Containment
- was a geopolitical strategic foreign policy pursued by the
United States during the Cold War to prevent the spread
of communism after the end of World War II.
- Involved two large ambiguities (1) the question of the
ends (2) the question of the means
The rest of the cold war
1952 – Dwight Eisenhower was elected president on a
campaign pledge to end the Korean War and roll back
communism.
The Republican Party argued that containment was a
cowardly accommodation to communism
1953 End of Stalins
1955 establishment of Austria as neutral state
1956 Khrushchev Secret Speech
1963-1978 détente or relaxation of tension
1969 to 1974 Nixon administration
The rule of nuclear weapon
Physics and Politics
Nuclear explosions have uncertain physical effects, such as the
theory of nuclear winter, which suggests a war would block sunlight
and end life. A National Academy of Sciences study suggests
nuclear winter is possible but highly uncertain. Burning cities would
cause smoke with high carbon content, but it's uncertain how long it
stays aloft. Some skeptics argue for nuclear autumn. A large-scale
nuclear war would destroy civilization, at least in the Northern
Hemisphere.
Nuclear weapons altered warfare but did not alter the world's
organization. Anarchic states continued in the nuclear age, with the
Soviet Union viewing the Baruch Plan as an American plot. The early
atomic weapons did not significantly damage the world, and the US
had only 2 nuclear weapons in 1947 and 50 in 1948. Military
planners initially believed atomic bombs were just extensions of
conventional warfare.
The emerging U.S.-Soviet rivalry also slowed change in political
thinking. Anarchic states continued in the nuclear age, with the
Soviet Union viewing the Baruch Plan as an American plot.The early
atomic weapons did not significantly damage the world, and the US
had only 2 nuclear weapons in 1947 and 50 in 1948.Military
planners initially believed atomic bombs were just extensions of
conventional warfare. The increased destructiveness of hydrogen
bombs also dramatized the consequences of nuclear war.
H-bomb had five significant political effects, even though it did not
recognized anarchic way in which the world goes about its business.
Fine, it revived concept of limited war.
The first half of the 20th century saw the rise of two world wars,
transforming from limited conflicts to total war. The second half saw
wars resembling the 18th and 19th centuries, with limited scope
and acceptance of defeat in Vietnam and Afghanistan.
Second. Crisis has replaced central war as moments of truth in the
nuclear age, as seen in the Cold War, where crises like the Berlin,
Cuban, and Middle East crises revealed the true correlation of
military power.
Third, nuclear weapons made deterrence (discouragement by fear)
the key strategy. It was now critical to organize military might to
produce fear in advance so attack would be deterred. In World War
II, the United States relied on its ability to mobilize and gradually
build a war machine after the war warded, but that mobilization
approach no longer worked when a nuclear war could be over in a
matter of hours.
Fourth. During the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union
developed a de facto regime of superpower prudence, despite
ideological differences. They engaged in proxy wars but never went
head-to-head. Both countries developed spheres of influence, with
the US not intervening in Eastern Europe due to nuclear war fears.
Fifth. The H-bomb, a fifth nuclear weapon, was considered unusable
during war due to a stigma attached to its use. Although engineers
and scientists managed to shrink the payload of nuclear weapons,
Americans and Russians refrained from using smaller-payload
nuclear weapons, opting instead for destructive tools like napalms
and incendiary bombs. This was partly due to fears that using any
nuclear weapon would open the door to using all nuclear weapons,
and a lingering sense of immorality since the first bomb dropped on
Hiroshima.
Balance of Terror
Nuclear weapons produced a peculiar form of the balance of power
that was sometimes called the "balance of terror." Tests of strength
were more psychological than physical. Both sides followed a policy
of preventing preponderance by the others but the result was
different from previous systems. Unlike the nineteenth-century
balance-of-power system in which five great poems. Unlike the
balance was very clearly organized around two very large States
each capable of destroying the other in an instant.
Nuclear weapons created a unique balance of power, known as the
"balance of terror," with psychological tests rather than physical
ones, contrasting with the 19th-century system with two large,
instantaneous states.
Problems of Nuclear Deterrence
Nuclear deterrence is a subset of general deterrence, but the
peculiar qualities of nuclear weapons changed how the superpowers
approached international relations during the Cold War. Nuclear
deterrence encourages the reasoning. “If you attack me, I may not
be able to prevent your attack, but I can retaliate so powerfully that
attack you will not want to attack in the first place.” Nuclear
weapons thus put a new twist on an old concept.
The Cuban Missile Crisis
The key case in nuclear deterrence in the Cold War was the Cuban
Missile Crisis of October 1962. This 13-day period was probably the
closest call in the nuclear age to a set of events that could have led
to nuclear war. If a total outsider, a man from Mars,” had looked at
the situation, he would have seen that the United States had a l7-to-
l superiority in nuclear weaponry. We now know the Soviets had only
about 20 nuclear weapons on intercontinental missiles that could
have reached the United States, but President Kennedy did not
know it at the time. Why then didn’t the United States try to
preempt a Soviet first strike by attacking Soviet missile sites, which
were then relatively vulnerable? The answer was that if even one or
two of the Soviet missiles had escaped and been fired at an
American city, that risk was enough to deter a U.S. first strike. In
addition, both Kennedy and Khrushchev feared that rational
strategies and careful calculations might spin of their control.
Khrushchev came up with a nice metaphor for this in letters to
Kennedy: "Be careful as we both tug at the ends of the rope in
have tied the knot of war."13
Moral Issues
After the Cuban Missile Crisis, tensions between the US and Soviet
Union slowed down. In 1963, a hotline allowed direct
communication, an arms control treaty limited atmospheric nuclear
tests, and increased US-Soviet trade. However, fear of nuclear war
returned after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. During
the little cold war, rhetoric became harsher, military budgets
increased, and peace groups pressed for a freeze and eventual
abolition of nuclear weapons.
