Nukes in the Cold War
To what extent was the Cold War shaped by the threat of nuclear weapons?
Intro – State context of the cold war - For forty-five years the Cold War was at the center of
world politics. It dominated the foreign policies of the two superpowers – the United States and
the Soviet Union – and deeply affected their societies and their political, economic, and military
institutions’ Agree that Cold War was predominantly shaped by the threat of Nuclear Weapons.
Other factors did contribute to the threat levels though.
Paragraphs
Nuclear weapons
The bomb certainly made the post-war relationship even more tense. Made the Americans more
confident in their commitment to security i. the North Atlantic Treaty of April 1949, but also the
Russians became less willing to compromise. Stalin adapted a policy called ‘tenacity and
steadfastness’ in retaliation to the US nuclear pressure on the Soviet Union. This policy focused
on stubbornness, for fear of seeming week rather than to compromise.
Truman dispatched B-29 bombers to Europe during the Berlin crisis, these had the intention to
signal that the US would defend Western Europe with nuclear weapons if necessary. Clearly
shows that nuclear weapons were a method of war against the USSR, thus shaping the path of the
Cold War Leaders from both sides attempted to use nuclear weapons for political gain. Examples
include the French in Indochina, where there was the discussion to use nuclear weapons to relive
French forces under siege, ended up with no action taking place.
Islands of Jinmen and Mazu were another case of willingness to use nuclear weapons.
Eisenhower gave serious consideration in using nuclear weapons, as he believed he could use
nuclear threats for political purposes. In both instances the crisis was settled when the Chinese
expressed desire for a peaceful settlement.
Khrushchev did similar, sending threats to London and Paris threatening missile attacks if they
did not withdraw their forces from Egypt. On the following day, Britain ended the Suez
operation, and Frace followed suit.
Ideology: Walter A. McDougall notes, the United States believed that the twentieth century
belonged to them; a sort of “American Century” of greatness. Soviet leaders believed that
communism would ultimately triumph in the world and that the Soviet Union was the vanguard
Socialist/Communist state. They also believed that the Western “imperialist” powers were
historically bound to pursue a hostile course against them. For their part, American and other
Western leaders assumed that the Soviet Union was determined to enhance its own power and to
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pursue expansionist policies by all expedient means in order to achieve a Soviet-led Communist
world.
Soft power: The factors of technology, education, and economic growth are becoming more
significant in international power, while geography, population, and raw materials are becoming
somewhat less important
International system: Anarchy in the context of the international system implies there are no
higher authorities, and because nation states are considered by many as primary actors in
international relations, an anarchical world would be one where there is no higher authority than
that of the state. when states try to survive in such a world, their survival becomes their principal
motivation. In order to survive, a state will try to reduce any external threats that could endanger
its existence. Therefore, wars happen when states fear for their safety. As Walt would suggest, a
states behavior “is determined by the threats they perceive and the power of others is merely one
element in their calculations.
War is the only solution to reduce security threats because the decision to make war imposes
itself as the only option. Their main interest is essentially power, and as classical realists such as
Morgenthau believe, states will engage in an endless struggle for power. Moreover, they will try
to maximize their power because they consider it to be the “ultimate safety” against other states.
Effectively the Cold War was a result of the anarchical system. Bipolarity of the international
system shaped the war. Two rival powers cannot remain in equilibrium indefinitely; one has to
surpass the other and therefore conflict is inevitable in a bipolar world
Origins of the Cold War
What were the origins of the Cold War?
Intro - Many issues led to the start of the Cold War. State context.
Nuclear weapons development: American monopoly of atomic weapons increased Stalin’s
determination to avoid war with the United States, it also made him less cooperative on a wide
range of issues, lest he appear weak, and strengthened his determination to expedite the
development of Soviet nuclear weapons.
Stalin was already aware prior to the conference about the Manhattan project. Truman believed
he had the upper hand, clearly didn’t, suggesting that negotiations were already deteriorating
between the two superpowers.
Ideology: After fifteen years of depression, war, and genocide, many of the bourgeois middle-of-
the-road parties of inter-war Europe also were weakened. This meant that European governments
became further interested in communism. Though this quickly died out with Communism
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attracted the support of not much more than about one voter in eight in western Europe even
before the ice had formed on the Cold War. Whereas in Eastern Europe brutal intimidatory
tactics by the Moscow-backed Communist Party succeeded over the following four years in
destroying the Smallholder Party and leaving complete power in the hands of the Communists.
Domino Theory – Fear that if one state fell to communism, then surrounding states would also
succumb.
Truman doctrine – Truman becoming the president after Roosevelts death, viewed the soviets
interventions in Eastern Europe as violation of the Yalta agreements – proved that Stalin was a
liar. Originated in1947 to contain the spread of communism (in the first instance by providing
military aid to Greece and Turkey) and the communist coup in Czechoslovakia in 1948. This
policy would need to protect the national security of America & its allies, defend existing and
potential liberal democratic governments, contain communist totalitarianism, and provide the
best prospects in the long term for an enduring global peace.
The Truman Doctrine was an unprecedented guarantee by the United States. Outside the
boundaries of hot war, the United States intended to aid politically, economically, and
strategically two threatened countries in a region that was not in its hemisphere. After Truman,
nearly every Cold War president either announced or was accorded a doctrine. In every case,
each is a response to Truman words and actions.
The Marshall Plan:
The Marshall Plan, also known as the European Recovery Program, was a U.S. program
providing aid to Western Europe following the devastation of World War II. It was enacted in
1948 and provided more than $15 billion to help finance rebuilding efforts on the continent. it
was crafted as a four-year plan to reconstruct cities, industries and infrastructure heavily
damaged during the war and to remove trade barriers between European neighbours – as well as
foster commerce between those countries and the United States Implementation of the Marshall
Plan has been cited as the beginning of the Cold War between the United States and its European
allies and the Soviet Union, which had effectively taken control of much of central and eastern
Europe and established its satellite republics as communist nations. In addition to economic
redevelopment, one of the stated goals of the Marshall Plan was to halt the spread communism
on the European continent Should be stated that the Soviets were offered to join in on the plan.
This determined that the economic trajectories of eastern and western Europe would
fundamentally differ.
It confirmed Moscow’s worst fears about the prospects for collaboration, negotiation and
agreement with the West. Signified the final failure in foreign policy. The alternative was
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separation, isolation and consolidation, which is the choice that the USSR made in 1947. The
USSR decided to abandon diplomacy to instead protect its interests.
The Soviet rejection of the plan was followed by the launch of the Molotov Plan, aseries of trade
treaties between the USSR and Eastern Europe. Marshall Plan has been cited as the beginning of
the Cold War between the United States and its European allies and the Soviet Union, which had
effectively taken control of much of central and eastern Europe and established its satellite
republics as communist nations.
Germany: One of the fundamental issues facing the two superpowers. One was
Germany...Neither the Soviet Union nor the United States could willingly run the risk that the
other would carry the day in either area. The most stable solution? That each would have its own
Germany.
The American decision in 1946 to leave troops in Europe indefinitely rather than withdraw them
in 1947 as initially envisaged didn’t help.
The nature of the international system:
Concept of vacuum. Realism interprets that the power struggle was created by the collapse of
Germany post-World War Two. The Cold War summarises the issues with having a bipolar
international system, and that it only ended when the USSR collapsed, thus becoming a unipolar
global order.
End of the Cold War
Did the United States of America win the Cold War?
Intro – Context of the Cold War. State what it was, between who. Then agree with the question.
Evidence has proven that the USSR was crippled after the Cold War, and although in recent
years there has been debate if the international system has witnessed another Cold War, it is still
unquestionable that the United States has global economic military hegemony.
Economics:
Continued repression at home and oppression abroad (especially the purge trials of the late 1940s
and the invasions of Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, and Afghanistan in 1979)
tarnished Communism’s image. The faltering Soviet economy further lessened communism‘s
appeal, as did growing international awareness of human rights and environmental abuses in the
communist world. Younger people in the Soviet bloc and the Third World measured their
economic well-being not against the experiences of their parents but against those of their
contemporaries in the West. Moreover the soviet union’s economy was defence based
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The central cause of the USSR's relative power decline in the 1980s was its failing economy.
From 1975 until 1985, the USSR's gross domestic produ (GDP) increased by an average of less
than 2 percent a year. In the sam period, the GDP of the United States grew more than 1.5 times.
Comparatively the United States aided the reconstruction of Western Europe and
Japan, promoted economic integration, supported a stable financial order, and encouraged
international trade and investment through the lowering of tariffs and the removal of other
impediments to the free flow of goods and capital. These changes, and high levels of military
spending, helped fuel an extended period of economic growth.
US technological and financial dominance and share of world production decreased over time,
the vitality of the West German and Japanese economies and the emergence of such Western-
oriented ‘newly industrializing countries’ as Taiwan and South Korea ensured the West’s
economic supremacy.
Collective security, free trade, solvency, and democracy helped Americans to take advantage of
unique opportunities and deflect dangerous challenges in the second half of the twentieth
century. The application of these ideas, in the peculiar circumstances of the time, enhanced
American power with manageable costs. The promotion of these ideas, by a select group of
leaders, served American interests, as well as the interests of America’s closest allies.
Reagan / Gorbachev: Ronald Reagan, through his weapons build-up and embrace of SDI,
brought the Soviet Union to its knees and left its leadership with no alternative but to acquiesce
in the independence of Eastern Europe, seek arms reductions, and end the Cold War. Somewhat
subjectable, Matlok rather argues that Reagan wished to negotiate from strength, but he did wish
to negotiate.
The fact that he liked Gorbachev and thought him sincere played a very positive role in making it
possible for them to come to far-reaching agreements.
Gorbachev: Gorbachev was serious in his declared intention of seeking to outlaw all nuclear
weapons by the year 2000.
After Chernobyl, he spoke both within his circle of advisers and in the Politburo about how the
accident at that nuclear power plant had strengthened his conviction of the need to banish nuclear
weapons complete Decisive factors were the coming to power of Gorbachev, his selection of a
new foreign policy team who shared his values, and Gorbachev’s willingness to liberalize the
Soviet system and then embark on its democratization. His rejection of the ideological
underpinnings of the East–West conflict led, in turn, to a new emphasis on freedom of choice
and the crucial rejection of the use of force to uphold regimes loyal to Moscow.
Did Mikhail Gorbachev end the Cold War?
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Intro: Was certainly a key figure in ending of the Cold War, however, to state he was the reason
that the Cold War ended is inaccurate.
The weight of evidence, in the shape of the Soviet declining growth rate from the 1950s to the
1980s, suggested that a command economy was less efficient than a market economy thus, one
could argue that some kind of radical economic reform was in the long-term interest of the
people as a whole
Maybe I’m wrong, but I believe we haven’t studied Europe enough and don’t know it very well,
we have to get up to speed on it ourselves and educate our people-Gorbachev.
This does not mean that Gorbachev and his inner circle of advisers fore-saw from the beginning
how far their new thinking would take them. When Gorbachev first took office, he believed that
the Soviet Union needed to be modernized within the framework of the Communist system Over
time, though, Gorbachev’s “mind was undergoing a sweeping de-ideologization.
Gorbachev also began to take steps, such as relaxing the power of the censors’ office, to
democratize Soviet society and alleviate popular fear of the party-state. Though limited at first to
greater press freedoms and tolerance of “non-threatening group activity,” such steps represented
a radical step into the political unknown.
This combination of persuasion and rhetorical entrapment spurred Soviet leaders to initiate
political reforms that, in turn, empowered independent activists who were pressing for ever
greater democratization. The resulting interaction of top-down reform and bottom-up social
mobilization was instrumental in the collapse of Communist rule in the Soviet Union.
In 1986, for example, Gorbachev made clear his readiness to ban all nuclear weapons. In 1987 he
signed the INF Treaty, eliminating not only the Soviet and American missiles deployed since the
late 1970sbut also the whole of the Soviet strategic theater missile forces that had faced Europe
and Asia for three decades. What is more, the treaty instituted an intrusive and extensive system
of verification. In 1988, Gorbachev proposed conventional arms reductions in Europe under a
plan that would abandon the Soviet Union’s numerical superiority, and also launched a
substantial unilateral force reduction. In 1988 and 1989 he withdrew all Soviet forces from
Afghanistan. At about the same time, he encouraged the ouster of the old Communist leadership
in Eastern Europe and accepted the transition of the former Soviet- allied states into non-
Communist neutral states. By 1990, Gorbachev had signed a CFE Treaty accepting Soviet
conventional arms levels in Europe to the Urals that were considerably lower than the levels for
NATO. By that time as well he had not only accepted Germany’s reunification but also the
membership of a unified Germany in NATO. A year later he had jettisoned the Warsaw Pact and
the CMEA economic union and had agreed to verified deep cuts in strategic nuclear forces
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The central cause of the USSR's relative power decline in the 1980s was its failing economy.
From 1975 until 1985, the USSR's gross domestic product (GDP) increased by an average of less
than 2 percent a year. In the sam period, the GDP of the United States grew more than 1.5 times
United Nations
What role did the United Nations play in superpower diplomacy between 1945 and 1989?
In the early cold war, the United Nations-especially the General Assembly became an arena of
sorts where the superpowers and their allies squared off against one another, each trying to score
points against its adversary and earn the allegiance of the global audience
Context of the UN
The course of the 20th century, sees states gradually coming together to create international
organizations in order to:
Promote peace and curb aggression, war and conflict \
Regulate diplomatic affairs
Devise and codify international law
Encourage social development
Foster economic prosperity and combat poverty
UN created end of WW2, HQ in NYC, 193-member states, six ‘principle organs’. Has a charter,
basic framework that every signatory has agreed to uphold. The UN was created with liberal
idealist intentions primarily to avoid a third destructive world war and preserve world peace and
security (Article 1.1), as well as to recognize the sovereignty of states and give a voice to each
state in the General Assembly
During its first decade, the UN was largely western-dominated. The Security Council reflected
the views and interests of the western world, with its permanent membership consisting of four
largely white states with European cultural ties and one Asian state. Nationalist China, or
Taiwan, essentially a western-created client
In many ways, the United Nations was most intensely involved in the Middle Eastduring the cold
war, where many countries seemed to have vital interests-whether related to oil, religion,
national security, trade, refugee settlement, territorial boundaries, or all of the above
Congo theatre - Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld's operation.
Second UN peacekeeping operation (known as ONUC), which involved some 20,000 troops and
civilians, was the UN's most complex and protracted operation to date. UN actions contributed,
against the odds, to holding the Congo together, decreasing the level of civilian hardship, and
preventing another proxy war between the superpowers. Hammarskjöld's policy of strict political
neutrality, however, ensured that at one time or another during the crisis all sides were
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discontented with the UN Secretary-General and his policy. Nevertheless, his push for
intervention helped transform the image of the UN (from perceived agent of US policy to
mediator) and make it a prominent forum for the forces of decolonization.
The UN had a significant role in easing the transformation of Soviet foreign and security policy.
Not only were some key changes of Soviet policy announced at the UN, but also the UN
provided a framework of principles, laws, and procedures within which Gorbachev could justify
his policies in terms that did not involve the humiliation of merely picking up the language and
policies of the West. The UN Security Council, in particular, provided a plat- form on which a
newly co-operative approach to security could be demonstrated, for example in the resolution
that helped end the Iran–Iraq War28 and in the resolution authorising the use of force to reverse
the Iraqi annexation of Kuwait.29
Did the United Nations serve as a stabilizing force during the Cold War?
Intro: Context of the Cold War, and orgins of the United Nations
Paragraphs
Creation of the UN itself
USSR:|
We know that the Soviet Union wished to be involved in the conferences and meetings which
framed the UN, both as a recognition of its status in international politics and to protect its
security interests. Stalin was probably not too interested in the sentiments and principles behind
the UN Charter; the key issue would be whether the Big Three would agree on the structure of
the post-war world and be able and willing to use the UN to support and defend this structure.
It was also fairly clear that being in a minority in all forums of the UN, the Soviet Union was not
going to allow the new organization to take decisions that were against its interests
US:
The American position towards the United Nations was less straightforward than that of either of
its wartime allies. American ideas were shaped by two contrasting positions towards the structure
of the future UN.13 One was universalism: an American belief in equality for all states and the
adoption of the rule of law for international relations. The other, somewhat echoing Stalin, was
for the continuation of the wartime condominium in the future UN with post-war international
relations and security being controlled by the Big Three
Thus the American and Soviet conceptions of the UN had a common feature -the maintenance of
great power cooperation – but they differed in their assumptions about the foundations for that
cooperation
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Discuss conflicts
Angola: The divisions of tribal society in Angola were intensified by the politics of the Cold
War, with the three largest tribal groups allying with various factions backed by either the Soviet
Union, Cuba, South Africa, or the United States. The United Nations mounted four missions to
Angola in the 1990s to verify the departure of foreign troops, monitor the implementation of
peace accords, and promote reconciliation. But, by 1999, with the UN's work only partly
accomplished, Angola asked the United Nations to depart, leaving behind only a UN presence to
liaise with the various combatants. Angola remains one of the most tragic legacies of Cold War
Africa.'"
Civil rights: Additionally, UN human rights work (p. 385) during the cold war oftenbecame a
battleground between the two superpowers: the Americans emphasized individual civil and
political rights and therefore condemned the communist nations for their lack of free elections
and freedom of speech, press, assembly, and religion; while the Soviet Union emphasized
collective economic, social, and cultural rights, condemned capitalist nations for their failure to
guarantee employment, and especially criticized the US for its treatment of African Americans
during the Jim Crow era
Greece: The background to the Greek case in the UN was the competition between Britain and
the Soviet Union to establish spheres of influence in the Balkans.
The cases of Greece and Spain therefore provided clear, public evidence of the worsening
relations among the Big Three in the UN from the very beginning of the organization’s history.
The manifestations of this breakdown were numerous: the invective and verbal clashes and the
sheer unpleasantness which marked the debates over both countries; the use of the Soviet veto;
the use of the UN as a forum for propaganda, for embarrassment and for highlighting divisions;
and the concerns especially of the British, to a lesser degree the Americans, that the UN
Secretariat was less than neutral in its approach to the two cases. All were features of the
handling of Greece and Spain in the UN after 1946. Given the potentially divergent expectations
each of the Big Three had held of the UN, the dissent and divisions should not have been a total
surprise, but they clearly disturbed some such as Bevin who hoped, in vain, that the UN might
avoid clashes of interests.
How important were Central America and the Caribbean to superpower rivalry?
Intro – Context of the Cold War, but also state that unlike Europe, Central America and the
Caribbean conflict was based on the pre-existing Cold War projection of US power on its
existing strategic and economic predominance. Main argument is that Central America and
Caribbean was much more important to the United States than to the USSR. Evident from the
scales of intervention the US undertook, compared to the actions and funding of the Soviet
Union. Thus, in regard to superpower rivalry, not overly important, areas such as Asia and
Europe took precedent.
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United States aptitudes:
The Cold War provided a convenient rationale for enlarging and institutionalizing pre-
existing US efforts to impose its ideological and policy preferences on other states.
However as this continued, anti-US movements began to occur 1959-62 when a newly
installed Cuban government opted to defect to the Soviet camp rather than adjust its
policies to US requirements.
US political leaders tended to accord great symbolic importance to deviations from US
policy preferences in Latin America, especially in the Caribbean. These actions enhanced
the capacity of US leaders to shape events throughout the region by making intervention
a credible threat, even in countries where it had not yet occurred
Latin American governments, political movements, and interest groups often challenged
US predominance from within the region. Though circumstances and capacities varied,
nearly every Latin American government attempted at one time or another to mitigate or
evade compliance with US interests by turning to other great powers, such as Britain,
France, and both imperial and Nazi Germany.
President Reagan made Nicaragua a key symbol of his administration’s aggressively anti-
Communist foreign policy. Nicaragua under the Sandinistas, the president stated, had
become a “Communist,” “totalitarian” state similar to Cuba.
The Soviet Union:
had no significant strategic or economic interests in the western hemisphere. Soviet
leaders refused pleas for military aid to avert the US attack on Guatemala in 1953-54.
Though it provided military and economic aid to Cuba from 1961, the USSR opposed
Cuba’s support of guerrilla insurgencies in the 1960s. In the 1970s, the Soviets pushed
the Cubans to abandon support for such movements in Latin America, offered only
modest assistance to the elected socialist government of Chile (1970-73), and sought
normal diplomatic and trade relations with the some of region’s most repressive military
regimes.
After defeating an invasion force of US-sponsored counterrevolutionaries at the Bay of
Pigs in April 1961, the Castro government received Soviet military aid to bolster its
defenses against what both Cuban and Soviet authorities perceived as the threat of an
imminent invasion by the armed forces of the United States.
Soviet military aid total led a mere $12 million from 1979 through 1980, rising to $45
million in 1981. Military aid from all the Soviet bloc countries peaked at approximately
$250 million in 1984. Economic aid from the Soviet bloc rose to a high of $253 million
in 1982 and declined thereafter.
Sandinista government received more aid from Western Europe and other Latin
American countries than from the Communist bloc, virtually all of it conditional on
respect for private property and civil liberties
Towards the end of the Cold War:
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Bush administration swiftly turned its attention away from Central America. As the Cold
War ended, the region lost both its strategic significance, arguable at best, as well as its
symbolic role as a battleground in a larger global conflict
The collapse of Communist regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe pushed
opposition parties and guerrilla movements to reassess their options
The sudden disappearance of the Soviet Union produced a stalemate in which the only
plausible outcome for all of the local contenders was a negotiated peace in the context of
US hegemony.
One of the cruel ironies of the Cold War was that, while the US and its allies championed
democracy and freedom as their goals, more often than not in the ‘developing world’ they ended
up supporting undemocratic military regimes, dictators, and monarchies alienated from the
aspirations of ordinary people. The frequent intervention of Western powers to protect their
interests in Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, in addition to US operations in Latin
America, polarized and radicalized large segments of the population in these societies
Why was Cuba such a fiercely contested Cold War battleground?
‘Truman Doctrine’ in 1947 to contain the spread of communism (in the first instance by
providing military aid to Greece and Turkey) and the communist coupin Czechoslovakia in
1948tr
Bay of Pigs incident
After defeating an invasion force of US-sponsored counterrevolutionaries at the Bay of Pigs in
April 1961, the Castro government received Soviet military aid to bolster its defences against
what both Cuban and Soviet authorities perceived as the threat of an imminent invasion by the
armed forces of the United States.
Jorge Dominguez has argued, for example, that the Cuban revolution so traumatized US policy-
makers that, at crucial moments in the succeeding decades, US policy became “illogical.
Moreover a US intelligence board concluded that the Soviet Union sought to use Cuba as a ‘base
of operations’ from which to launch forays into Latin America, and that ‘the Castro regime has
already become an effective instrument of the [Sino-Soviet] Bloc
Cuban missile Crisis
Soviet Union attempted to address the issue of its own deficit of Intercontinental Ballistic
Missiles compared to the United States by placing shorter-range nuclear missiles within Cuba, an
allied Communist nation directly off the shores of the United States. This move allowed the
Soviet Union to reach many of the United States’ largest population centres with nuclear
weapons, placing both nations on a more equal footing in terms of security and status.
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Whoever actually initiated the process leading to their installation (historians stillargue over the
exact mix of Soviet and Cuban motives and initiatives), it seems clear that the decision was
linked to the Bay of Pigs and the threat from the North.
Fidel Castro - was not just another vaguely romantic military strongman without any special
political program. He was under the influence of the Communists andhe had a hemispheric plan
for revolution, could not be brought over to the US side. For Castro, the Soviets represented that
‘‘other’’ kind of modernity-emphasizing social justice – that he hoped to build in Cuba. By
March 1960 the Soviet leadership had granted a Cuban request for arms and military advisers.
Conclusion
perhaps most important of all from the Soviet perspective, is the fact that Cuba today is a
basically successful and functioning example of socialism in the Western Hemisphere
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