Cold War

The Cold War (1945–1991) was the continuing state of political conflict, military tension, and economic competition existing after World War II (1939–1945), primarily between the USSR and its satellite states, and the powers of the Western world, including the United States. Although the primary participants' military forces never officially clashed directly, they expressed the conflict through military coalitions, strategic conventional force deployments, a nuclear arms race, espionage, proxy wars, propaganda, and technological competition, such as the Space Race

United States President Ronald Reagan (left) and President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev meet in 1985.

Despite being allies against the Axis powers and having the most powerful forces, the USSR and the US disagreed about the configuration of the post-war world while occupying most of Europe. The Soviet Union created the Eastern Bloc with the eastern European countries it occupied, annexing some as Soviet Socialist Republics and maintaining others as satellite states, some of which were later consolidated as the Warsaw Pact (1955–1991). The US and some western European countries established containment of communism as a defensive policy, establishing alliances such as NATO to that end.

Several such countries also coordinated the rebuilding of western Europe, especially western Germany, which the USSR opposed. Elsewhere, in Latin America and Southeast Asia, the USSR fostered communist revolutions, opposed by several western countries and their regional allies; some they attempted to roll back, with mixed results. Some countries aligned with NATO and the Warsaw Pact, yet non-aligned country blocs also emerged.

The Cold War featured periods of relative calm and of international high tension – the Berlin Blockade (1948–1949), the Korean War (1950–1953), the Berlin Crisis of 1961, the Vietnam War (1959–1975), the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), the Soviet war in Afghanistan (1979–1989), and the Able Archer 83 NATO exercises in November 1983. Both sides sought détente to relieve political tensions and deter direct military attack, which would likely guarantee their mutual assured destruction with nuclear weapons.

In the 1980s, the United States increased diplomatic, military, and economic pressures against the USSR, which had already suffered severe economic stagnation. Thereafter, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the liberalizing reforms of perestroika ("reconstruction", "reorganization", 1987) and glasnost ("openness", ca. 1985). The Cold War ended after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, leaving the United States as the dominant military power, and Russia possessing most of the Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal. The Cold War and its events have had a significant impact on the world today, and it is commonly referred to in popular culture such as fiction.

Legacy

Formation of the CIS, the official end of the Soviet Union

Created on December 21, 1991, the Commonwealth of Independent States is viewed as a successor entity to the Soviet Union but according to Russia's leaders its purpose was to "allow a civilized divorce" between the Soviet Republics and is comparable to a loose confederation.^[231]

Following the Cold War, Russia cut military spending dramatically, but the adjustment was wrenching, as the military-industrial sector had previously employed one of every five Soviet adults^[232] and its dismantling left millions throughout the former Soviet Union unemployed.^[232] After Russia embarked on capitalist economic reforms in the 1990s, it suffered a financial crisis and a recession more severe than the US and Germany had experienced during the Great Depression.^[233] Russian living standards have worsened overall in the post-Cold War years, although the economy has resumed growth since 1999.^[233]

The legacy of the Cold War continues to influence world affairs.^[14] After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the post-Cold War world is widely considered as unipolar, with the United States the sole remaining superpower.^{[234][235][236]} The Cold War defined the political role of the United States in the post-World War II world: by 1989 the US held military alliances with 50 countries, and had 1.5 million troops posted abroad in 117 countries.^[237] The Cold War also institutionalized a global commitment to huge, permanent peacetime military-industrial complexes and large-scale military funding of science.^[237]

Military expenditures by the US during the Cold War years were estimated to have been $8 trillion, while nearly 100,000 Americans lost their lives in the Korean War and Vietnam War.^[238] Although the loss of life among Soviet soldiers is difficult to estimate, as a share of their gross national product the financial cost for the Soviet Union was far higher than that of the US.^[239]

In addition to the loss of life by uniformed soldiers, millions died in the superpowers' proxy wars around the globe, most notably in Southeast Asia.^[240] Most of the proxy wars and subsidies for local conflicts ended along with the Cold War; the incidence of interstate wars, ethnic wars, revolutionary wars, as well as refugee and displaced persons crises has declined sharply in the post-Cold War years.^[241]

No separate campaign medal has been authorized for the Cold War; however, in 1998, the United State Congress authorized Cold War Recognition Certificates "to all members of the armed forces and qualified federal government civilian personnel who faithfully and honorably served the United States anytime during the Cold War era, which is defined as Sept. 2, 1945 to Dec. 26, 1991." ^[242]

The legacy of Cold War conflict, however, is not always easily erased, as many of the economic and social tensions that were exploited to fuel Cold War competition in parts of the Third World remain acute.^[14] The breakdown of state control in a number of areas formerly ruled by Communist governments has produced new civil and ethnic conflicts, particularly in the former Yugoslavia.^[14] In Eastern Europe, the end of the Cold War has ushered in an era of economic growth and a large increase in the number of liberal democracies, while in other parts of the world, such as Afghanistan, independence was accompanied by state failure.^[14]

Historiography

Main article: Historiography of the Cold War

As soon as the term "Cold War" was popularized to refer to post-war tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, interpreting the course and origins of the conflict has been a source of heated controversy among historians, political scientists, and journalists.^[243] In particular, historians have sharply disagreed as to who was responsible for the breakdown of Soviet–US relations after the Second World War; and whether the conflict between the two superpowers was inevitable, or could have been avoided.^[244] Historians have also disagreed on what exactly the Cold War was, what the sources of the conflict were, and how to disentangle patterns of action and reaction between the two sides.^[14]

Although explanations of the origins of the conflict in academic discussions are complex and diverse, several general schools of thought on the subject can be identified. Historians commonly speak of three differing approaches to the study of the Cold War: "orthodox" accounts, "revisionism", and "post-revisionism".^[237]

"Orthodox" accounts place responsibility for the Cold War on the Soviet Union and its expansion into Eastern Europe.^[237] "Revisionist" writers place more responsibility for the breakdown of post-war peace on the United States, citing a range of US efforts to isolate and confront the Soviet Union well before the end of World War II.^[237] "Post-revisionists" see the events of the Cold War as more nuanced, and attempt to be more balanced in determining what occurred during the Cold War.^[237] Much of the historiography on the Cold War weaves together two or even all three of these broad categories.

End of the Cold War (1985–91)

Main article: Cold War (1985–1991)

Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan sign the INF Treaty at the White House, 1987

Gorbachev reforms

Further information: Mikhail Gorbachev, perestroika, and glasnost

By the time the comparatively youthful Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary in 1985,^[181] the Soviet economy was stagnant and faced a sharp fall in foreign currency earnings as a result of the downward slide in oil prices in the 1980s.^[207] These issues prompted Gorbachev to investigate measures to revive the ailing state.^[207]

An ineffectual start led to the conclusion that deeper structural changes were necessary and in June 1987 Gorbachev announced an agenda of economic reform called perestroika, or restructuring.^[208] Perestroika relaxed the production quota system, allowed private ownership of businesses and paved the way for foreign investment. These measures were intended to redirect the country's resources from costly Cold War military commitments to more profitable areas in the civilian sector.^[208]

Despite initial scepticism in the West, the new Soviet leader proved to be committed to reversing the Soviet Union's deteriorating economic condition instead of continuing the arms race with the West.^[117][209] Partly as a way to fight off internal opposition from party cliques to his reforms, Gorbachev simultaneously introduced glasnost, or openness, which increased freedom of the press and the transparency of state institutions.^[210] Glasnost was intended to reduce the corruption at the top of the Communist Party and moderate the abuse of power in the Central Committee.^[211] Glasnost also enabled increased contact between Soviet citizens and the western world, particularly with the United States, contributing to the accelerating détente between the two nations.^[212]

Thaw in relations

Further information: Reykjavík Summit, Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, START I, and Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany

In response to the Kremlin's military and political concessions, Reagan agreed to renew talks on economic issues and the scaling-back of the arms race.^[213] The first was held in November 1985 in Geneva, Switzerland.^[213] At one stage the two men, accompanied only by a translator, agreed in principle to reduce each country's nuclear arsenal by 50 percent.

Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1988

A second Reykjavík Summit was held in Iceland. Talks went well until the focus shifted to Reagan's proposed Strategic Defense Initiative, which Gorbachev wanted eliminated: Reagan refused.^[215] The negotiations failed, but the third summit in 1987 led to a breakthrough with the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). The INF treaty eliminated all nuclear-armed, ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers (300 to 3,400 miles) and their infrastructure.^[216]

East–West tensions rapidly subsided through the mid-to-late 1980s, culminating with the final summit in Moscow in 1989, when Gorbachev and George H. W. Bush signed the START I arms control treaty.^[217] During the following year it became apparent to the Soviets that oil and gas subsidies, along with the cost of maintaining massive troops levels, represented a substantial economic drain.^[218] In addition, the security advantage of a buffer zone was recognised as irrelevant and the Soviets officially declared that they would no longer intervene in the affairs of allied states in Eastern Europe.^[219]

In 1989, Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan^[220] and by 1990 Gorbachev consented to German reunification,^[218] the only alternative being a Tiananmen scenario.^[221] When the Berlin Wall came down, Gorbachev's "Common European Home" concept began to take shape.^[222]

On December 3, 1989, Gorbachev and Reagan's successor, George H. W. Bush, declared the Cold War over at the Malta Summit;^[223] a year later, the two former rivals were partners in the Gulf War against longtime Soviet ally Iraq.^[224]

Faltering Soviet system

Further information: Economy of the Soviet Union, Revolutions of 1989, and Baltic Way

By 1989, the Soviet alliance system was on the brink of collapse, and, deprived of Soviet military support, the Communist leaders of the Warsaw Pact states were losing power.^[220] In the USSR itself, glasnost weakened the bonds that held the Soviet Union together^[219] and by February 1990, with the dissolution of the USSR looming, the Communist Party was forced to surrender its 73-year-old monopoly on state power.^[225]

At the same time freedom of press and dissent allowed by glasnost and the festering "nationalities question" increasingly led the Union's component republics to declare their autonomy from Moscow, with the Baltic states withdrawing from the Union entirely.^[226] The 1989 revolutionary wave that swept across Central and Eastern Europe overthrew the Soviet-style communist states, such as Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria,^[227] Romania being the only Eastern-bloc country to topple its communist regime violently and execute its head of state.^[228]

Soviet dissolution

Further information: January 1991 events in Latvia, 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, and History of the Soviet Union (1985–1991)

Gorbachev's permissive attitude toward Eastern Europe did not initially extend to Soviet territory; even Bush, who strove to maintain friendly relations, condemned the January 1991 killings in Latvia and Lithuania, privately warning that economic ties would be frozen if the violence continued.^[229] The USSR was fatally weakened by a failed coup and as a growing number of Soviet republics, particularly Russia, threatened to secede the USSR was declared officially dissolved on December 25, 1991.

Second Cold War (1979–85)

This map shows the two essential global spheres during the Cold War in 1980–the US in blue and the USSR in red. See the legend on the map for more details.

Main article: Cold War (1979–1985)

The term second Cold War has been used by some historians to refer to the period of intensive reawakening of Cold War tensions and conflicts in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Tensions greatly increased between the major powers with both sides becoming more militaristic.^[14]

Afghanistan war

Main article: Soviet war in Afghanistan

During December 1979, approximately 75,000 Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan in order to support the Marxist government formed by ex-Prime-minister Nur Muhammad Taraki, assassinated that September by one of his party rivals.^[178] As a result, US President Jimmy Carter withdrew the SALT II treaty from the Senate, imposed embargoes on grain and technology shipments to the USSR, demanded a significant increase in military spending, and further announced that the United States would boycott the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics. He described the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan as "the most serious threat to the peace since the Second World War".^[179]

Reagan and Thatcher

In 1980, Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter in the US presidential election, vowing to increase military spending and confront the Soviets everywhere.^[180] Both Reagan and new British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher denounced the Soviet Union and its ideology. Reagan labeled the Soviet Union an "evil empire" and predicted that Communism would be left on the "ash heap of history".^[181]

Polish Solidarity movement

Main articles: Solidarity (Polish trade union), Soviet reaction to the Polish Crisis of 1980-1981, and Martial law in Poland

Pope John Paul II provided a moral focus for anti-communism; a visit to his native Poland in 1979 stimulated a religious and nationalist resurgence centered on the Solidarity movement that galvanized opposition and may have led to his attempted assassination two years later.^[182] Reagan also imposed economic sanctions on Poland to protest the suppression of Solidarity.^[183] In response, Mikhail Suslov, the Kremlin's top ideologist, advised Soviet leaders not to intervene if Poland fell under the control of Solidarity, for fear it might lead to heavy economic sanctions, representing a catastrophe for the Soviet economy.^[183]

Soviet and US military and economic issues

US and USSR/Russian nuclear weapons stockpiles, 1945–2006

Further information: Brezhnev stagnation, Strategic Defense Initiative, RSD-10 Pioneer, and MGM-31 Pershing

Moscow had built up a military that consumed as much as 25 percent of the Soviet Union's gross national product at the expense of consumer goods and investment in civilian sectors.^[184] Soviet spending on the arms race and other Cold War commitments both caused and exacerbated deep-seated structural problems in the Soviet system, which saw at least a decade of economic stagnation during the late Brezhnev years.

Soviet investment in the defense sector was not driven by military necessity, but in large part by the interests of massive party and state bureaucracies dependent on the sector for their own power and privileges.^[185] The Soviet Armed Forces became the largest in the world in terms of the numbers and types of weapons they possessed, in the number of troops in their ranks, and in the sheer size of their military–industrial base.^[186] However, the quantitative advantages held by the Soviet military often concealed areas where the Eastern Bloc dramatically lagged behind the West.^[187]

After ten year old American Samantha Smith wrote a letter to Yuri Andropov expressing her fear of nuclear war, Andropov invited Smith to the Soviet Union.

By the early 1980s, the USSR had built up a military arsenal and army surpassing that of the United States. Previously, the US had relied on the qualitative superiority of its weapons, but the gap had been narrowed.^[188] Ronald Reagan began massively building up the United States military not long after taking office. This led to the largest peacetime defense buildup in United States history.^[189]

Tensions continued intensifying in the early 1980s when Reagan revived the B-1 Lancer program that was canceled by the Carter administration, produced LGM-118 Peacekeepers,^[190] installed US cruise missiles in Europe, and announced his experimental Strategic Defence Initiative, dubbed "Star Wars" by the media, a defense program to shoot down missiles in mid-flight.^[191]

With the background of a buildup in tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States, and the deployment of Soviet RSD-10 Pioneer ballistic missiles targeting Western Europe, NATO decided, under the impetus of the Carter presidency, to deploy MGM-31 Pershing and cruise missiles in Europe, primarily West Germany.^[192] This deployment would have placed missiles just 10 minutes' striking distance from Moscow.^[193]

After Reagan's military buildup, the Soviet Union did not respond by further building its military^[194] because the enormous military expenses, along with inefficient planned manufacturing and collectivized agriculture, were already a heavy burden for the Soviet economy.^[195] At the same time, Reagan persuaded Saudi Arabia to increase oil production,^[196] even as other non-OPEC nations were increasing production.^[197] These developments contributed to the 1980s oil glut, which affected the Soviet Union, as oil was the main source of Soviet export revenues.^[184][195] Issues with command economics,^[198] oil prices decreases and large military expenditures gradually brought the Soviet economy to stagnation.^[195]

On September 1, 1983, the Soviet Union shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, a Boeing 747 with 269 people aboard, including sitting Congressman Larry McDonald, when it violated Soviet airspace just past the west coast of Sakhalin Island—an act which Reagan characterized as a "massacre". This act increased support for military deployment, overseen by Reagan, which stood in place until the later accords between Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev.^[199] The Able Archer 83 exercise in November 1983, a realistic simulation of a coordinated NATO nuclear release, has been called most dangerous moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis, as the Soviet leadership keeping a close watch on it considered a nuclear attack to be imminent.^[200]

US domestic public concerns about intervening in foreign conflicts persisted from the end of the Vietnam War.^[201] The Reagan administration emphasized the use of quick, low-cost counter-insurgency tactics to intervene in foreign conflicts.^[201] In 1983, the Reagan administration intervened in the multisided Lebanese Civil War, invaded Grenada, bombed Libya and backed the Central American Contras, anti-communist paramilitaries seeking to overthrow the Soviet-aligned Sandinista government in Nicaragua.^[105] While Reagan's interventions against Grenada and Libya were popular in the US, his backing of the Contra rebels was mired in controversy.^[202]

Meanwhile, the Soviets incurred high costs for their own foreign interventions. Although Brezhnev was convinced in 1979 that the Soviet war in Afghanistan would be brief, Muslim guerrillas, aided by the US and other countries, waged a fierce resistance against the invasion.^[203] The Kremlin sent nearly 100,000 troops to support its puppet regime in Afghanistan, leading many outside observers to dub the war "the Soviets' Vietnam".^[203] However, Moscow's quagmire in Afghanistan was far more disastrous for the Soviets than Vietnam had been for the Americans because the conflict coincided with a period of internal decay and domestic crisis in the Soviet system.

A senior US State Department official predicted such an outcome as early as 1980, positing that the invasion resulted in part from a "domestic crisis within the Soviet system. ... It may be that the thermodynamic law of entropy has ... caught up with the Soviet system, which now seems to expend more energy on simply maintaining its equilibrium than on improving itself. We could be seeing a period of foreign movement at a time of internal decay".^[204][205] The Soviets were not helped by their aged and sclerotic leadership either: Brezhnev, virtually incapacitated in his last years, was succeeded by Andropov and Chernenko, neither of whom lasted long. After Chernenko's death, Reagan was asked why he had not negotiated with Soviet leaders. Reagan quipped, "They keep dying on me".

Confrontation through détente (1962–79)

Main article: Cold War (1962–1979)

The United States reached the moon in 1969—a symbolic milestone in the space race.

United States Navy F-4 Phantom II intercepts a Soviet Tupolev Tu-95 D aircraft in the early 1970s

In the course of the 1960s and '70s, Cold War participants struggled to adjust to a new, more complicated pattern of international relations in which the world was no longer divided into two clearly opposed blocs.^[79] From the beginning of the post-war period, Western Europe and Japan rapidly recovered from the destruction of World War II and sustained strong economic growth through the 1950s and '60s, with per capita GDPs approaching those of the United States, while Eastern Bloc economies stagnated.^[79][154]

As a result of the 1973 oil crisis, combined with the growing influence of Third World alignments such as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the Non-Aligned Movement, less-powerful countries had more room to assert their independence and often showed themselves resistant to pressure from either superpower.^[105] Moscow, meanwhile, was forced to turn its attention inward to deal with the Soviet Union's deep-seated domestic economic problems.^[79] During this period, Soviet leaders such as Alexey Kosygin and Leonid Brezhnev embraced the notion of détente.^[79]

Dominican Republic and French NATO withdrawal

Main article: United States invasion of the Dominican Republic

President Lyndon B. Johnson landed 22,000 troops in the Dominican Republic in Operation Power Pack, citing the threat of the emergence of a Cuban-style revolution in Latin America.^[20] NATO countries remained primarily dependent on the US military for its defense against any potential Soviet invasion, a status most vociferously contested by France's Charles de Gaulle, who in 1966 withdrew from NATO's military structures and expelled NATO troops from French soil.^[155]

Czechoslovakia invasion

Main articles: Prague Spring and Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia

In 1968, a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia called the Prague Spring took place that included "Action Program" of liberalizations, which described increasing freedom of the press, freedom of speech and freedom of movement, along with an economic emphasis on consumer goods, the possibility of a multiparty government, limiting the power of the secret police^[156][157] and potentially withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact.^[158]

The Soviet Red Army, together with most of their Warsaw Pact allies, invaded Czechoslovakia.^[159] The invasion was followed by a wave of emigration, including an estimated 70,000 Czechs initially fleeing, with the total eventually reaching 300,000.^[160] The invasion sparked intense protests from Yugoslavia, Romania and China, and from Western European communist parties.^[161]

Brezhnev Doctrine

Brezhnev and Nixon during Brezhnev's June 1973 visit to Washington; this was a high-water mark in détente between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Main article: Brezhnev Doctrine

In September 1968, during a speech at the Fifth Congress of the Polish United Workers' Party one month after the invasion of Czechoslovakia, Brezhnev outlined the Brezhnev Doctrine, in which he claimed the right to violate the sovereignty of any country attempting to replace Marxism-Leninism with capitalism. During the speech, Brezhnev stated:^[158]

When forces that are hostile to socialism try to turn the development of some socialist country towards capitalism, it becomes not only a problem of the country concerned, but a common problem and concern of all socialist countries.

The doctrine found its origins in the failures of Marxism-Leninism in states like Poland, Hungary and East Germany, which were facing a declining standard of living contrasting with the prosperity of West Germany and the rest of Western Europe.^[162]

Third World escalations

Main articles: Vietnam War, Operation Condor, and Yom Kippur War

The US continued to spend heavily on supporting friendly Third World regimes in Asia. Conflicts in peripheral regions and client states—most prominently in Vietnam—continued.^[163] Johnson stationed 575,000 troops in Southeast Asia to defeat the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF) and their North Vietnamese allies in the Vietnam War, but his costly policy weakened the US economy and, by 1975, ultimately culminated in what most of the world saw as a humiliating defeat of the world's most powerful superpower at the hands of one of the world's poorest nations.^[20]

Additionally, Operation Condor, employed by South American dictators to suppress leftist dissent, was backed by the US, which (sometimes accurately) perceived Soviet or Cuban support behind these opposition movements.^[164] Brezhnev, meanwhile, attempted to revive the Soviet economy, which was declining in part because of heavy military expenditures.^[20]

Moreover, the Middle East continued to be a source of contention. Egypt, which received the bulk of its arms and economic assistance from the USSR, was a troublesome client, with a reluctant Soviet Union feeling obliged to assist in both the 1967 Six-Day War (with advisers and technicians) and the War of Attrition (with pilots and aircraft) against US ally Israel;^[165] Syria and Iraq later received increased assistance as well as (indirectly) the PLO.^[166]

During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, rumors of imminent Soviet intervention on the Egyptians' behalf brought about a massive US mobilization that threatened to wreck détente;^[167] this escalation, the USSR's first in a regional conflict central to US interests, inaugurated a new and more turbulent stage of Third World military activism in which the Soviets made use of their new strategic parity.^[168]

Sino-American relations

Main article: 1972 Nixon visit to China

As a result of the Sino-Soviet split, tensions along the Chinese-Soviet border reached their peak in 1969, and US President Richard Nixon decided to use the conflict to shift the balance of power towards the West in the Cold War.^[169] The Chinese had sought improved relations with the US in order to gain advantage over the Soviets as well.

In February 1972, Nixon announced a stunning rapprochement with Mao's China^[170] by traveling to Beijing and meeting with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. At this time, the USSR achieved rough nuclear parity with the US while the Vietnam War weakened US influence in the Third World and cooled relations with Western Europe).^[171] Although indirect conflict between Cold War powers continued through the late 1960s and early 1970s, tensions were beginning to ease.^[117]

Nixon, Brezhnev, and détente

Leonid Brezhnev and Jimmy Carter sign SALT II treaty, June 18, 1979, in Vienna

Main articles: Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, Helsinki Accords, and Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe

Following his China visit, Nixon met with Soviet leaders, including Brezhnev in Moscow.^[172] These Strategic Arms Limitation Talks resulted in two landmark arms control treaties: SALT I, the first comprehensive limitation pact signed by the two superpowers,^[173] and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which banned the development of systems designed to intercept incoming missiles. These aimed to limit the development of costly anti-ballistic missiles and nuclear missiles.^[79]

Nixon and Brezhnev proclaimed a new era of "peaceful coexistence" and established the groundbreaking new policy of détente (or cooperation) between the two superpowers. Between 1972 and 1974, the two sides also agreed to strengthen their economic ties,^[20] including agreements for increased trade. As a result of their meetings, détente would replace the hostility of the Cold War and the two countries would live mutually.^[172]

Meanwhile, these developments coincided with the "Ostpolitik" of West German Chancellor Willy Brandt.^[161] Other agreements were concluded to stabilize the situation in Europe, culminating in the Helsinki Accords signed at the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe in 1975.^[174]

Late 1970s deterioration of relations

In the 1970s, the KGB, led by Yuri Andropov, continued to persecute distinguished Soviet personalities such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov, who were criticising the Soviet leadership in harsh terms.^[175] Indirect conflict between the superpowers continued through this period of détente in the Third World, particularly during political crises in the Middle East, Chile, Ethiopia and Angola.^[176]

Although President Jimmy Carter tried to place another limit on the arms race with a SALT II agreement in 1979,^[177] his efforts were undermined by the other events that year, including the Iranian Revolution and the Nicaraguan Revolution, which both ousted pro-US regimes, and his retaliation against Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in December.

Crisis and escalation (1953–62)

Khrushchev, Eisenhower and De-Stalinization

In 1953, changes in political leadership on both sides shifted the dynamic of the Cold War.^[79] Dwight D. Eisenhower was inaugurated president that January. During the last 18 months of the Truman administration, the US defense budget had quadrupled, and Eisenhower moved to reduce military spending by a third while continuing to fight the Cold War effectively.^[20]

In March, following the death of Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev became the Soviet leader following the deposition and execution of Lavrentiy Beria and the pushing aside of rivals Georgy Malenkov and Vyacheslav Molotov. On February 25, 1956, Khrushchev shocked delegates to the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party by cataloguing and denouncing Stalin's crimes.^[113] As part of a campaign of de-Stalinization, he declared that the only way to reform and move away from Stalin's policies would be to acknowledge errors made in the past.^[79]

On November 18, 1956, while addressing Western ambassadors at a reception at the Polish embassy in Moscow, Khrushchev used his famous "Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you" expression, shocking everyone present.^[114] However, he had not been talking about nuclear war, he later claimed, but rather about the historically determined victory of communism over capitalism.^[115] He then declared in 1961 that even if the USSR might indeed be behind the West, within a decade its housing shortage would disappear, consumer goods would be abundant, its population would be "materially provided for", and within two decades, the Soviet Union "would rise to such a great height that, by comparison, the main capitalist countries will remain far below and well behind".^[116]

Eisenhower's secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, initiated a "New Look" for the containment strategy, calling for a greater reliance on nuclear weapons against US enemies in wartime.^[79] Dulles also enunciated the doctrine of "massive retaliation", threatening a severe US response to any Soviet aggression. Possessing nuclear superiority, for example, allowed Eisenhower to face down Soviet threats to intervene in the Middle East during the 1956 Suez Crisis.^[20]

Warsaw Pact and Hungarian Revolution

Main articles: Warsaw Pact and Hungarian Revolution of 1956

Map of the Warsaw Pact countries

While Stalin's death in 1953 slightly relaxed tensions, the situation in Europe remained an uneasy armed truce.^[117] The Soviets, who had already created a network of mutual assistance treaties in the Eastern Bloc by 1949,^[118] established a formal alliance therein, the Warsaw Pact, in 1955.^[47]

The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 occurred shortly after Khrushchev arranged the removal of Hungary's Stalinist leader Mátyás Rákosi.^[119] In response to a popular uprising,^[120] the new regime formally disbanded the secret police, declared its intention to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact and pledged to re-establish free elections. The Soviet Red Army invaded.^[121] Thousands of Hungarians were arrested, imprisoned and deported to the Soviet Union,^[122] and approximately 200,000 Hungarians fled Hungary in the chaos.^[123] Hungarian leader Imre Nagy and others were executed following secret trials.^[124]

From 1957 through 1961, Khrushchev openly and repeatedly threatened the West with nuclear annihilation. He claimed that Soviet missile capabilities were far superior to those of the United States, capable of wiping out any American or European city. However, Khrushchev rejected Stalin's belief in the inevitability of war, and declared his new goal was to be "peaceful coexistence".^[125] This formulation modified the Stalin-era Soviet stance, where international class struggle meant the two opposing camps were on an inevitable collision course where Communism would triumph through global war; now, peace would allow capitalism to collapse on its own,^[126] as well as giving the Soviets time to boost their military capabilities,^[127] which remained for decades until Gorbachev's later "new thinking" envisioning peaceful coexistence as an end in itself rather than a form of class struggle.^[128]

US pronouncements concentrated on American strength abroad and the success of liberal capitalism.^[129] However, by the late 1960s, the "battle for men's minds" between two systems of social organization that Kennedy spoke of in 1961 was largely over, with tensions henceforth based primarily on clashing geopolitical objectives rather than ideology.^[130]

Berlin ultimatum and European integration

During November 1958, Khrushchev made an unsuccessful attempt to turn all of Berlin into an independent, demilitarized "free city", giving the United States, Great Britain, and France a six-month ultimatum to withdraw their troops from the sectors they still occupied in West Berlin, or he would transfer control of Western access rights to the East Germans. Khrushchev earlier explained to Mao Tse-tung that "Berlin is the testicles of the West. Every time I want to make the West scream, I squeeze on Berlin."^[131] NATO formally rejected the ultimatum in mid-December and Khrushchev withdrew it in return for a Geneva conference on the German question.^[132]

More broadly, one hallmark of the 1950s was the beginning of European integration—a fundamental by-product of the Cold War that Truman and Eisenhower promoted politically, economically, and militarily, but which later administrations viewed ambivalently, fearful that an independent Europe would forge a separate détente with the Soviet Union, which would use this to exacerbate Western disunity.^[133]

Worldwide competition

Nationalist movements in some countries and regions, notably Guatemala, Iran, the Philippines, and Indochina were often allied with communist groups—or at least were perceived in the West to be allied with communists.^[79] In this context, the US and the Soviet Union increasingly competed for influence by proxy in the Third World as decolonization gained momentum in the 1950s and early 1960s;^[134] additionally, the Soviets saw continuing losses by imperial powers as presaging the eventual victory of their ideology.^[135]

The US government utilized the CIA in order to remove a string of unfriendly Third World governments and to support allied ones.^[79] The US used the CIA to overthrow governments suspected by Washington of turning pro-Soviet, including Iran's first democratically elected government under Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq in 1953 (see 1953 Iranian coup d'état) and Guatemala's democratically elected president Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in 1954 (see 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état).^[104] Between 1954 and 1961, the US sent economic aid and military advisors to stem the collapse of South Vietnam's pro-Western regime.^[20]

Many emerging nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America rejected the pressure to choose sides in the East-West competition. In 1955, at the Bandung Conference in Indonesia, dozens of Third World governments resolved to stay out of the Cold War.^[136] The consensus reached at Bandung culminated with the creation of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961.^[79] Meanwhile, Khrushchev broadened Moscow's policy to establish ties with India and other key neutral states. Independence movements in the Third World transformed the post-war order into a more pluralistic world of decolonized African and Middle Eastern nations and of rising nationalism in Asia and Latin America.^[20]

Sino-Soviet split, space race, ICBMs

Charting the Space Race in context of Sputnik and other nuclear threats.

Main articles: Sino-Soviet split and Space Race

The period after 1956 was marked by serious setbacks for the Soviet Union, most notably the breakdown of the Sino-Soviet alliance, beginning the Sino-Soviet split. Mao had defended Stalin when Khrushchev attacked him after his death in 1956, and treated the new Soviet leader as a superficial upstart, accusing him of having lost his revolutionary edge.^[137]

After this, Khrushchev made many desperate attempts to reconstitute the Sino-Soviet alliance, but Mao considered it useless and denied any proposal.^[137] The Chinese and the Soviets waged an intra-Communist propaganda war.^[138] Further on, the Soviets focused on a bitter rivalry with Mao's China for leadership of the global communist movement,^[139] and the two clashed militarily in 1969.^[140]

On the nuclear weapons front, the US and the USSR pursued nuclear rearmament and developed long-range weapons with which they could strike the territory of the other.^[47] In August 1957, the Soviets successfully launched the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM)^[141] and in October, launched the first Earth satellite, Sputnik.^[142] The launch of Sputnik inaugurated the Space Race. This culminated in the Apollo Moon landings, which astronaut Frank Borman later described as "just a battle in the Cold War"^[143] with superior spaceflight rockets indicating superior ICBMs.

Berlin Crisis of 1961

Soviet tanks face US tanks at Checkpoint Charlie, on October 27, during the Berlin Crisis of 1961

Main articles: Berlin Crisis of 1961, Berlin Wall, and Eastern Bloc emigration and defection

The Berlin Crisis of 1961 was the last major incident in the Cold War regarding the status of Berlin and post-World War II Germany. By the early 1950s, the Soviet approach to restricting emigration movement was emulated by most of the rest of the Eastern Bloc.^[144] However, hundreds of thousands of East Germans annually emigrated to West Germany through a "loophole" in the system that existed between East and West Berlin, where the four occupying World War II powers governed movement.^[145]

The emigration resulted in a massive "brain drain" from East Germany to West Germany of younger educated professionals, such that nearly 20% of East Germany's population had migrated to West Germany by 1961.^[146] That June, the Soviet Union issued a new ultimatum demanding the withdrawal of allied forces from West Berlin.^[147] The request was rebuffed, and in August, East Germany erected a barbed-wire barrier that would eventually be expanded through construction into the Berlin Wall, effectively closing the loophole.^[148]

Cuban Missile Crisis and Khrushchev ouster

Main article: Cuban Missile Crisis

The Soviet Union formed an alliance with Fidel Castro-led Cuba after the Cuban Revolution in 1959.^[149] In 1962, President John F. Kennedy responded to the installation of nuclear missiles in Cuba with a naval blockade. The Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world closer to nuclear war than ever before.^[150] It further demonstrated the concept of mutually assured destruction, that neither nuclear power was prepared to use nuclear weapons fearing total destruction via nuclear retaliation.^[151] The aftermath of the crisis led to the first efforts in the nuclear arms race at nuclear disarmament and improving relations,^[117] although the Cold War's first arms control agreement, the Antarctic Treaty, had come into force in 1961.^[152]

In 1964, Khrushchev's Kremlin colleagues managed to oust him, but allowed him a peaceful retirement.^[153] Accused of rudeness and incompetence, he was also credited with ruining Soviet agriculture and bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war.^[153] Khrushchev had become an international embarrassment when he authorised construction of the Berlin Wall, a public humiliation for Marxism-Leninism.