Cold War Historical Overview Archives - Page 3 of 10

U is for U-2

November 15, 2018 by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe

In 1956, the US Air Force bought 48 single-seater models of Lockheed’s U-2 spy plane, and five 2-seater models. The planes flew too high for Soviet anti-aircraft missiles or fighters, and had free reign after 1957. They flew from bases in Japan, Turkey, and Britain, staying in the air for 12 hours, and mapping and photographing the Russian land mass, air and missile bases, and factories.

In 1960, as President Eisenhower prepared for a summit with Russia’s Khruschev in Paris, the CIA pressed for one last U-2 mission over the Soviet Union to establish whether there was a missile plant or base near the Urals. It was one mission too many.

On May 5 as the summit was about to begin, Khruschev announced that a U-2 had been shot downover Soviet territory. The Americans denied that the plane had been on a spy mission, but Khruschev produced the pilot, Gary Powers, along with his suicide needle, cameras, and other evidence.

Eisenhower accepted responsibility and declared in Paris that the spy flights had taken place with his full knowledge. Khruschev insisted on an American apology, a promise not to do it again, and that ‘the criminals be punished’.

Ike refused.

France’s DeGaulle pointed out that modern technology was making sovereignty over a state’s higher airspace a more and more elusive concept. He pointed out that a Soviet satellite was orbiting over France.

In the end, the Paris summit never took place. A month later the Soviet delegation walked out of the Geneva disarmament talks.

By late 1961, the U-2 flights and the first of the American spy satellites made it clear that the US had overwhelming superiority in the ability to deliver nuclear weapons, even if not in warheads.

In 1962, U-2 flights played a critical role in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

T is for Truman Doctrine

May 24, 2018 by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe

President Truman made a dramatic address on March 12, 1947, to both Houses of the US Congress. In the speech (known as Truman’s Declaration of Cold War), the president asked Americans to join in a global commitment against communism. He asked for $400 million in emergency aid and for the right to send US troops to administer reconstruction and train local forces in Greece and Turkey. These measures were necessary, he said, to save those countries from imminent Communist takeover. The Truman administration feared that the Greek Communists would align Greece with the Soviet Union.

The president said the US had no choice but to step in with an extensive program of economic and military assistance:

I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.

This became known as the Truman Doctrine. It appeared to apply globally, not only to southeastern Europe.

Congress, in an unprecedented show of bipartisan responsibility, voted an aid program for Greece and Turkey in May. The congressional action confirmed the end of Britain’s role as a dominant world power and the beginning of America’s role as principle guardian of the postwar peace. It also set forth the basic postwar philosophy of containment of Soviet aggression. (For more on containment, see Letter C.) Senator J. William Fulbright declared:

More by far than any other factor the anti-communism of the Truman Doctrine has been the guiding spirit of American foreign policy since World War II.

Noted historian Walter LaFeber says the Truman Doctrine was a milestone in American history for at least 4 reasons:

1) It marked the point at which Truman used the American fear of communism both at home and abroad to convince Americans they must embark upon a Cold War foreign policy;

2) Congress gave the President great powers to wage the Cold War as he saw fit;

3) For the first time in the postwar era, Americans massively intervened in another nation’s civil war; this intervention was justified on the basis of anticommunism;

4) Truman used the doctrine to justify a gigantic aid program to prevent a collapse of the European and American economies; later such programs were expanded globally.

The Truman Doctrine became an ideological shield behind which the US marched to rebuild the Western political-economic system and counter the radical left. From 1947 on, any threats to the Western system could be explained as communist-inspired, not as problems arising from difficulties within the system itself.

Watch the speech in its entirety below.

Photograph Courtesy of Harry S. Truman Library & Museum.

Dr. Seuss and the Cold War

February 12, 2018 by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe

Did you ever wonder where Donald Trump got the idea for his “big, beautiful wall?” Was he thinking of the Berlin Wall? The Korean demilitarized zone? Exactly what kind of wall does he have in mind? Maybe it’s like the one Dr. Seuss describes in his Butter Battle Book, published on January 12, 1984. The book is an anti-war story, a parable about arms races, mutually assured destruction, and nuclear weapons.

Theodore Geisel, more commonly known as Dr. Seuss, took on the Cold War in several of his books, starting with Horton Hears A Who in 1954. So this wasn’t the first time he had written about the Cold War. But it was the first time he had written about a wall.

The narrator of Butter Battle introduces the wall in the book’s first two lines:

“On the last day of summer,” he says, “ten hours before fall . . . . . . my grandfather took me out to the wall.”

Maybe Seuss was thinking about the Iron Curtain or the Iron Fence as it was sometimes called, because we learn very quickly that the wall he writes about was meant to separate the Yooks and the Zooks, just as the Iron Curtain was meant to separate communist and non-communist Europe. Physically, the Iron Curtain took the form of border defenses between the countries of Europe in the middle of the continent. The most notable border was marked by the Berlin Wall and its Checkpoint Charlie which served as a symbol of the Iron Curtain as a whole.

The Berlin Wall (1987)

Berlin Wall (1987) by Hunter Desportes (Flickr)

You remember the Berlin Wall, right? That wall was built to separate East and West Berlin, and it was the site of several historical events in the late Cold War, involving two very different men, David Bowie and Ronald Reagan.

David Bowie’s Concert

In June 1987, David Bowie returned to the divided city of Berlin for a concert that some Germans, rightly or wrongly, view as having changed history. Bowie had lived in West Berlin for three years in the 1970s and had recorded three albums there.

In 1977, the year Bowie recorded Heroes, the second of his three Berlin albums, East German border guards shot and killed 18-year-old Dietmar Schwietzer as he tried to flee west across the wall. A few months later, 22-year-old Henri Wiese drowned trying to cross the Spree River. Heroes was, thus, haunted by the Cold War themes of fear and isolation that hung over the city.

When, in 1987, Bowie returned for the Concert for Berlin, he chose Heroes for his performance. The concert was near enough to the border for many East Berliners to crowd along the wall to listen to the forbidden music, and the show was broadcast in its entirety by a US run radio station in the American Sector as well.

Bowie said:

“We kind of heard that a few of the East Berliners might actually get the chance to hear the thing, but we didn’t realize in what numbers they would. And there were thousands on the other side that had come close to the wall. So it was like a double concert where the wall was the division. And we would hear them cheering and singing along from the other side. God, even now I get choked up. It was breaking my heart. I’d never done anything like that in my life, and I guess I never will again.”

You can watch Bowie’s performance below.

Reagan’s Speech

A week after Bowie’s performance at the Concert for Berlin, the American president, Ronald Reagan, visited West Berlin. Standing in front of the city’s famous Brandenburg Gate, Reagan called on Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.” You can watch the speech in its entirety below. (Courtesy of the Reagan Foundation.)

The Berlin Wall came down just two years after these 1987 events. I leave it up to you to decide what role Bowie and Reagan played in its fall. But for now, let’s get back to Seuss since his wall is all about separating too.

The Yooks and the Zooks

According to the Butter Battle Book, the people who need to be kept apart are the Yooks and the Zooks who have two very different approaches to buttering their bread. Grandfather Yook makes this very clear in a warning to his grandson, the narrator — and chief player — in the book:

“It’s high time that you knew of the terribly horrible things that the Zooks do. In every Zook house and in every Zook town, Every Zook eats his bread with the butter side down!”

Even worse, grandfather goes on to opine:

“But we Yooks, as you know, when we breakfast or sup, spread our bread with the butter side up. That’s the right way, honest way!”

Grandpa gritted his teeth. “So you can’t trust a Zook who spreads bread underneath!”

Now this is obviously a tremendously important problem for the Yooks, but they know just what to do. Patrol the border of course, like the Allies and Communists both did at Iron Curtain checkpoints. Perhaps the most well-known was the Allies’ Checkpoint Charlie which monitored the Berlin Wall. In the case of the Yooks, this means “watching Zooks for the Zook-Border-Patrol.”

Checkpoint Charlie

Of course, any of you who grew up in the Cold War can certainly argue that you don’t need a physical wall to patrol your borders. I remember monitoring the skies as part of the Civil Air Patrol with my babysitter, Rosie, who marched me to a tower in the local Methodist Church every Wednesday night. She took notes while I watched for planes through my powerful binoculars, noting their direction, the number of engines, and their markings. Remember the silly song “up in the air junior birdsmen.” It was like that.

At any rate, it was clear to the Yooks that “every Zook must be watched,” and kept away from the righteous and innocent citizens of their homeland so, in addition to the wall, they bolstered their security with the Zook-Watching Border Patrol.

The border patrol was necessary because the wall itself started out as a little thing, not so high. And the Yooks actually had a Snick-Berry Switch, designed to serve as an additional deterrent, a weapon hefty enough to keep the Zooks away. This tactic worked fine until, one day

“a very rude Zook by the name of VanItch snuck up, slingshotting our hero’s Snick-Berry Switch.”

The whole episode reminds me of Truman and the A bomb.

Truman and the A-Bomb

As you might remember, the first A-bomb — code named Trinity — was tested at Alamogordo (New Mexico) on July 16, 1945. On his way home from Potsdam less than a month later, President Harry Truman received news that the atomic bomb had obliterated Hiroshima (Japan). Thinking he now had the upper hand, Truman’s opinion was that he could figure out how to use the bomb to gain concessions from the Soviet Union. But he was never able to do this. Instead, Stalin immediately pushed forward the Soviet effort to acquire atomic weaponry. As would soon happen with the Yooks and the Zooks, the arms race was on.

“We’ll give you a fancier slingshop to shoot!,” says the Chief Yookeroo.

“My Boys in the Back Room have already begun to think up a walloping whiz-zinger one! My bright boys are thinking, They’re on the right track. They’ll think one up quick and we’ll send you right back.”

Interestingly, all of this talk about thinking, spurred some thoughts of my own. So I found an excerpt of President “Ike’s” Farewell Speech on YouTube. Beware the military industrial complex he said. Watch part of his speech below.

Escalation

Just like the United States in the late 1950s, the Yooks thought that what they needed was an armaments industry of vast proportions. Consequently, the Boys in the Back Room were given additional resources which they used to come up with a gun called the Kick-a-Poo Kid, loading it with powerful Poo-a-Doo Powder. The Yooks also increased their troop strength, adding a new kind of specialist, “a really smart dog named Daniel to serve as [the] country’s first gun-toting spaniel.”

Bolstered by Daniel, our fearless young Yook marches toward the wall, thinking that he now has the upper hand. But imagine! VanItch is there waiting, ready to retaliate with an

“Eight-Nozzled Elephant-Toted Boom Blitz that shoots high explosive cherry pits, scaring the Yook troops out of their “witz.”

Demoralized, our wanna be hero and Daniel limp home, embarrassed by their defeat.

Instead of ‘our young Yookeroo’s’’ expected demotion, however, the Chief announces:

“You’ve been promoted! The Big War is coming and you’re going to begin it.”

So I’m confused. Is our young Yook expendable? Beginning a war, nuclear or otherwise, seems like a dangerous endeavor to me. Or does “little Yook” have talents that we’re still unaware of?

At any rate, our “little man” is now given a new weapon, a thing called the Utterly Sputter:

“so modern, so frightfully new, no one knew quite exactly just what it would do!”

“. . . it had several faucets that sprinkled Blue Goo which, somehow would sprinkle the Zooks as I flew and gum-up that upside-down butter they chew.”

Agent Orange

Seems like this new flying machine was the latest in the Chief’s long progression of ‘boy’s toys’, and it hadn’t even been tested. There was an obvious problem. Just like Agent Orange in the Vietnam War, when sprinkling Zooks with Blue Goo, our Yook ended up sprinkling himself as well.

You may remember that Agent Orange was a tactical herbicide used by the US military from 1962 to 1975. Millions of gallons were sprayed on trees and vegetation during the Vietnam War, exposing American troops in the process. The US government has documented higher cases of leukemia, Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and various kinds of cancer in exposed veterans. The herbicide also caused enormous environmental damage in Vietnam. So whether it’s Agent Orange or Blue Goo, you don’t want to mess around.

What was the Chief thinking? Was he intent on beginning a nuclear war, or was he just thinking of outsmarting the Zooks like the Allies thwarted the Communist blockade of West Berlin during the Berlin Airlift? In any event, whatever happened to peaceful coexistence through mutual deterrence? Not in the equation, I guess, because the Chief seemed determined. When the Utterly Sputter failed, he said:

“Everything is all right. My Bright Back Room Boys have been brighter than bright. They’ve thought up a gadget that’s Newer than New. It is filled with mysterious Moo-Lack-Moo and can blow all those Zooks clear to Sala-ma-goo. THEY’VE INVENTED THE BITSY BIG-BOY BOOMEROO!”

“You just run to the wall like a nice little man. Drop this bomb on the Zooks just as fast as you can. I have ordered all Yooks to stay safe underground while the Bitsy Big-Boy Boomeroo is around.”

Duck and Cover

Remember Duck and Cover? Our young Yookeroo had no such protection. Was he dispensable? Luckily, for him, Grandfather Yook didn’t think so. He said:

“You should be down that hole! And you’re up here instead. . . .”

“Grandpa!” our hero shouted, as “VanItch klupped up,” his very own Big-Boy-Boomeroo in his fist.

“Be careful! Oh, gee! Who’s going to drop it? Will you or will he?

“Be patient,” said Grandpa. “We’ll see. We will see.”

Ok. Now we’re into brinkmanship. It’s a stalemate. Or is it? Parity anyone?

Unfortunately, Seuss leaves us hanging.

Is there a winner and a loser here?

What happens to the wall? Does it eventually fall?

Maybe Dr. Seuss doesn’t actually have an end in sight. After all, the climax of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall were unforeseeable when he finished this book. But he could have taken a hint from the old nursery rhyme. Remember Humpty Dumpty?

PostScript: Think this arms race stuff doesn’t matter anymore? Well, you’re wrong. A recent New York Times article noted that as we begin 2018 a new kind of arms race is underway. According to the Times, “this one is based less on numbers of weapons and more on novel tactics and technologies meant to outwit and outmaneuver the other side.” Read the article titled “To Counter Russia, U.S. Signals Nuclear Arms Are Back in a Big Way.” Just click here.

Be sure to check out our post on another Dr. Seuss book, THE LORAX. Access it here.

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Featured photograph by Martin Pettitt (Flickr)

[Do you want more background on Heroes? Read all about it here. ]

Q is for Quemoy

January 31, 2018 by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe

A challenge that would trigger action by the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization was successfully blunted in 1954 and 1955 when the Chinese Communists threatened the offshore islands of Quemoy, Matsu, and the Tachens, islands which lay between Mainland China and Taiwan. As the communists shelled the islands and then announced the imminent “liberation” of Taiwan, Eisenhower warned that any “liberation forces” would have to run over the American Seventh Fleet stationed in the Formosa Straits.

US Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, flew to Taiwan in December and signed a mutual defense pact with Chiang Kai- shek, pledging that the US would defend Chiang in return for his promise not to try to invade the mainland without American approval. The treaty was signed on December 2, 1954, and went into effect on March 3, 1955. Nothing was said in the pact about the offshore islands.

On January 18, 1955, the communists took the small northernmost island of the Tachen group. Eisenhower declared that, because this island had no relationship to the defense of Taiwan, the attack required no counteraction. Within five days, however, he asked Congress for authority “to assure the security of Formosa [Taiwan] and the Pescadores [Matsu and the rest of the Tachen group]” and, if necessary, “closely related localities.” Congress whipped through the resolution by a vote of 409 to 3 in the House and 85 to 3 in the Senate.

On August 23, 1958, just as China was embarking on the Great Leap Forward (goal: to concentrate 20 years of Soviet-style development into a single year), China began shelling the offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu which were occupied by the forces of Taiwan. The American Seventh Fleet shipped Taiwanese reinforcements to the islands, and provided extra artillery capable, at least in theory, of firing atomic shells. Mao appealed for Soviet nuclear weapons, but Khruschev responded only with assurances that the Soviet Union would come to China’s support if the Americans actually attacked. For China this was betrayal. Khruschev said:

We didn’t want to give them the idea we were their obedient slaves, who would give them whatever they wanted, no matter how much they insulted us.

Want the full alphabet?

Download a copy of COLD WAR UNVEILED: ARMS RACE T0 ZDANOV DOCTRINE.

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Photograph of the USS Midway by Herb Neufeld (Flickr)

1968: 50 Years Later

January 10, 2018 by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe

This year, 2018, marks the 50th anniversary of one of the most turbulent years in recent American history: 1968. Here is a selected listing of that year’s most talked about happenings.

January 1: The New Year’s Day Battle of 1968, a military engagement during the Vietnam War involving units assigned to the US 25th Infantry Division and a regiment of the North Vietnamese Army (NVA).

Want to learn more about the battle? Watch the 1986 Oliver Stone film Platoon. Stone was serving in one of the American units during the battle. The final battle scene in the movie is a dramatization of the real battle as experienced by Stone.

January 23: North Korean patrol boats capture the USS Pueblo, a US Navy intelligence vessel along with its 83 man crew on charges of violating the communist country’s twelve-mile territorial limit. This crisis will dog the US foreign policy team for 11 months, with the crew of the Pueblo finally released on December 22.

January 31: At half-past midnight, the North Vietnamese launch the Tet Offensive at Nha Trang. Nearly 70,000 North Vietnamese troops will take part in this action, taking the battle from the jungles to the cities, attacking more than 100 towns. The offensive lasts for weeks and is seen as a major turning point in American attitudes toward the war. At 2:45 that morning, the US Embassy in Saigon is invaded. It’s held until 9:15 AM.

February 2: Richard Nixon, a republican from California, enters the New Hampshire primary and declares his presidential candidacy.

February 18: The US State Department announces the highest US casualty toll of the Vietnam War. The previous week saw 543 Americans killed in action, and 2547 wounded.

March 16: Senator Robert Kennedy, brother of former president John F. Kennedy (1961-1964), announces that he will enter the 1968 Presidential race.

March 16: The My Lai Massacre: US ground troops from Charlie Company rampage through the hamlet of My Lai killing more than 500 Vietnamese civilians including infants and the elderly. The massacre is not public knowledge for more than a year.

March 22: In Czechoslovakia, Antonin Novotny resigns the Czech presidency, alarming Moscow, and setting the stage for the Prague Spring.

April 4: Martin Luther King’s assassination in Memphis shocks and outrages the nation, sparking rioting in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City, Newark, Washington DC, and elsewhere. 46 deaths with be blamed on the riots.

April 11: The Civil Rights Act of 1968 (also known as the Fair Housing Act) is enacted during the King Assassination Riots.

April 23: Protestors angered over Columbia University‘s links to the Department of Defense occupy university buildings for more than a week to protest the Vietnam War. Police storm the buildings and violently remove the protestors at the Columbia administration’s request.

May 3: US and North Vietnamese delegations agree to begin peace talks in Paris on May 19.

May 6: In France, “Bloody Monday” marks one of the most violent days of the Parisian student revolt. 5,000 students march through the Latin Quarter. Riots ensue.

June 3: Andy Warhol is shot in his New York City loft by Valerie Solanis.

June 4/5: Robert Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles at 12:13 AM after addressing a large crowd of supporters. The shooter, Sirhan Sirhan, was apparently angered by several pro-Israeli speeches given by Kennedy during his campaign.

June 6: Kennedy, age 42, dies in the early morning.

June 27: The Prague Spring continues in Czechoslovakia with President Ludvik Vaculi releasing his manifesto “Two Thousand Words.” The essay criticizes Communist rule in Czechoslovakia and concludes with a threat to “foreign forces” trying to control the government of the country. The Soviets (who conducted ongoing military exercises in the the country and who are planning an invasion later in the summer see this as a direct challenge).

July 7: Abbie Hoffman‘s “The Yippies are Going to Chicago” is published in The Realist. The Yippies will be in the center of the action six weeks later at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

July 24: Folk singer Arlo Guthrie performs the 20 minute long Alice’s Restaurant at the Newport Folk Festival. He gets rave reviews.

August 8: Republicans nominate Richard Nixon to be their presidential candidate at the Party convention in Miami Beach.

August 20: The Soviet Union invades Czechoslovakia with over 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops, putting an end to the Prague Spring.

August 26: Mayor Richard Daley opens the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Demonstrations are widespread, but generally peaceful. The city’s police attempt to enforce an 11 o’clock curfew.

August 28: Chicago police take action against crowds of demonstrators. At least 100 people are sent to emergency rooms and 175 are arrested.

September 1: Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey kicks off his presidential campaign in New York City.

September 7: Women’s Liberation Groups target the Miss America Beauty Contest in Atlantic City. Protestors engage in a “symbolic bra-burning.”

October 2: Police and military police in Mexico City react violently to a student led protest. Hundreds of demonstrators are killed or injured.

October 11: Apollo 7 is launched from Florida for an 11 day journey. It will orbit the earth 163 times.

October 18: Tommie Smith and John Carlos, US athletes and medalists, disrupt the Summer Olympic Games in Mexico City by performing the Black Power Salute.

October 31: President Johnson announces a total halt to US bombing in North Vietnam.

November 5: Election Day. Nixon wins 43.4% of the total vote, Humphrey brings in 42.7% of the total, and Wallace gets 13.4% (o.4% goes to other candidates).

November 14: National Turn in Your Draft Card Day is observed with rallies and protests on collage campuses country wide.

November 26: The South Vietnamese government agrees to join in the Paris Peace talks.

December 21: Apollo 8 begins the first US mission to orbit the moon.

1968 was an eventful year for Popular Culture too. Here are a few of the things that happened:

April 29: “Hair” — known for its nudity and drug use — opens on Broadway. This may be the quintessential “period piece” of 1968.

August 1968: The Beatles release “Hey Jude.”

September: The first Big Mac is served in Pittsburgh by a McDonald’s franchise owner named Jim Delligatti. It cost 49 cents.

September 24: “60 Minutes” debuts on CBS.

November 1: A new movie ratings system was introduced with four categories: G, M, R and X.

December 3: The Elvis “comeback special” airs on TV. It’s widely considered one of the great rock ‘n’ roll moments.

The Rolling Stones stage a comeback also with their recording of “Jumping Jack Flash.” Here was the year’s real rock ‘n’ roll comeback.

As the year progresses, Cold War Studies will post frequently on this year of RESISTANCE and PROTEST. I hope you’ll check back often. If you want to make sure not to miss a post, why not SUBSCRIBE using the form below. We’ll never share your information. Meanwhile, HAPPY NEW YEAR!

P is for Pact Building

October 17, 2017 by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe

Perhaps the most famous pact, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Pact, was signed on April 4, 1949. Its underlying premise was that European defense could not be entrusted to the United Nations. NATO, therefore, was designed to “create not merely a balance of power, but a preponderance of power” to deal with the Russians from “positions of strength.”

Twelve nations signed the pact including the US, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Portugal, Norway, Great Britain, and the Benelux. These nations pledged to use force only in self-defense and to develop “free institutions,” particularly through the encouragement of “economic collaboration between any or all” of the parties. Article 5 of the agreement was central.” It stated:

The parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all, and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them . . . will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force.

Article 11 modified this commitment by adding that the pact’s provisions “shall be carried out in accordance with each nation’s constitutional processes.’” $11.2 billion for European military aid was the immediate financial price for the NATO commitment.

In the years following NATO’s signing, President Eisenhower and his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, devoted a considerable amount of diplomatic energy to further constructing a worldwide network of alliances to block Soviet expansion. In Latin America, they reinforced the Rio Pact which had been signed on September 2, 1947; in Southeast Asia, the Manila Pact of 1954; in the western Pacific, mutual defense treaties in 1954 with the Republic of Korea and the Republic of China; in the Near East, the 1955 Baghdad Pact, and, in 1960, the security treaty with Japan. Some called these efforts pactomania.

So far as the Soviets were concerned, Khruschev safeguarded Soviet security both ideologically and militarily by developing the Warsaw Pact — a bloc military alliance, patterned after NATO, which could allow Soviet military control of Eastern Europe after the political controls were relaxed. It was signed on May 14, 1955, in Warsaw. By the end of 1956 the Soviets had engaged in 14 economic and military agreements with nations in Asia and the Middle East. North Vietnam and Indonesia were favored in Southeast Asia. In the Middle East, Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey, and Egypt were targets of the Soviet economic offensive.

Russia vs. America

September 27, 2017 by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe

RUSSIA vs AMERICA

Stalin’s compulsion to protect Russian interests dictated his actions. He was determined to prevent foreign domination of territories contiguous to his nation’s borders. Stalin’s obsession is not difficult to understand given Soviet losses in World War II.

According to Bruce R. Kuniholm, the United States suffered 291,557 battle deaths and the British 373,372. The Soviets, on the other hand, lost in the neighborhood of 11,000,000 military personnel and 7,000,000 civilians. Seventy thousand villages and 1,710 towns were reduced to rubble.

Fearing foreign encroachment, as early as February 1946, Stalin described a ‘capitalist encirclement of the Soviet Union’ and depicted the capitalist economy as ‘setting the stage for war.’

Stalin’s comments were analyzed by George Kennan in what became known as the “long telegram.” In this 8,000 word cable dated February 22, 1946, Kennan speaks of Russia’s insecurity and of her persistent efforts to extend her borders. He recommends that the United States adopt a “policy of containment.” Containment strategy was first used in the Iranian crisis of 1946.

In sum, while the Soviets were committed to defending themselves against potentially hostile interests in China and a resurgent Japan, American leaders were concerned with expanding their economic markets and rebuilding Japan as a thwart to Soviet expansionism.

A strong, stable China was the cornerstone of American postwar Far Eastern policy. In fact, the Americans believed that China would take Japan’s place as the West’s prime Asian commercial partner.

When the Russians abrogated their Sino-Soviet treaty obligations, and allowed arms and ammunition to fall into the hands of the CCP, President Truman attempted to help the Nationalists by moving 100,000 American troops into China. However, as LaFeber notes, it soon became apparent that “If Americans tried to save Chiang they would ‘virtually [have] to take over the Chinese government.’”

By February 1949, the Nationalists had lost nearly half their troops, mostly by defection. Eighty percent of the American equipment given Chiang had fallen into Communist hands.

In effect, Stalin held Manchuria hostage. Buhite argues that the province was “the most important area of China,” containing the country’s only “nearly developed industrial complex,” and was “the only CCP source for the machinery required for industrial development.”

So far as American interests in China were concerned, since Communist China could not achieve economic progress without Manchuria, Mao had no flexibility for a rapprochement with the United States.

The Soviets successfully influenced the Chinese Communists using material and technical aid as leverage. The pattern of assistance employed in Manchuria would be replicated repeatedly during the half century Cold War as the Soviets expertly allocated economic and military aid to the less developed world in their attempts to broaden their sphere of influence.

Importantly, with Mao’s final victory in 1949, over a million KMT government and army personnel were forced to flee their homeland, most of them settling in Taipei on the island of Formosa (Taiwan).

Meanwhile, a Western campaign for the military encirclement of the Soviet Union known as “the containment of international communism” had begun.

Superpower Conflict in the Third World

September 12, 2017 by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe

Was the Cold War a direct result of the breakdown of World War II alliances? Not really. In actuality, it took form in the late 19th century on the plains of Northern China and Manchuria. Conflict arose when the American emphasis on business, markets, and profits clashed with the czarist emphasis on expansion and empire.

The US believed that its prosperity required an open door to trade in Manchuria. Nevertheless, when the Russians occupied the rich, industrial Chinese province in 1901, the Americans were unwilling to fight for their interests. Later, when the Japanese colonized the province in 1931, the Soviets appealed to the Americans for assistance. Still, the US opted for a policy of balanced antagonism. Only when Nazi and Japanese aggression proved overwhelming did the US enter into a reluctant — and temporary — partnership with its longterm rival, the Soviet Union.

Memories of past contests reemerged when, in September 1945, Stalin honored a wartime agreement with the United States and invaded enemy strongholds in Manchuria, disarming the Japanese and confiscating arms and property worth between 800 and 900 million dollars.

Military and industrial equipment was dismantled and moved to the Soviet Union to aid in the rebirth of Soviet industry.

In return for early withdrawal from the territory, the Soviets demanded large-scale ownership of virtually every aspect of the Manchurian economy.

Stalin’s activities were rooted in the Soviet perception of reality. The United States and its allies were emerging from World War II with worldwide military superiority. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, was facing an urgent need to bolster national security and rebuild its wartorn economy. Since industrial capacity and manufacturing ability had been severely damaged, any and all resources that could be used in the reconstruction and restoration of the motherland were to be acquired and mobilized so as to facilitate a rapid economic recovery.

Along with the industrial buildup, Stalin was obsessed with guaranteeing his nation’s vulnerable borders. Since German armies had invaded the Soviets through Eastern Europe twice in 25 years, he decided that it was best to exert control over all countries bordering the Soviet Union — countries like Manchuria and Iran. The idea was to create a Soviet sphere of influence that would provide protection against incursions.

Stalin’s interpretation of Russian interests impelled him to intervene in China where civil war was raging between the Nationalist or KMT forces led by Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under the leadership of Mao-tse-tung.

Although Stalin had treaty obligations with the Nationalists, he feared a resurgent US presence in Manchuria if the Nationalists returned. So he stepped up support for the Communists, allowing 600,000 tons of light arms and ammunition to fall into the hands of the Chinese Communist Party. This facilitated the CCP’s movement into Manchuria and enabled them to establish administrative control over much of the province.

While the Kremlin was fixated on a need to retain control over Manchuria’s raw materials and industrial resources, the United States was intent on developing a proAmerican China which would serve as a counterbalance to the Soviet Union.

The West clearly saw the implementation of Soviet policy as a communist threat. Speaking in March 1946 in President Truman’s home state of Missouri, Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain said:

the Soviets covet the fruits of war and the indefinite expansion of their power and doctrines.

Churchill’s remarks set the stage for global confrontation, and were legitimated by Truman’s presence on the platform.