Cold War, the open yet restricted rivalry that developed after World War II between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies. The Cold War was waged on political, economic, and propaganda fronts and had only limited recourse to weapons. The term was first used by the American financier and presidential adviser Bernard Baruch during a congressional debate in 1947. Following the surrender of Nazi Germany in May 1945 near the close of World War II, the uneasy wartime alliance between the United States and Great Britain on the one hand and the Soviet Union on the other began to unravel. By 1948 the Soviets had installed left-wing governments in the countries of eastern Europe that had been liberated by the Red Army. The Americans and the British feared the permanent Soviet domination of eastern Europe and the threat of Soviet-influenced communist parties coming to power in the democracies of western Europe. The Soviets, on the other hand, were determined to maintain control of eastern Europe in order to safeguard against any possible renewed threat from Germany, and they were intent on spreading communism worldwide, largely for ideological reasons. The Cold War had solidified by 1947-48, when U.S. aid provided under the Marshall Plan to western Europe had brought those countries under American influence and the Soviets had installed openly communist regimes in eastern Europe. The Cold War reached its peak in 1948-53. In this period the Soviets unsuccessfully blockaded the Western-held sectors of West Berlin (1948-49); the United States and its European allies formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a unified military command to resist the Soviet presence in Europe (1949); the Soviets exploded their first atomic warhead (1949), thus ending the American monopoly on the atomic bomb; the Chinese communists came to power in mainland China (1949); and the Soviet-supported communist government of North Korea invaded U.S.-supported South Korea in 1950, setting off an indecisive Korean War that lasted until 1953. (see also Index: Berlin blockade and airlift) From 1953 to 1957 Cold War tensions relaxed somewhat, largely owing to the death of the longtime Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in 1953; nevertheless, the standoff remained. A unified military organization among the Soviet-bloc countries, the Warsaw Pact, was formed in 1955; and West Germany was admitted into NATO that same year. Another intense stage of the Cold War was in 1958-62. The United States and the Soviet Union began developing intercontinental ballistic missiles, and in 1962 the Soviets began secretly installing missiles in Cuba that could be used to launch nuclear attacks on U.S. cities. This sparked the Cuban missile crisis (1962), a confrontation that brought the two superpowers to the brink of war before an agreement was reached to withdraw the missiles. (see also Index: nuclear weapon) The Cuban missile crisis showed that neither the United States nor the Soviet Union were ready to use nuclear weapons for fear of the other's retaliation (and thus of mutual atomic annihilation). The two superpowers soon signed the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty of 1963, which banned aboveground nuclear weapons testing. But the crisis also hardened the Soviets' determination never again to be humiliated by their military inferiority, and they began a buildup of both conventional and strategic forces that the United States was forced to match for the next 25 years. Throughout the Cold War the United States and the Soviet Union avoided direct military confrontation in Europe and engaged in actual combat operations only to keep allies from defecting to the other side or to overthrow them after they had done so. Thus the Soviet Union sent troops to preserve communist rule in East Germany (1953), Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968), and Afghanistan (1979). For its part, the United States helped overthrow a left-wing government in Guatemala (1954), supported an unsuccessful invasion of Cuba (1961), invaded the Dominican Republic (1965) and Grenada (1983), and undertook a long (1964-75) and unsuccessful effort to prevent communist North Vietnam from bringing South Vietnam under its rule. In the course of the 1960s and '70s, however, the bipolar struggle between the Soviet and American blocs gave way to a more complicated pattern of international relationships in which the world was no longer split into two clearly opposed blocs. A major split had occurred between the Soviet Union and China in 1960 and widened over the years, shattering the unity of the communist bloc. In the meantime, western Europe and Japan achieved dynamic economic growth in the 1950s and '60s, reducing their relative inferiority to the United States. Less-powerful countries had more room to assert their independence and often showed themselves resistant to superpower coercion or cajoling. The 1970s saw an easing of Cold War tensions as evinced in the SALT I and II agreements of 1972 and 1979 respectively, in which the two superpowers set limits on their antiballistic missiles and on their strategic missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons. This was followed by a period of renewed Cold War tensions in the early 1980s as the two superpowers continued their massive arms buildup and competed for influence in the Third World. But the Cold War began to break down in the late 1980s during the administration of Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev. He dismantled the totalitarian aspects of the Soviet system and began efforts to democratize the Soviet political system. When communist regimes in the Soviet-bloc countries of eastern Europe collapsed in 1989-90, Gorbachev acquiesced in their fall. The rise to power of democratic governments in East Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia was quickly followed by the unification of West and East Germany under NATO auspices, again with Soviet approval. Gorbachev's internal reforms had meanwhile weakened his own Communist Party and allowed power to shift to Russia and the other constituent republics of the Soviet Union. In late 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed and 15 newly independent nations were born from its corpse, including a Russia with a democratically elected, anticommunist leader. The Cold War had come to an end. Related Internet Links Towards a New Cold War Review by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt of Noam Chomsky's Towards a New Cold War: Essays on the Current Crisis and How We Got There, published in The New York Times on March 8, 1982. Cold War Hot Links: Web Sources Relating to the Cold War Extensive collection of links related to the Cold War, including topics such as "Dr. Seuss and the Cold War," "The Brookings Institute Atomic Audit," "The Paul Robeson Collection," and "Missle Silo Snooping." Provides access to several essays on the cultural aspects of the Cold War. America the Objectionable Review by Michael Mandelbaum of Noam Chomsky's Towards a New Cold War: Essays on the Current Crisis and How We Got There, published in The New York Times on March 21, 1982. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 20th-Century International Relations THE COLD WAR GUILT QUESTION As early as 1948 American left-liberals blamed the Truman administration for the icy tone of its relations with Moscow, while rightists blamed the Communists but accused Roosevelt and Truman of appeasement. Moderates of both parties shared a consensus that Truman's containment policy was, as the historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., wrote, "the brave and essential response of free men to communist aggression." After all, Stalin's tyranny was undeniable, and his seizure of countries in eastern Europe one by one was reminiscent of Hitler's "salami tactics." To be sure, Roosevelt may have helped to foster mistrust by refusing to discuss war aims earlier and then relying on vague principles, and Truman may have blundered or initiated steps that solidified the Cold War. Those steps, however, were taken only after substantial Soviet violation of wartime agreements and in fearful confusion over the motivations for Soviet policy. Was the U.S.S.R. implacably expansionist, or were its aims limited? Was it executing a plan based on Communist faith in world revolution, or reflecting the need of the regime for foreign enemies to justify domestic terror, or merely pursuing the traditional aims of Russian imperialism? Or was it only Stalin's own paranoia or ambition that was responsible for Soviet aggression? The fact that Western societies tended to parade their disagreements and failures in public, in contrast to the Soviet fetish for secrecy, guaranteed that historical attention would fix on American motivations and mistakes. In the late 1950s and the 1960s, traditional left-liberal scholars smarting from the excesses of McCarthyism and new leftists of the Vietnam era began publishing revisionist interpretations of the origins of the Cold War. The "hard revisionism" of William Appleman Williams in 1959 depicted the Cold War in Marxist fashion as an episode in American economic expansion in which the U.S. government resorted to military threats to prevent Communists from closing off eastern European markets and raw materials to American corporations. Less rigidly ideological "soft revisionists" blamed the Cold War on the irascible Truman administration, which, they charged, had jettisoned the cooperative framework built up by Roosevelt at Tehran and Yalta and had dropped the atomic bombs on Japan as a means of frightening the Russians and forcing an "American peace." These revisionist interpretations were based not so much on new evidence as on new assumptions about U.S. and Soviet motives, influenced in turn by the protest movements against the Vietnam War, nuclear weapons, and the alleged domination of American society by the "military-industrial complex." Looking back to the years after 1945, the revisionists argued that Stalin was not a fanatical aggressor but a traditional Soviet statesman. After all, the Soviet Union had been brutally invaded and had lost 20,000,000 lives in the war. Stalin could thus be excused for insisting on friendly governments on his borders. He was betrayed, said revisionists, by American militancy and Red-baiting after the death of Roosevelt. Traditional historians countered that little evidence existed for most of the revisionist positions. To be sure, American hostility to Communism dated from 1917, but the record proved Roosevelt's commitment to good relations with Stalin, while no proof at all was forthcoming that American policy makers were anxious to penetrate eastern European markets, which were, in any case, of minor importance to the U.S. economy. Williams rebutted that policy makers so internalized their economic imperialism that they did not bother to put their thoughts on paper, but this "argument from no evidence" made a mockery of scholarship. The preponderance of evidence also indicated that the atomic decision was made for military considerations, although isolated advisers did hope that it would ease negotiations with Moscow. These and other examples led most historians to conclude that, while the revisionists brought to light new issues and exposed American aimlessness, inconsistency, and possible overreaction at the end of World War II, they failed to establish their primary theories of American guilt. Historians with a longer perspective on the Cold War transcended the passions of Vietnam-era polarization and observed that deeper forces must have been at work for the Cold War to have persisted for so long after 1945. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine how leaders of the two countries could have sat down agreeably and settled the affairs of the world. The new superpowers were wrenched out of isolationism and thrust into roles of world leadership, they nurtured contrary universalist ideologies, and they mounted asymmetrical military threats (one based on conventional weapons, sheer numbers, and land power; the other on nuclear might, technological superiority, and air and sea power). To these liabilities could be added the fact that both countries had been forced into World War II by sneak attacks and had resolved never again to be seduced into appeasement or to be taken by surprise. Even such a balanced long-range view should not be taken uncritically. It remains the case that the Cold War grew out of specific diplomatic disputes, among them Germany, eastern Europe, and atomic weapons. Could those disputes have been avoided or amicably resolved? Certainly some prior agreement on war aims might have softened the discord after 1945, but Roosevelt's policy of avoiding divisive issues during the war, while wise in the short run, enhanced the potential for conflict. It might, without undue exaggeration, be said that the United States entered the postwar period with only a vision of a postwar economic world and few political war aims at all, and thus had little excuse for indignation once Stalin set out methodically to realize his own aims. But this does not justify a Soviet policy bent on denying self-rule to neighbouring peoples and imposing police states as cruel as those of Hitler. Although the Soviets had lost 20,000,000 in the war, Stalin had killed at least an equal number of his own citizens through deliberate famine and purge. American hegemony, if it can be called that, was by contrast liberal, pluralistic, and generous. The question has been posed: Is it not an expression of American exclusivism, self-righteousness, or cultural imperialism to insist that the rest of the world conform to Anglo-Saxon standards of political legitimacy? Even if so, critics must take care not to indulge in a double standard: excusing the U.S.S.R. for being "realistic" and damning the United States for being insufficiently "idealistic." --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Theory and Conduct of War Alternatives to assured destruction. Critics found the condition of mutual assured destruction--which had become known by its acronym MAD--alarming. If MAD failed to deter, then any war would soon lead to genocide. In addition, if the threat of retaliating with nuclear weapons was used to deter only nuclear attack, then the value of nuclear threats in deterring conventional aggression would be lost. In principle, this could undermine the commitments made to allies to use nuclear weapons on their behalf if they faced such aggression. Particularly alarming was evidence that the nuclear strategy of the Soviet Union envisaged using nuclear weapons in a traditional military manner much as if they were conventional weapons--that is, at most to obtain a decisive military advantage in a conflict and at the very least to reduce the damage that an enemy might do to Soviet territory (if necessary, by launching preemptive strikes). During the negotiations that led to SALT II, critics also argued that the momentum behind the Soviet ICBM program, in combination with improved guidance systems that gave unprecedented accuracy to MIRVed missiles, had opened a "window of vulnerability" in the U.S. deterrent force. They expressed concern that the Soviet Union, by deploying the SS-17, SS-18, and SS-19 ICBMs, was building a force of such size and accuracy that just a portion of it could attack and destroy the U.S. Minuteman and Titan ICBM force without killing huge numbers of civilians. Although this would not be a true first strike, since U.S. bombers and submarines could retaliate, these latter delivery systems were not accurate enough to produce an equivalent counterforce attack against Soviet missile silos. Instead, the United States would be forced to escalate the war by retaliating against cities. This repugnant act would be of no strategic value, however, because the rest of the untouched Soviet missile force would then be used to wipe out U.S. cities. The United States, therefore, would have placed itself in a position in which it would have to choose between surrender and slaughter. The realism of this scenario may be doubted, given that no attack against U.S. ICBMs would be accurate enough to avoid massive civilian destruction; therefore, the Soviet Union could be certain that the United States would feel little repugnance at retaliating against Soviet cities. Nonetheless, it was used to criticize SALT II, a complicated treaty that offered few means of verification and did little to interfere with the Soviet ICBM program. It was also used to argue for the development of U.S. ICBMs comparable to the Soviet systems. The first formal break with assured destruction came in 1974, when Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger announced that future U.S. nuclear targeting would be geared to selective strikes and not just the sort of massive attacks suggested by the philosophy of mutual assured destruction. Although President Jimmy Carter's secretary of defense, Harold Brown, was skeptical that either side would actually find such sophisticated nuclear strikes possible, he accepted the need to develop a range of targeting options to convince the Soviet Union that it could not gain the upper hand by such methods. This was the main theme of the "countervailing" strategy announced in 1980. Ronald W. Reagan came to office the next year with a much more radical critique of MAD, and his presidency was devoted to attempts to escape from its constraints. Initially, this took the form of a search for offensive nuclear operations that would enable the United States to "prevail" in a protracted war with the Soviet Union, rather than just countervail. It involved upgrading the old civil-defense systems and deploying the MX, an experimental ICBM originally designed to survive a first strike through some form of mobile deployment. Neither of these ideas was politically popular. In the end, civil defense was rejected as impossible, and the MX (now named Peacekeeper) was deployed in Minuteman silos and in only a fraction of the originally proposed numbers. In March 1983 Reagan announced the start of a second search for a means to escape from MAD. This time it was for a defensive system that could intercept ballistic missiles. Reagan spoke of his preference for protecting lives rather than avenging them, and of the possibility of rendering nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete," but the vision could not be turned into reality. Although the Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI (which critics dubbed Star Wars, after a science fiction movie), was given a high priority and billions of dollars for research, the idea of protecting society as a whole from nuclear attack soon appeared hopelessly impractical, given the diverse means of delivering nuclear weapons. The main question became whether SDI could protect key political and military assets from attack, but even here some of the more futuristic ideas--such as using space-based lasers to destroy ballistic missiles just as they were launched--proved technically demanding and expensive. Political support waned. Meanwhile, Reagan had replaced talks on arms limitation with the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START). At first the Soviet Union argued that no progress on strategic arms control was possible so long as SDI was being pursued. Mikhail Gorbachev, who became the Soviet leader in 1985, offered his own vision of how to escape from assured destruction in a speech of January 1986, in which he set out a radical disarmament agenda leading toward a nuclear-free world by the end of the century. In October 1986, at a summit in Reykjav�k, Ice., Reagan came close to embracing this vision, although no agreement was reached because he refused Gorbachev's demand to abandon SDI. Nevertheless, the concept of arms reduction had taken hold, and START proceeded with a new emphasis on deep cuts in nuclear arsenals. (see also Index: Reykjav�k summit) The switch to arms reduction suggested that Reagan's critique of MAD had concluded with the view that, given the difficulties of designing and deploying both discriminating offensive options and effective ballistic missile defenses, it was better to do away with nuclear weapons altogether. This constituted a formidable challenge to the orthodox view that nuclear weapons exercised a stabilizing deterrence on international misbehaviour and were a reassurance to America's allies, who faced preponderant Soviet conventional forces. Reagan was prevailed upon to moderate his critique, but not before doubts had been created as to the strength of the U.S. commitment to guarantee the security of its allies with nuclear weapons. On the other hand, the alacrity with which Gorbachev embraced complete nuclear disarmament reflected the greater freedom of maneuver available to any Soviet leader as well as the subordinate role of the Warsaw Pact allies. Whereas NATO's European members were anxious to lock the United States into their security arrangements for fear that they would be unable to stand alone, the Soviet Union had drawn its allies into a pact that met its own security requirements--that is, extending its form of government into eastern Europe and creating a buffer between it and the hostile capitalist forces of the West. Members of the Warsaw Pact might be beneficiaries of a Soviet nuclear guarantee, but there was no question of shared decision-making on nuclear matters. In fact, during the 1970s Soviet doctrine had appeared to have the goal of extracting the maximum regional benefit from its nuclear arsenal--vis-�-vis both western Europe and China--while maintaining Soviet territory as a sanctuary from nuclear devastation. Its priority in any nuclear conflict would have been to confine nuclear exchanges to central Europe, while showing a certain respect for U.S. territory as a sanctuary in the hope of reciprocal treatment by the United States. If escalation had appeared inevitable, however, or if the United States had appeared to be preparing a first strike, then Soviet doctrine would have called for a preemptive blow against the United States' long-range arsenal in an effort to reduce damage to the Soviet Union. This approach was undermined by evidence that U.S. nuclear doctrine and deployment showed no respect for geographic sanctuary and by the Soviets' own recognition of the sheer difficulty of managing a nuclear exchange in such a way as to reduce the vulnerability of Soviet territory. Even before Gorbachev, there had been a discernible trend in military