Download Study Guide for Cold War Test

Study Guide for Cold War
The following terms and concepts will be covered in class and in the remainder of this document. Identify them
in your notes, paying attention to both their definition and their significance. Additionally, I advise you to
create a timeline in your notebook so that you have a solid sense of when things occurred, when the people were
in power, and what time periods were crisis periods and which were periods of détente.
Terms and Events to Know:
Conflicts and Wars
1st Indochina War
Korean War
Vietnam War
Cuban Missile Crisis
Bay of Pigs
Berlin Crisis/Airlift
Afghanistan Conflict
Groups & Organizations
NATO
Warsaw Pact
Eastern Bloc
Comecon
Cominform
KMT
PRC
EEC
CIA
KGB
UN
Security Council
Permanent Members & the Veto
Khmer Rouge
Conferences
Bretton Woods
1955 Geneva Conference
SALT I & II
1975 Helsinki Treaty
1986, ’87, ’88 Summits
People
Nikita Khrushchev
Charles de Gaulle
Henry Kissinger
John Foster Dulles
Ronald Reagan
Mikhail Gorbachov
Tito (Josip Broz)
Policies and Ideologies
Truman Doctrine
Marshall Plan
Domino Theory
Containment Doctrine
Ostpolitik
Brezhnev Doctrine
Concepts
‘Iron Curtain’
“Evil Empire”
Multipolarity
Bipolarity
Détente
Arms Race
ICBM
MAD
Berlin Wall
Olympic Boycotts
U2 Spy Plane
Essential Concepts of the Cold War:
There were five phases of the Cold War. The first phase was the period from WWII to Stalin’s death. The
second phase stretched from 1953 to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Both of these phases were marked by
bipolar confrontation, but the difference lay in the leadership of the Soviet Union. Stalin was steadily firm in his
approach, while Khrushchev would at times make overtures of peace and then would threaten war the next. The
third phase of the Cold War was from 1962 through 1973 was marked by an erosion of power from both sides.
Vietnam did this for the US and conflict with China and other satellites did this for the USSR. The fourth phase
of the Cold War was from 1973 through 1981. This was a period of détente for the powers as they both
struggled with their ‘imperial overstretch’. 1981 through 1991 was the fifth and final phase, which was marked
by initial confrontation and final capitulation of the USSR.
From the beginning, Germany was a crucial issue within the Cold War. Both sides felt that a unified Germany
was critical for the economic recovery of Europe and the world, but both felt that they would need to be
controlled in order to prevent them from starting another war. Of course, both sides felt that they should be the
ones overseeing the rebuilding of Germany. Thus, from the start, one of the causes of friction was Germany.
Ideological differences defined the Cold War, enabling each side to view the other as a threat to their very
existence. At heart, their differences were all economically based, as capitalism functions best when the rights
of the individuals are intact and they are free to pursue business without interference from the government,
while communism requires the government to interfere and create a state in which all individuals have their
basic needs provided. Thus, both systems can claim to be supportive of the equality of the individual, but the
economic systems are inherently different in the degree of government involvement.
The US viewed their society as uniquely superior to others, and, since WWII demonstrated that the US could no
longer remain isolated, it seemed necessary and beneficial to all concerned to promote their ideals around the
world. The Truman Doctrine, which became known as the Containment Doctrine, was an expression of this.
Similarly, the essence of Marxism and Communism is the view that it is the best option for the world to utilize
for social structure. Therefore, there was inherent justification for actions that led to the spread of Communism,
or, at the very least, the safeguarding of the USSR.
Even though ideologies were what leaders used in their speeches and such, power was the essential issue and did
more to determine the choices of the leaders than ideology. Power had traditionally been defined by military
might, but the Cold War (on top of WWI and II) demonstrated that industrial strength is more important.
Both the US and the USSR claimed to be anti-imperialist, and their populations would have agreed with that,
but the governments both behaved as imperial powers. They did so in order to meet either real or perceived
security threats. An example of this is the Brezhnev Doctrine, which was issued in 1968, following a
Czechoslovakian political challenge to Soviet rule. Essentially, it was deemed critical for the stability of the
entire soviet bloc and the security of USSR’s borders, to maintain control. So the USSR sent in an army and
crushed the rebellion. This doctrine was only relaxed at the end of the ‘80’s, when the Eastern Bloc fell apart.
Both sides of the conflict suffered from ‘imperial overstretch’, which is the state of spending too much on one’s
military and the maintenance of ‘colonies’. This destabilizes the economy to a point that causes suffering and
dissatisfaction with the government. The effect of the wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan were examples of this.
The Arms Race was crippling for both nations. They were in a constant battle to gain enough of an advantage
to conceivably win a war. That would give them the bargaining power that would enable their dominance of the
world and an ideological victory. By the ‘80’s, the combined might of the two nation’s nuclear weapons could
destroy the world many times over. The culmination of the Arms Race was the concept of a ‘Star Wars’ defense
system that would shoot down incoming nuclear warheads. The money required by this concept was more than
the command economy of the Soviet Union could bear, and newly elected Mikhail Gorbachov was forced to
find ways to modify the Soviet system and to come to terms with the US.
Over the course of the Cold War, both powers attempted to regain a sense of rationality by trying to agree upon
limits to the proliferation of nuclear weapons. There were as series of treaties, the 1955 Geneva Conference
(little progress made on nuclear weaponry, but the attempt was made), SALT I & II (1972 and 1979, both of
which limited the number and kind of future nuclear weapons the nations would produce), the 1975 Helsinki
Treaty (both sides, and all other European nations, agreed to honor the existing boundaries of the nations), and
the series of summits in the 1980’s (’86 – agreed to scrap mid-range nuclear weapons, ’87 – met to officially
sign agreement and to verify progress, ’88 – failed to agree on Gorbachov’s proposal that future conflicts would
not be resolve via military means). In the end, neither side could truly bring themselves to drastically reduce
their arms, as they still feared each other. Plus, as long as they were confident that they each had enough to
truly eliminate the other side, then the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction, or MAD, ensured the nuclear
peace.
Due to the lack of any other nation that was capable of competing with the US and USSR, the world following
WWII was bipolar, with just the two nations to turn to. This led, inevitably to the formation of multinational
groups that could effectively compete with the two superpowers.
The first step towards the European Union was the European Coal and Steel Community treaty (1951), and
this led to other such agreements. A more complete form was the 1957 creation of the European Economic
Community (EEC), which came to be known as the Common Market. This linked the western European
nations economically. Charles de Gaulle (President of France from 1958 – 1969) was very active in the
promotion of a unified Europe that might challenge the might of the superpowers. Following him, West
German leaders were to promote the concept of Ostpolitik, which embraced the reunification of Germany and
the linking of the remainder of Europe. Both of these movements supported the continued development of the
European Union. While de Gaulle disagreed with the federal model that the EEC embraced, he applauded
anything that would remove Europe’s dependency on the US.
Other forms of international groups that challenged the bipolarity of the world order included OPEC and an
organization of Southeast Asian nations. Individually, China moved away from the Soviet Union’s influence,
eventually clashing in military skirmishes along their mutual border. They developed into another world power,
further increasing the reality of multipolarity, which was the state of the world at the end of the Cold War.
The timing of the U2 spy plane that was shot down over Russia couldn’t have been worse. The two powers
were to meet in Paris for renewed talks on disarmament, but Khrushchev broke of talks before they began, as a
result of the incident. This incident spurred on confrontations between the two powers. Khrushchev soon
delivered an ultimatum that he would remove access from East Germany and West. The target was Berlin. A
few months later, this resulted in the erection of the Berlin Wall. This was occurring at the same time (1961) as
the ill-advised Bay of Pigs invasion. The following year, was when the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred, which
marked the end of Khrushchev’s effective power.
The Khmer Rouge was an example of a group that was supported by a Cold War power in the hopes of creating
another client state, or, at least, solidifying a current client state. Both the US and the USSR engaged in this
practice. This often led to abusive governments and widespread suffering. In this case, the USSR supported the
group, and when it came to power, led by Pol Pot, the group caused 20% of the population of Cambodia to die.
The war in Afghanistan (1979 – 1988) was for the USSR what Vietnam was for the US. The USSR had
installed a series of puppet governments there, but the Afghans never supported the communist regime. When a
resistance group formed and began attacking the government, the Soviets responded to calls for help by
invading the nation with their military. They were never able to subdue the rebel forces. The US, filling the
role that the USSR filled during the Vietnam War, secretly supplied the rebels with weapons. This conflict led
to the US boycott of the 1980 Olympic games in Moscow. The Soviets responded in kind during the 1984 Los
Angeles games.
John Foster Dulles, the Secretary of State for Eisenhower, escalated the initial concept of containment. He
argued that Soviet rule over Eastern Europe should be contested because the international struggle of
capitalism/democracy vs. communism was a matter of good vs. evil. He was one of the first to color the
struggle in that way, and an echo of Mr. Dulles may be heard in Reagan’s rhetoric.
Henry Kissinger, the Secretary of State for Nixon, was instrumental in generating a period of détente in the
70’s. He, unlike Dulles, had a coherent worldview that did not color relations in terms of good and evil. His
political ideas remained a force throughout the period of détente. The most obvious result of his work was the
visit of Nixon to Communist China in 1972.
The fall of the Soviet Union occurred after Gorbachov attempted to open up the communist state’s policies and
to loosen their grip on their satellite nations. As soon as the government’s grip of the populace within the USSR
and the client states was loosened, nationalist revolutions occurred and ended the USSR’s existence. The intent
had been to gradually move the communist state policies towards a mixed economy, essentially becoming more
of a socialist state that embraced some democratic principles, but the result indicated the long repression of
individuals within the society. The rapid disintegration of the USSR and the Eastern Bloc surprised all.