-legal elections since the Second World War. The elections, held on 4 and 18 June, saw the
collapse of the Communist Party, and Tadeusz Mazowiecki became the first non-Communist head of
government in Eastern Europe. He was appointed on 19 August 1989 and endorsed by an overwhelming
majority by the Polish Sjem on 8 September 1989 as a result of a coalition between Solidarity, the
agricultural party and the Democratic party. In December 1989, Lech Wałęsa, symbolic leader of
Solidarność, replaced General Jaruzelski of the Polish United Workers’ Party as President. The victory of
the trade union’s candidates in these elections triggered a wave of peaceful anti-Communist revolutions
in Central and Eastern Europe. In Hungary, demonstrations against the regime increased during 1987
and 1988. The Opposition became more organised, and reformers entered the government in June
1988. On 18 October 1989, the Stalinist Constitution was abandoned, and Hungary adopted political
pluralism. Earlier that year, in May, the ‘Iron Curtain’ separating Hungary from Austria had been
dismantled, enabling many East Germans to flee to the West. In Czechoslovakia, a programme of
reforms inspired by those of the USSR was adopted in December 1987 but was not widely implemented.
The regime became more oppressive and suppressed demonstrations in 1988. The fall of the Berlin Wall
on 9 November 1989 further accelerated the demise of the Communist governments. In Czechoslovakia,
the Opposition leader, Václav Havel, was unanimously elected interim President of the Republic by the
parliament of the Socialist Republic on 29 December 1989. In the same vein, the anti-establishment Civic
Forum movement won the first free parliamentary elections on 8 June 1990 and reappointed Václav
Havel as President of the Republic in July of that year. In Hungary, the parliamentary elections held on 2
April 1990 resulted in the formation of the Democratic Forum government. On 9 December 1990, Lech
Wałęsa became President of the Republic of Poland. In Bulgaria, a coalition government was formed on
7 December 1990, and a new Constitution was adopted on 9 July 1991. In Romania, following violent
demonstrations, the Communist dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu was executed on 25 December 1989 and a
new Constitution establishing pluralism was adopted on 8 December 1991. This transformation
proceeded, for the most part, in a peaceful manner. Nevertheless, in Romania, the revolution against
the dictator Ceauşescu resulted in heavy bloodshed, and the fragmentation of Yugoslavia led to a long
and bitter civil war. The collapse of Soviet Communism led to dislocation of the Soviet Union, sapped by
an ideological, political and economic crisis. This in turn precipitated the break-up of the empire, both
cause and effect of the end of Communism. The organisations specific to ‘Soviet federalism’ hastened
the implosion of the Soviet Union despite being primarily intended to consolidate it. One after another
the Soviet Socialist Republics (SSRs) proclaimed their 26/28 sovereignty in the summer of 1991. In
December of the same year, some of these republics, which had become independent in the meantime,
redefined their respective links by creating the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

References:
 Google scholar search engine
 Youtube: documentary on cold war
 Wikipedia
 BOOKS
 chawal aaman or azaadi by zareen Fatima.
 The cold war.. by odd arne westad.
 The cold war military history by Jeremy black