Overview of the Cold War
The Cold War was a 44 year global conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union in the decades after World War Two. The term “cold war” was used to describe the conflict because the two countries acted toward each other like they were at war, however they could not directly fight each other because both possessed nuclear weapons in large enough numbers to destroy the world several time over. Any military conflict between the two countries could have resulted in a war that destroyed all human civilization.
At the core of the Cold War conflict was the fact that the United States and the Soviet Union had very different ideologies, or views about the world, and saw the other country’s ideology as a threat. The United States was a capitalist democracy and the Soviet Union was a communist dictatorship. The ideas of democracy and capitalism hold the people should be free to decide their own government through open debate and voting and also have the freedom to decide their own economic lives and pursue their own interests in making money. The communist dictatorship of the Soviet Union believed that the government should control the society so as to improve the economy of the country and raise everyone’s standard of living. The Soviet Union saw as its goal to spread communism to other countries – which it did in the countries it captured at the end of World War Two – which involved taking away people’s private property and personal freedom. The United States opposed this. However, the United States was often more interested in opposing communism around the world than promoting democracy.
The Cold War took the form of non-violent hostility between the United States and the Soviet Union because both countries had large arsenals of nuclear weapons. The United States developed the first atomic bomb and used it twice against Japan to end World War Two. Soon after, Soviet Union was able to build its own atomic bomb due to spies that stole the secrets from the United States. Both countries built large arsenals of nuclear weapons so they were able to destroy the world several times over. The reality that any country that used a nuclear weapon would in fact destroy the world made it so neither the United States nor the Soviet Union wanted to use these weapons and would avoid a conflict that would cause them to be used – which became known as “mutually assured destruction”. The United States used the threat of nuclear war to force the Soviet Union to pull its nuclear weapons out of Cuba in the Cuban Missile Crisis.
This conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union affected the whole world because both countries were able to use their military and economic power to control and influence events around the world – for this reason, both countries were called “Super Powers”. Because both countries could not directly fight each other without risking nuclear war, they often fought with each other through other countries in event called “proxy wars”. The Soviet Union supported groups that were fighting to spread communism around the world and the United States supported groups that were opposed to communism. The American war in Vietnam and the Soviet war in Afghanistan are examples of proxy wars in which local conflicts became part of the global Cold War conflict.
The first area affected by the Cold War was Europe. During World War Two, the United States and the Soviet Union had been allies against Nazi Germany. As a result, at the end of the war, Europe was divided between areas that had been liberated from the Nazis by the United States and those liberated by the Soviet Union. The United States was interested in having the countries of Europe return to being democratic capitalist countries, the way they were before World War Two. However, the Soviet Union turned the countries in Eastern Europe that it had had “liberated” into communist dictatorships – even if the populations in those countries did not want this. Winston Churchill described this division of Europe by saying that an “Iron Curtain had descended across the continent.” The United Sates developed the policy of Containment to prevent the Soviet Union from expanding communism to new countries. The United States rebuilt Western Europe to be democratic capitalist countries by enacting the Marshall Plan to pay for the post-war reconstruction and organizing the countries of Western Europe into a military alliance called North American Treaty Organization (NATO). In addition, the United States enacted the Truman Doctrine which said it would give military assistance to any country trying to resist a communist take-over. However, to avoid a nuclear conflict with the Soviet Union, the United States did assist communist countries that revolted against Soviet rule, such as Hungary or Czechoslovakia. The symbol of the Cold War division of Europe was the Berlin Wall that was built by the Soviet Union to prevent people in communist East Germany from escaping into democratic West Germany. When the citizens of East Germany revolted against their communist government and broke down the Berlin Wall it was seen as marking the end of the Cold War.
The Cold War also affected Asia and led to several wars. The Soviet Union supported the communist leader Mao Zedong in the Chinese Civil War which he won in 1949. This made the most populous country in the world a communist country. After China fell to communism, the next Cold War battle began in 1950 when Communist North Korea attacked Democratic South Korea. The United States fought to defend the South and the Soviet Union supported the North. After several years of fighting, with neither side able to win, both sides signed a cease-fire and Korea remained divided between a democratic South Korea and a communist North Korea. The next Asian country to become a Cold War battlefield was Vietnam. This began when the Soviet Union supported the North Vietnamese, lead by Ho Chi Minh, in their war first with the French for independence and then against the United States to make all of Vietnam a communist country. The wars in Vietnam raged from the mid 1950’s all the way to 1975, when the United States pulled out of the war.
The Cold War in the Middle East helped fuel the conflict between the Jewish Israelis and the Arab nations. Following the Holocaust in World War Two, the nation of Israel was created in the Middle East as homeland for the Jewish people. The near destruction of the Jewish people in the Holocaust convinced them and the world that the Jewish people needed their own country. However, many of the Arab people in the Middle East opposed the creation of Israel because it was being formed on Arab land. The Palestinian people were an Arab people who had lived in the area that was to become Israel. They wanted their own country of Palestine. As a result, on the day Israel was created in 1948, it was attacked by the Arab nations. Israel had to fight, and ultimately defeated the united Arabs nations in this first war. With the assistance of the Soviet Union, the Arabs nations again attempted to destroy Israel in two more wars in 1967 and 1973. In both of these wars, the region of the Middle East became part of the Cold War conflict as the Soviet Union supported the Arab nations and the United States supported Israel. Israel won both of these wars due in large part from the massive military assistance the United States gave Israel. However, Israeli victory did not bring peace to the Middle East. The Palestinian people lost their country in the 1948 War and were forced to live in refugee camps. They were organized to fight against Israel by Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. This group used terrorist attacks to hurt Israel. This is part of a conflict that continues to this day – long after the Cold War ended.
The Cold War in the Middle East took an unexpected turn in 1979 when the government of Iran (an American ally) was overthrown in the Islamic Revolution. The new Iranian government declared that it was an "Islamic republic" and an enemy of the United States, which it called "the great Satan". However, it also opposed the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union feared that the ideas of the Islamic Revolution would spread to the country of Afghanistan and possibly destabilize the Soviet Union. In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. The people of Afghanistan violently opposed the Soviet invasion and the United States supported them in a proxy war against the Soviets. The Soviet War in Afghanistan lasted until the end of the Cold War, when the Soviets withdrew from the country. After this, Afghanistan fell into chaos and became center of Islamic extremism.
In Latin America, which the United States considered its sphere of influence, or the area under its control, was also a place of Cold War conflict. In the 1950’s, the Fidel Castro over threw the Cuban dictator Batista who was supported by the United States. The Soviet Union supported Castro’s new Cuban government, which adopted communism. The United States tried to overthrow Castro by supporting Cubans who attacked Castro Cuba in 1961. After that failed, the Soviet Union moved to place nuclear missiles in Cuba. However, the United States threatened war if the Soviets did this in an event called the "Cuban Missile Crisis", which marked the point in the Cold War when two countries came closest to nuclear war. After this, the United States no longer actively tried to overthrow Castro and Castro continued to rule Cuba as a repressive dictator until well after the Cold War ended. After this, the United States actively supported many dictators in Latin America to prevent any other country in the region from becoming communist. For example, the United States assisted a military leader Augusto Pinochet in overthrowing the democratic government of Chile because the president supported many communist ideas and worked closely with communist governments. Many of the governments that the United States supported in Latin America were brutal dictatorships that violently suppressed any group that opposed them.
The Cold War came to a close in the 1980’s as it became clear that the communist countries could not compete with the democratic countries. Quite simply, people in the democratic capitalist countries in Europe, North America and Asia (Japan and South Korea) were freer and enjoyed a higher quality of life than people in the communist countries. All across the communist world, governments tried to reform, but the communist system could not be fixed easily. In the Soviet Union, the leader Mikhail Gorbachev came to power with the goal of reforming the Soviet Union and ending the Cold War with the United States. He succeeded in negotiating an end to the Cold War with American President Ronald Reagan. However, his efforts to fix the communist system in the Soviet Union result in the collapse of the Soviet Union. Quite simply, when people were given a choice about communism, they chose to get rid of communism. First, in 1989, the countries of Eastern Europe which has been communist since the end of World War Two, rebelled against Soviet rule and became democratic countries. Then, in 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist and country of Russia was reborn. The collapse of the Soviet Union lead to the end of communism in most of the world (Cuba and North Korea are the exceptions). In some places, governments still claimed to be “communist” but they became more capitalistic. This is the case with the communist government in China. Under the rule of Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese communist government began to reform by allowing American and European countries to build factories in China and by making the country more capitalist and less communist. However, unlike Gorbachev, when the Chinese people asked for democracy in 1989 at large protests in Tienanmen Square, Deng Xiaoping ordered the Chinese army to crush the protests.