History of the Cold War

Battle of ideologies between the US and the USSR which lead to international proxy wars aided by each country for democracy of for communism: The Cold War. The threat of nuclear attack by one country over the other lead to a general stalemate whenever tensions about direct confrontations would arise between the two. Its foundations lie in the nature of socio-political events taking place during and after the second world war.

May 1945. an extremely important month in the pages of history. Nazi Germany surrenders under Karl Donitz on 8 th May 1945. The red army marches into the heart of Germany from the eastern front, whereas the British, the French and American troops catch the retreating and defeated Nazi armies from the western front. The war in Europe has ended and Germany is divided is divided into 4 zones between the British, the French, the Americans and the Soviets. The capital city of Berlin is mostly inside the Soviet occupied region, however considering its importance, is divided among the 4 as well.

The British, French and American regions later combine under one flag to form Western Germany, inheriting the democratic and right-wing ideals of the previous occupants whereas, the Soviet territory of Germany forms the new state of eastern Germany, pertaining the communist values ushered under the soviet rule. Tensions rise and the prelude to the Cold War begins.

The research and development of nuclear bombs play a key role in all this. The Americans launch nuclear programs for from 1939 itself. America, backed by the British and Canada begin the Manhattan project. The soviets suspect that the Americans have a secret ‘superweapon’ and start their own research. Soviet spies of likes of Klaus Fuchs pass highly confidential information about the project to the soviets till the end of 1949. The atomic bombs dropped on 6th and 9th august by the US sends shockwaves around the world and Japan surrenders on 15 august. However, this military capability doesn’t come as a shock to Stalin who is already aware of the extent of western powers. The official surrender is done on 2nd September 1945, marking the end of the second world war.

Two massive nations with different ideologies and having huge arsenal led to growing insecurities about control over international politics. The idea of communism threatened the free ideals of the American capitalist system and the Truman Doctrine is announced in 1947 to control the global spread of communism. The soviets are not happy. An example being the values of freedom and democracy in western Germany especially, bothered the reds. The final nail in the coffin being the Deutsche Mark, a new currency. The Soviets bring in the Berlin Blockade, cutting all resource access (railway, roads and canal) from Soviet occupied Germany to Western occupied Berlin, with their condition for removing the blockade being the renunciation and annulment of the Deutsche Mark. The US and UK choose the option of airlift as an answer to the blockade, bringing the Soviets international shame due to the failure of their plans. The soviets answer with the East Germany Mark as the new currency in eastern Germany and the Berlin Wall is setup later in 1961.

August of 1949, the soviets test their nuclear weapon, ushering the world into a new era of nuclear arms race. The US is extremely concerned with these new developments as the discovery of Soviet spies leaking information to the reds about the Manhattan project surface. The Cold War has begun.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is formed by select western states stating that they will provide military support if the East Germany or the USSR invades any of its members. The USSR shortly retaliates to this with the Warsaw Pact which is similar deal but for the eastern fronts and USSR allies. This lead to the formation of an “Iron Curtain” between the two blocs.

To understand the Cold War, one must understand the rise, spread and popularization of communism pre and post the second world war. If explained in the simplest way possible, before the war, communism spread as a natural solution to countries which had an innate issue of harsh ‘landlord problems’. Examples can be found in the states of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR), which was born from the ashes of Tsar dynasty and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which was born from the fall of the Qing dynasty (and a humiliating loss by the Chinese Republic Party, who were the democratic front in China and fled to Taiwan after losing to the popularity of the CCP). While, their histories in themselves are complicated topics, in the context of the Cold War, it should understood that for some countries, the ideas of communism were adopted by them rather naturally rather than being indoctrination by foreign powers. An example would be that the citizens of east Germany did not like the soviet influence and actively voted against the communists whenever given a chance. However, other countries like Vietnam, Cuba and Laos actively took upon communist regimes and ideas even when they were unaided by the USSR. The Cold War comes into play for these “post war communist countries” when we look at the actions taken by the US, who is extremely against communism and the USSR, a nation built on communist ideals. While the US on many occasions straight up declared war on “communist countries” and tried to preach democracy, on the other hand the USSR would help these countries with some sort of active or passive support.

Some countries however can be seen as special cases of ‘democracy’ or ‘communism’. Similar to the experience of Germany, the division of Korea also occurred due to different parts of the same allied force dividing regions among itself to determine how the state should function after the war.

For some context, during the early 20th century, the forces of imperial Japan were one not to be reckoned with. The ambitions of imperial Japan caused destabilization of the eastern fronts many times during that time period. They were so strong that the Japanese forces had managed to invade and occupy large parts of Korea and Manchuria in 1905 right under the imperial Russian noses. These land ‘expansions’ stayed so mostly till the end of the second world war, when Japan surrendered (the case of Manchuria is a bit complex in nature as it was a constant area of conflict between the Soviets and the Japanese with the place also serving as a stronghold for the Qing Dynasty). Korea as a result was under Japanese rule from 1910 – 1945. However, when Japan had to give up its territories to the allied after their loss, the US and USSR split Korea into two parts with the ‘common goal’ of reunification in the future. As a result North Korea became a communist state under the Soviets with Kim II Sung as their leader and South Korea became a democratic republic under the US. The breakdown of the ‘common goal of reunification’ can be attributed to the Soviets trying to retain communism in North Korea and American trying to keep democracy intact in South Korea.

On 25 June 1950, North Korea invades South Korea, marking the beginning of the Korea War. The goal of the war was reunification of Korea under the communist flag. However, after 3 years of war, the war ended in a stalemate and an armistice was signed on 27 July 1953. The important thing to notice here is that the armistice was not signed by the South Korean government. It was signed between North Korea, China and United Nations Army. South Korea never signed the armistice. In China, the war went by the name of ‘Great Movement to Resist America and Assist Korea’ and was seen as an opportunity to ‘Beat American Arrogance’. The propaganda promoted the Korean War as a chance to challenge the US presence in Asia, and project China’s rise as a regional, if not a world power.

With the armistice, a demilitarized zone was established between North and South Korea. As of today, the two nations are still technically at war since no peace treaty was ever signed between the two and as of today, the DMZ is still considered one of the most heavily guarded zone in the world.

While the Korean War was direct war fought during the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis was a war that was not fought with weapons, but fought about the very conception of threat of war. It encapsulates perfectly what the Cold War really was or to what extent each country would go to maintain their international superpower status. Both knew that neither could afford another war and both knew that a even if it did happen, a direct confrontation would be death to humanity itself.

Fidel Castro became the first communist leader of Cuba on 16 February, 1959. The relationship between Cuba and the US was extremely delicate at that time. Cuba used to be a Republic after its independence but was not democratic. The US supported Fidel during the early stages of the Cuban Revolution to overthrow the Republic. They would apply taxes and embargos to subtly weaken the Cuban government. However, they were taken aback, when Fidel eliminated his rivals after coming to power and adopted communist ideals. What the US saw as a way to bring democracy into the

Latin America and Cuba instead established itself as a communist state even without much Soviet backing. This prompted the US government to commence the Cuban Project to actively sabotage the government. Careful politics was played to ensure that this was not seen as war.

While these events were playing out in the American continent, something else was also going on in the European continent at the same time. The US had freshly supplied Turkey and Italy with the new Jupiter middle ranged ballistic missiles (MRBMs). These were not seen as welcoming by the Soviets as the two countries were a part of NATO. In retaliation, the Soviets figured that Cuba, who were already asking for help against the US, with their nuclear warheads. This served two purposes. The Soviets did not wish to sour ties with a fellow communist state like they had with China (if interested, read on The Sino-Soviet split) and also ensuring that US wouldn’t be able to threaten them with counter missiles so close to them.

However, this led to further problems. The threat of nuclear missiles so close to US was to be stopped at all costs. As a result, the US issued a ‘quarantine’ against Cuba, blocking all ships to the country carrying materials for the nuclear missiles. They demanded the Soviet to dismantle existing warheads in Cuba and stop further production.

This political standoff went for 35 days and is the Cuba Missile Crises. The closest the world ever got to a direct nuclear war. Finally, when both parties realized the gravity of situation, common ground was formed. In the talks that followed, Russia agreed to dismantle the nuclear warheads if the US promised not to intervene with Cuba and would agree to not supplying nuclear warheads to Turkey in the future.

This crisis concluded with improved ties between the two superpowers as neither seemed to back down if equal compromises were not made. To prevent further future crises like these, the Washington-Moscow hotline was setup.

After the Cuban Missile both countries understand one thing very clearly. A nuclear war, if any, can never be won by either side. Hence, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the world witnesses the two superpowers thawing their cold relationship. The Treaty on the Non Proliferation of Nuclear Arms (NPT) signed by both sides on July 1st, 1968 is seen as a general victory for humanity. The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks also begins between the two and sees success with the two countries signing ground breaking agreements in 1972: the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty limiting the countries’ deployment of missile defence systems to their national capital and one ICBM site and SALT I, which restricted their number of nuclear missile silos and submarine-launched missile tubes for a five-year period. However, SALT I did not address strategic bombers or warhead arsenals. Things go on smoothly between the two and on 1979, the two countries enter SALT 2. The agreement would have placed further limits on their nuclear weapons and launch platforms, including strategic bombers, and imposed certain notification requirements and new testing bans.

However, the Soviets being as they are bombed the relations by invading Afghanistan, fanning the flames of Afghan War (not to be confused with whatever the US did in retaliation of 9-11). The reds intervened in favour of the then communist Afghani government. The government came to power via some very suspicious methods and was mostly unpopular. This lead to insurgency in the country and the rise of guerrilla groups with the mujahideen leading the efforts against the commies. The Soviet government marched into Afghanistan with 30,000 troops to aide the government with their fighting.

The US just could not see communism spread in the middle eastern countries. They passively backed the mujahideen guerrillas under ‘Operation Cyclone’; a move which would later bite them back, hard. The Afghan war eventually led to the breaking down of SALT 2 and it seemed like the ice wall between the two nations was back up again.

The threat of nuclear war loomed over the world again, with the Reagan government in the US vilifying the Soviets for not accepting the US proposed START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) treaty. Reagan also proposed an anti-nuclear ‘shield program against the Soviets, in case they ever did use nuclear warheads against the US. This was named as the Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI), a very revolutionary way of thinking at that time.

The chapter of the Cold War starts to end with the beginning of weakening of the USSR. Crude internal politics, corruption and a government with an iron hand over everything led to the slow rusting of the Soviets. Their influence has left a mark so deep in history that further generations are surely going to be affected by the ideals on which they built upon. Today, even US is seeing a sweep towards a possibly socialist state.

This takes us back to Germany, but on 9th November, 1989. The iron curtain, now rusted begins to show signs of crumbling, with the first cracks appearing on the Berlin Wall. East Germans break the wall and reunite with their fellow Germans in the west under one flag of Germany. They maintain their status of a NATO country as well.

As the USSR slowly sees a rise in republic states within its ranks, the new state of Russia along with 26 other states see the light of day. The Cold War comes to an end with the dissolution of the USSR on 26 December, 1991.