The Real Cold War: A High-Stakes Chess Match of Global
Proportions
No missiles were launched and no guns were fired between the
two superpowers, but The Cold War was a war nonetheless: a battle of
indirect aggression, of politics, of economics and propaganda. The term
"Cold War" was originally coined by presidential adviser Bernard
Baruch during a 1947 congressional debate. That term would come to
signify decades of tension and hostility between the United States and
the United Soviet Socialist Republic.
The conflict would take many forms, from the chess game of
ever-shifting global alliances to an escalating arms race that would
spark worldwide fears of a nuclear holocaust. Often thought to refer
solely to the strained relations between the U.S. and U.S.S.R., the Cold
War, in fact, involved the whole world. If the United States and the
Soviet Union were the main players, then lesser countries were their
pawns.
Fall of Hitler, rise of Russia
At the end of World War II in 1945, the clear-cut relationships
between the Allies began to unravel. Their common enemy, Hitler, was
done away with; ideologies and agendas set aside during the war were
taken up again. The victors of WWII, surveying the altered landscape of
global power relations, also began to eye one another warily.
By 1948, the Soviets had already established leftist governments
in the liberated Eastern-bloc countries as a bulwark against any
renewed German threat; America and Great Britain feared that Soviet
influence, if not curbed, would spread to Western Europe. In 1947-48,
the U.S. was building its own bulwark, sending aid to Western Europe
under the Marshall Plan. With the Soviets having installed openly
communist regimes in the East, the Cold War had begun.
The next five years would mark the height of the Cold War, with
the Soviets and the U.S. dividing Europe with their military forces and
ideologies. The subsequent years unfolded in an unnerving match of
maneuver and counter-maneuver: After the Soviets unsuccessfully
blockaded Western-held sectors of West Berlin in 1948-49, the U.S. and
its European allies formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO), a military presence that served to keep Soviet influence in
check. But the Soviets were advancing in other quarters nonetheless,
exploding their first atomic warhead in 1949, ending the U.S.'s primacy
in weapons technology. Also, in 1949, the Soviet-backed North Korean
government penetrated the border into South Korea, which was
supported by the U.S. The ensuing Korean War would last until 1953.
Hot points
That same year, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin died, easing the
standoff somewhat. But two years later, relations were strained anew
as the two superpowers' military organizations -- the West's NATO and
the Soviet Union's newly formed Warsaw Pact -- scrambled in a sort of
larger-than-life membership drive.
The race was for technology as well as allies: the U.S. and
U.S.S.R. began developing intercontinental ballistic missiles in 1958,
touching off another intense period. When the Soviets were discovered
to be secretly installing missiles in Cuba -- well within range of U.S.
cities -- the superpowers were poised at the brink of war. Fortunately,
this episode, known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, was defused when an
agreement was reached to withdraw the weapons.
The outcome was strangely hopeful: it showed that even top
defense leaders of both superpowers feared the awesome destructive
power of these new weapons. With the signing of the Nuclear Test-Ban
Treaty in 1963, both sides agreed not to engage in above-ground
nuclear weapons tests.
But hostilities still ran high. The Soviets considered the outcome
of the Cuban Missile crisis nothing less than a humiliation to them; they
vowed to never again be shamed by their rival in the west. The Soviet
Union thus began a buildup of conventional and strategic forces over
the next 25 years -- and the U.S. would be forced to keep pace. This
escalating arms race would be one of the definitive aspects of the Cold
War, inspiring civilian peace movements and deep fears of The Bomb.
The Cold War had its hot points, battles carried out in allied and
enemy countries. The Soviet Union fortified member countries such as
East Germany, Hungary and Afghanistan. The U.S., meanwhile, tried to
stanch communist influence closer to home, overthrowing a leftist
regime in Guatemala, invading the Dominican Republic and Grenada,
and backing a failed invasion of Cuba in 1961. Most infamously, it
fought from 1964-1975 to stop North Vietnam from bringing South
Vietnam under communist rule.
The thaw
But cracks were forming in the Communist bloc. Countries that
were once of middling consequence showed signs of autonomy and
political strength, and the globe wasn't so easily defined in terms of
U.S. or Soviet influence. China had largely distanced itself from the
Soviet Union, creating a rift in what was formerly considered a unified
Communist front. Meanwhile, Western Europe and Japan were
developing at an explosive rate.
Tensions were eased further with the SALT I and II agreements,
which limited the development of antiballistic and strategic missiles.
Still, tensions spiked in the 1980s with a flurry of mutual arms buildup.
However, the administration of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the
Cold War wound down, as he attempted to democratize the U.S.S.R.'s
political machine. With the fall of the Soviet bloc of Eastern Europe in
1989-90, the rise of democratic governments in its place and, most
notably, the unification of East and West Germany under NATO
oversight, the tensions of Cold War were finally disappearing.
In late 1991, the final stubborn bastion of Communism, the
Soviet Union, collapsed, creating 15 newly independent nations. Russia
itself saw a democratically elected leader come to power, and the
world sighed with relief: it was the surest sign that the Cold War had
thawed at last.