The Second Cold War: Part I

By the mid 1970s, the world had entered a Second Cold War. This coincided with a major change in the world economy.

Two inter-related developments now seemed to impact the influence of the two superpowers.

• First, Vietnam.
• Second, the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Through OPEC, the Arab states of the Middle East had done what they could to impede support for Israel by cutting oil supplies and threatening oil embargoes. In doing so they discovered that they had the ability to multiply the world price of oil. There was nothing the US could do.

Vietnam and the Middle East weakened the US but did not alter the global balance of power.

Between 1974 and 1979 a new wave of revolutions surged across the globe. It was the coincidence of this third wave of world revolution with the moment of public American failure and defeat in Vietnam which produced the Second Cold War.

This phase of the conflict was waged by a combination of local wars in the Third World fought indirectly by the US and by an extraordinary acceleration of the nuclear arms race.

The Second Cold War: Part II

Detente had given Nixon and Kissinger (1968-1974) the opportunity to score two major successes: the expulsion of the Soviets from Egypt and the informal recruitment of China into the anti-Soviet alliance.

The new wave of revolutions, all of which were likely to be against conservative regimes which the US defended, gave the USSR the chance to recover the initiative.

While the Soviets had already begun to bankrupt themselves by embarking on an overly ambitious armaments program, raising defense expenditure by an annual average of 4-5% in the 20 years after 1964, the US felt threatened.

Moreover, the USSR had moved into Afghanistan convincing the US that western supremacy would end if not reasserted by a show of power.

Washington was not realistic.

In real terms, US power, as distinct from US prestige, remained much greater than Soviet power.

The hysteria had the effect of convincing the Soviets that a pre-emptive nuclear attack by the West on the USSR was possible or impending.

The policies of Ronald Reagan, elected US President in 1980, can only be understood as an attempt to wipe out American feelings of humiliation by demonstrating supremacy.

Actions included the invasion of Grenada, a massive air and naval attack on Libya, and the invasion of Panama.

Reagan and the Evil Empire

Reagan crusaded against the “Evil Empire” abroad and the memory of FDR at home. The enemy was liberalism and the welfare state as much as communism.

There is no sign that the US government expected the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Reagan actually believed in coexistence, albeit in a world without nuclear arms.

The Cold War ended when one or both superpowers recognized the absurdity of the nuclear arms race and when one or both accepted the other’s sincerity in wishing it to end.

Gorbachev took the first step.

Did the end of the Cold War mean the end of the Soviet system?

The Soviet type of socialism had claimed to be a global alternative to the capitalist world system. Since capitalism had not collapsed, the prospects for socialism depended on its ability to compete. It was evident that after 1960 the USSR was falling rapidly behind. It was no longer competitive.

Both superpowers overstretched and distorted their economies by the arms race, but the world capitalist system could absorb the cost.

By the end of the 1970s, the European Community and Japan together were 60% larger than the US economy. They were not a drain.

On the other hand, the USSR’s allies and dependents remained a constant and vast annual drain of billions of dollars.

Geographically and demographically, the underdeveloped countries of the world whose revolutionary mobilizations Moscow supported, represented 89% of the world.

It was the interaction of Soviet-type economies with the capitalist world economy from the 1960s on that made socialism vulnerable.

What defeated — and in the end wrecked — the USSR was not confrontation but detente.

The real Cold War ended at the Washington summit of 1987, but it could not be recognized as being at an end until the USSR had visibly ceased to be a superpower.

In the early 1990s, the collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1989 and the dissolution of the USSR in 1989-1991 made it impossible to pretend that nothing had changed. Still, the outcome was not cast in stone.

Photograph by Steffen Zahn (Flickr)

HOW DID THE COLD WAR START?

Lines of demarcation between the Soviets and the West were drawn at Yalta. Animosity escalated with the partition of Germany, the withdrawal of all ex-belligerents from Austria, and the unilateral US occupation of Japan.

More friction surrounded the new post colonial states in what was then called The Third World. This was the zone in which the 2 superpowers continued, throughout the Cold War, to compete for support and inflluence. This was the area where armed conflict was most likely to break out.

Even though most of the new post colonial states were hostile to the US and its camp, they were not communist. They were mostly anti-communist in their domestic politics, and they were outside the Soviet military block — non-aligned — in international affairs.

Despite post WWII differences between the West and the Soviets, the world situation soon became reasonably stable, and the communist camp showed no signs of significant expansion. The period between the Chinese Revolution in 1949 and the mid 1970s has been called the Cold Peace.

CAUSES OF THE COLD WAR

While the US was worried about the danger of Soviet world supremacy at some time in the future, Moscow was worried about the actual hegemony of the US all over the globe. Only areas that were occupied by the Red Army were risk free.

Americans believed that their country represented an ideology that should be a model for the rest of the world. The US believed in world capitalism and thought that their liberal society was in danger. But, in fact, the postwar plans of the US government had more to do with preventing another Great Depression than with preventing another war.

Washington expected that postwar challenges were likely to weaken both capitalism and the US. They were worried that the USSR would become stronger even though the Soviets demobilized their troops, reducing the Red Army from a 1945 peak strength of 12 million to 3 million by 1948.

Both superpowers adopted policies of no compromise.

In 1946, the American diplomat George Kennan formulated the “containment” policy that became the framework for America’s Cold War strategy. His policy was not based on fear of communism. Rather, it was centered on the threat of Russian expansionism.

The issue was not really the threat of communist world domination, but the maintenance of a real US supremacy.

“Containment” was everyone’s policy, the destruction of communism was not.

THE ARMS RACE

In 1954, the US announced an aggressive strategy of massive retaliation. Potential aggressors were to be threatened with attack by nuclear weapons, even in the case of a limited conventional attack.

Both the US and the Soviets became committed to an insane arms race and to a “military-industrial complex,” an increasingly vast agglomeration of men and resources living by preparation for war.

After the 1960s, there was a period of slackening tensions known as detente. In 1963, a hot line was installed linking the White House with the Kremlin.

The 1960s and 1970s saw significant steps to control and limit nuclear arms: test-ban treaties, attempts to stop nuclear proliferation, a Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT), and some agreement about each side’s Anti-Balllistic Missiles (ABMs).

In practice the two superpowers retained a nuclear monopoly. But, over the course of the 1970s and 1980s, some other countries — Israel, South Africa, India — acquired the capacity to make nuclear weapons.

Still, nuclear proliferation did not become a serious international problem until after 1989.

The most obvious face of the Cold War was military confrontation and a frenetic nuclear arms race.

Nuclear powers were involved in 3 major wars — Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. But they did not fight each other.

EUROPE AND THE MARSHALL PLAN

The political consequences of the Cold War on Europe were important.

The world was polarized into two camps.

Direct Soviet control was firmly clamped on all of Eastern Europe except Finland. Stalin was also unable to impose Soviet control on Tito’s Yugoslavia which broke with Moscow in 1948 without joining the other side.

Europe was important. The Western European situation in 1946-1947 was so tense that Washington felt that the development of a strong European (and soon a strong Japanese) economy was the most urgent priority.

The Marshall Plan, a massive design for European recovery, was launched in June 1947 in the form of grants rather than loans. So far as the US was concerned, this project depended on a strong Germany.

The US soon dominated the international behavior of Europe. Still, as the Cold War lengthened, there was a growing gap between the overwheming military and political domination of the Western alliance by Washington, and the gradually weakening economic predominance of the US. The dollar, the keystone of the post WWII economy, grew weaker.

One effect of the Cold War on the international politics of Europe was to create the European Community, a permanent arrangement to integrate the economies and to some extent the legal systems of a number of independent nation-states: France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxemburg. The community was created both by and against the United States.

Nations who refused to closely associate themselves with either the Soviets or the US were known as
neutral or nonaligned.

The very concept of nonalignment was a problem for US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. At the same time, he acknowledged the vitality of nationalism in the Third World. He also understood the moral as well as the strategic arguments for assisting the new nations whether they were members of our anti-Communist alliance system or not.

The issue of foreign aid was central. Third World leaders were masters at playing the two camps off against each other. They operated according to strategic calculations of how to maximize their own national interest.

Less aligned nations weren’t making any kind of judgment as to the rightness of the two superpowers. Julius Nyerere, leader of Tanzania (then Tanganyika) summed things up saying:

Our desire is to be friendly to every country in the world, but we have no desire to have a friendly country choosing our enemies for us.

people are more interested in development than in doctrine. They are more interested in achieving a decent standard of living than following the standards of either East or West.

In actuality, the Cold War overlay inevitably imposed itself. When the Cold War ended, Third World countries found they had lost much of their leverage over the West.

The collapse of the Soviets left most of the Third World alone with the West and with the necessity of redefining their relationship with the technically advanced societies.

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. So that’s where our timeline begins. NOTE: If you can’t see the timeline (below), just reload your page.

Our timeline ends in December 1949 when Chiang Kai-shek Chiang evacuates over a million KMT government and army personnel to the island of Taiwan, establishing Taipei as the  ‘wartime’ capital of the Nationalist Chinese.

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Have you ever thought of using a timeline for a project? Or just to organize your thoughts in a way that enables you to grasp the “big picture?” If so, you’ll want to download our Timeline Checklist. It takes you through all the steps involved in creating an eye-catching interactive timeline that you can embed online. And it’s absolutely free. Just follow this link and we’ll deliver it right to your inbox.

The Marshall Plan for the recovery of Europe was formally unveiled in a speech given by US Secretary of State, General George C. Marshall, at Harvard University on June 5, 1947. The speech was a natural outgrowth of the Truman Doctrine.  Suffice it to say, the Truman administration used the American fear of communism both at home and abroad to convince Americans they must embark upon a Cold War foreign policy. Most importantly, Truman and Marshall used this fear to justify a gigantic aid program designed to prevent a collapse of the European and American economies. Later such programs were expanded globally.

The question of Russian participation in the plan was uppermost in many minds. Although the Soviet bloc was invited, the State Department made Russian acceptance improbable by demanding that the economic records of each nation be open for scrutiny. It was also suggested that, despite their devastated economy, the Soviet Union should ship goods to Europe. The Russians, on the other hand, wanted to extract reparations from Germany. Still, the Russians gave the plan serious consideration. They even ordered their East European satellites to be prepared to join the plan. Eventually, though, the Russians revolted, warning that the plan would undermine national sovereignty, revive Germany, allow America to control Europe, and divide Europe into two groups of states. They saw the plan as a way for the US to infiltrate the Soviet Union and its sphere of influence in order to destroy it.

Want to learn more? Check out our podcast on The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan.