INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT SCIENCES

SUBMITTED TO: SIR KAMRAN ZAHOOR PROJECT REPORT SUBMITTED BY: HENNA BHATTI ERUM BHATTI HASSAN AHMED DANYAAL JAVAID DAWAR ALI PEERZADA TANZEEL TAHIR

Origins of the term WAR An international relation dispute, characterized by organized violence between national military units is known as a war. There are three Types of war: 1) Hot War: The actual warfare.

2) Warm War: Where talks are still going on. 3) Cold War: Client States fight on the behalf on their supporting nations. COLD WAR A STATE OF PERMANENT HOSTILITY BETWEEN TWO POWERS WHICH NEVER ERUPTS INTO AN ARMED CONFRONTATION OR A HOT WAR In current historiography the term Cold War describes the conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States from 1945 until 1989. It was popularized by the American journalist Walter Lippmann in 1947 and widely used thereafter to describe US-Soviet relations. In the aftermath of the Second World War the Soviet Union and the United States were the most powerful states and they formed the two poles of the international state system (the bipolar system). Both nations were competing for position of dominance within the system and they wanted to stop each other filling the power vacuum created by the Second World War. The American policy in the Cold War was called containment but it was a policy of confining communism in those areas where it already existed. At the end of World War II, English author and journalist George Orwell used the term Cold War in his essay You and the Atomic Bomb, published October 19, 1945, in the British newspaper Tribune. Contemplating a world living in the shadow of the threat of nuclear warfare, he warned of a peace that is no peace, which he called a permanent cold war, Orwell directly referred to that war as the ideological confrontation between the Soviet Union and the Western powers. Moreover, in The Observer of March 10, 1946, Orwell wrote that after the Moscow conference last December, Russia began to make a cold war on Britain and the British Empire. The first use of the term to describe the postWorld War II geopolitical tensions between the USSR and its satellites and the United States and its western European allies is attributed to Bernard Baruch, an American financier and presidential advisor. In South Carolina, on April 16, 1947, he delivered a speech (by journalist Herbert Bayard Swope) saying, Let us not be

deceived: we are today in the midst of a cold war. Newspaper reporter-columnist Walter Lippmann gave the term wide currency, with the book Cold War (1947) Background

American troops in Vladivostok, August 1918, during the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. There is disagreement among historians regarding the starting point of the Cold War. While most historians trace its origins to the period immediately following World War II, others argue that it began towards the end of World War I, although tensions between the Russian Empire, other European countries and the United States date back to the middle of the 19th century As a result of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia (followed by its withdrawal from World War I), Soviet Russia found itself isolated in international diplomacy. Leader Vladimir Lenin stated that the Soviet Union was surrounded by a "hostile capitalist encirclement", and he viewed diplomacy as a weapon to keep Soviet enemies divided, beginning with the establishment of the Soviet Comintern, which called for revolutionary upheavals abroad. Subsequent leader Joseph Stalin, who viewed the Soviet Union as a "socialist island", stated that the Soviet Union must see that "the present capitalist encirclement is replaced by a socialist encirclement." As early as 1925, Stalin stated that he viewed international politics as a bipolar world in which the Soviet Union would attract countries gravitating to socialism and capitalist countries would attract states gravitating toward capitalism, while the world was in a period of "temporary stabilization of capitalism" preceding its eventual collapse. Various events before the Second World War had been demonstrative of mutual distrust and suspicion between the Western powers and the Soviet Union, including the Bolsheviks' challenge to capitalism; Western support of the anti-Bolshevik White movement in the Russian Civil War; the 1926 Soviet funding of a British general workers strike causing Britain to break relations with the Soviet Union; Stalin's 1927 declaration of peaceful coexistence with capitalist

countries "receding into the past"; conspiratorial allegations during the 1928 Shakhty show trial of a planned British- and French-led coup d'tat; the American refusal to recognize the Soviet Union until 1933; and the Stalinist Moscow Trials of the Great Purge, with allegations of British, French, Japanese and Nazi German espionage. As a result of the German invasion in June 1941, the Allies decided to help the Soviet Union; Britain signed a formal alliance and the United States made an informal agreement. In wartime, the United States supplied both Britain and the Soviets through its Lend-Lease Program. However, Stalin remained highly suspicious and believed that the British and the Americans had conspired to allow the Soviets to bear the brunt of the fighting against Nazi Germany. According to this view, the Western Allies had deliberately delayed opening a second anti-German front in order to step in at the last moment and shape the peace settlement. Thus, Soviet perceptions of the West left a strong undercurrent of tension and hostility between the Allied powers. CAPITALISM & COMMUNISM: IDEOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES Capitalism (USA) Limited government Multi party politics Individual rights Free enterprise economy Open society A command economy Closed society Communism (USSR) Strong central state One party government

Cold War Chronology 1945 : A-Bomb dropped on Hiroshima+ Nagasaki. USA ahead in the arms race. 1947 : Marshall Aid to the west of Europe. Stalin of USSR refused it for Eastern Europe. 1948 : start of the Berlin Blockade - ended in 1949 1949 : NATO established; USSR exploded her first A-bomb; China becomes communist 1950 : Korean War started. 1952 : USA exploded her first hydrogen bomb. 1953 : Korean War ended. USSR exploded her first hydrogen bomb. Stalin died.

1955 : Warsaw Pact created. Peaceful coexistence called for. 1956 : Hungary revolts against USSR. Suez Crisis. 1957 : Sputnik launched. 1959 : Cuba becomes a communist state. 1961 : Military aid sent to Vietnam by USA for the first time. Berlin Wall built. 1962 : Cuban Missile Crisis. 1963 : Huge increase of American aid to Vietnam. 1965 : USA openly involved in Vietnam. 1967 : Six-Day War in Middle East. 1968 : USSR invades Czechoslovakia. 1973 : Yom Kippur War. 1979 : USSR invaded Afghanistan. 1986 : Meeting in Iceland between USSR (Gorbachev) and USA (Reagan). 1987 : INF Treaty signed.

Main causes of the Cold War American fear of communist attack. Trumans dislike of Stalin. Russias fear of the American atomic bomb Russias dislike of capitalism. Russias fear of the American attack. Americas refusal to share nuclear secrets. Russias action in the Soviet zone of Germany. Russias need for a secure western border. Russia's aim of spreading world communism.

Timeline of the Cold War 1940s

 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s

1945: February 4 Yalta Conference Cold War Begins. 1945: August 8 United States first used atomic bomb in war. 1945: August 14 Japanese surrender End of World War II. 1948: February Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia. 1948: June 24 Berlin Blockade begins. 1949: July NATO ratified. 1949: May 12 Berlin Blockade ends.

1950: June Korean War begins. 1953: July Korean War ends. 1954: March -- KGB established. 1954: July Vietnam split at 17th parallel.

1960: May Soviet Union reveals that U.S. spy plane was shot down over Soviet territory. 1960: November John F .Kennedy elected President. 1961: August 13 Berlin border closed. 1961: August 17 Construction of Berlin Wall begins. 1963: July Nuclear Test Ban Treaty ratified

1972: July SALT I signed. 1975: April 17 North Vietnam defeats South Vietnam. 1979: July SALT II signed.

1989: January Soviet troops withdraw from Afghanistan. 1989: September Hungary becomes independent. 1989: November Berlin Wall falls.

1990s 1990: May 29 Boris Yeltsin elected to presidency of Russia. 1990: October 3 Germany reunited. 1991: August End of Soviet Union Cold War Ends.

End of World War II and post-war (194547)

Wartime conferences regarding post-war Europe

The "Big Three" at the Yalta Conference:Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt andJoseph Stalin, 1945. The Allies disagreed about how the European map should look, and how borders would be drawn, following the war. Each side held dissimilar ideas regarding the establishment and maintenance of post-war security. The western Allies desired a security system in which democratic governments were established as widely as possible, permitting countries to peacefully resolve differences through international organizations.

Given the Russian historical experiences of frequent invasions and the immense death toll (estimated at 27 million) and the destruction the Soviet Union sustained during World War II, the Soviet Union sought to increase security by dominating the internal affairs of countries that bordered it. The Western Allies were themselves deeply divided in their vision of the new post-war world. Roosevelt's goals military victory in both Europeand Asia, the achievement of global American economic supremacy over the British Empire, and the creation of a world peace organization were more global than Churchill's, which were mainly centered on securing control over the Mediterranean, ensuring the survival of the British Empire, and the independence of Eastern European countries as a buffer between the Soviets and the United Kingdom. In the American view, Stalin seemed a potential ally in accomplishing their goals, whereas in the British approach Stalin appeared as the greatest threat to the fulfillment of their agenda. With the Soviets already occupying most of Eastern Europe, Stalin was at an advantage and the two western leaders vied for his favors. The differences between Roosevelt and Churchill led to several separate deals with the Soviets. In October 1944, Churchill traveled to Moscow and agreed to divide the Balkans into respective spheres of influence, and at Yalta Roosevelt signed a separate deal with Stalin in regard of Asia and refused to support Churchill on the issues of Poland and the Reparations.

Post-war Allied occupation zones in Germany. Further Allied negotiations concerning the post-war balance took place at the Yalta Conference in February 1945, albeit this conference also failed to reach a firm consensus on the framework for a post-war settlement in Europe. In April 1945, both Churchill and new United States President Harry S. Truman opposed, among other things, the Soviets' decision to prop up the Lublin government, the Soviet-controlled rival to the Polish government-in-exile, whose relations with the Soviets were severed.

Following the Allies' May 1945 victory, the Soviets effectively occupied Eastern Europe, while strong US and Western allied forces remained in Western Europe. In Allied-occupied Germany, the Soviet Union, United States, Britain and France established zones of occupation and a loose framework for four-power control. The 1945 Allied conference in San Francisco established the multi-national United Nations (UN) for the maintenance of world peace, but the enforcement capacity of its Security Council was effectively paralyzed by individual members' ability to use veto power. Accordingly, the UN was essentially converted into an inactive forum for exchanging polemical rhetoric, and the Soviets regarded it almost exclusively as a propaganda tribune. Potsdam Conference and defeat of Japan

Winston Churchill, Harry S. Truman and Joseph Stalin at the Potsdam Conference, 1945. At the Potsdam Conference, which started in late July after Germany's surrender, serious differences emerged over the future development of Germany and eastern Europe. Moreover, the participants' mounting antipathy and bellicose language served to confirm their suspicions about each others' hostile intentions and entrench their positions. At this conference Truman informed Stalin that the United States possessed a powerful new weapon. Stalin was aware that the Americans were working on the atomic bomb and, given that the Soviets' own rival program was in place, he reacted to the news calmly. The Soviet leader said he was pleased by the news and expressed the hope that the weapon would be used against Japan. One week after the end of the Potsdam Conference, the US bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Shortly after the attacks, Stalin protested to US officials when Truman offered the Soviets little real influence in occupied Japan. Beginnings of the Eastern Bloc

Post-war territorial changes in Eastern Europe and the formation of the Eastern Bloc. During the final stages of World War II, the Soviet Union laid the foundation for the Eastern Bloc by directly annexing several countries as Soviet Socialist Republics that were initially (and effectively) ceded to it by Nazi Germany in the MolotovRibbentrop Pact. These included eastern Poland (incorporated into two different SSRs), Latvia (which became the Latvian SSR), Estonia (which became the Estonian SSR), Lithuania (which became the Lithuanian SSR), part of eastern Finland (which became the Karelo-Finnish SSR) and eastern Romania (which became the Moldavian SSR). The Eastern European territories liberated from the Nazis and occupied by the Soviet armed forces were added to the Eastern Bloc by converting them into satellite states, such as East Germany, the People's Republic of Poland, the People's Republic of Bulgaria, the People's Republic of Hungary, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, the People's Republic of Romania and the People's Republic of Albania. The Soviet-style regimes that arose in the Bloc not only reproduced Soviet command economies, but also adopted the brutal methods employed by Joseph Stalin and Soviet secret police to suppress real and potential opposition. In Asia, the Red Army had overrun Manchuria in the last month of the war, and went on to occupy the large swath of Korean territory located north of the 38th parallel.

As part of consolidating Stalin's control over the Eastern Bloc, the NKVD, led by Lavrentiy Beria, supervised the establishment of Soviet-style secret police systems in the Bloc that were supposed to crush anti-communist resistance. When the slightest stirrings of independence emerged in the Bloc, Stalin's strategy matched that of dealing with domestic pre-war rivals: they were removed from power, put on trial, imprisoned, and in several instances, executed. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was concerned that, given the enormous size of Soviet forces deployed in Europe at the end of the war, and the perception that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was unreliable, there existed a Soviet threat to Western Europe. In AprilMay 1945, the British War Cabinet's Joint Planning Staff Committee developed Operation Unthinkable, a plan "to impose upon Russia the will of the United States and the British Empire". The plan, however, was rejected by the British Chiefs of Staff Committee as militarily unfeasible. Tensions build In February 1946, George F. Kennan's "Long Telegram" from Moscow helped to articulate the US government's increasingly hard line against the Soviets, and became the basis for US strategy toward the Soviet Union for the duration of the Cold War. That September, the Soviet side produced the Novikov telegram, sent by the Soviet ambassador to the US but commissioned and "co-authored" by Vyacheslav Molotov; it portrayed the US as being in the grip of monopoly capitalists who were building up military capability "to prepare the conditions for winning world supremacy in a new war". On September 6, 1946, James F. Byrnes delivered a speech in Germany repudiating the Morgenthau Plan (a proposal to partition and de-industrialize post-war Germany) and warning the Soviets that the US intended to maintain a military presence in Europe indefinitely. As Byrnes admitted a month later, "The nub of our program was to win the German people [...] it was a battle between us and Russia over minds [...]" A few weeks after the release of this "Long Telegram", former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivered his famous "Iron Curtain" speech in Fulton, Missouri. The speech called for an Anglo-American alliance against the Soviets, whom he accused of establishing an "iron curtain" from "Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic". Containment through the Korean War (194753)

Cominform and the TitoStalin split

In September 1947, the Soviets created Cominform, the purpose of which was to enforce orthodoxy within the international communist movement and tighten political control over Sovietsatellites through coordination of communist parties in the Eastern Bloc. Cominform faced an embarrassing setback the following June, when the TitoStalin split obliged its members to expel Yugoslavia, which remained Communist but adopted a non-aligned position.

Containment and the Truman Doctrine

European military alliances. Main articles: Containment and Truman Doctrine By 1947, US president Harry S. Truman's advisers urged him to take immediate steps to counter the Soviet Union's influence, citing Stalin's efforts (amid post-war confusion and collapse) to undermine the US by encouraging rivalries among capitalists that could precipitate another war. In February 1947, the British government announced that it could no longer afford to finance the Greek monarchical military regime inits civil war against communist-led insurgents. The American government's response to this announcement was the adoption of containment, the goal of which was to stop the spread of communism. Truman delivered a speech that called for the allocation of $400 million to intervene in the war and unveiled the Truman Doctrine, which framed the conflict as a contest between free peoples and totalitarian regimes. Even though the insurgents were helped by Josip Broz Tito's Yugoslavia, US policymakers accused the Soviet Union of conspiring against the Greek royalists in an effort to expand Soviet influence. Enunciation of the Truman Doctrine marked the beginning of a US bipartisan defense and foreign policy consensus between Republicans and Democrats focused on containment and deterrence that weakened during and after the Vietnam War, but ultimately held steady.

Moderate and conservative parties in Europe, as well as social democrats, gave virtually unconditional support to the Western alliance, while European and American Communists, paid by the KGB and involved in its intelligence operations, adhered to Moscow's line, although dissent began to appear after 1956. Other critiques of consensus politics came from anti-Vietnam War activists, the CND and the nuclear freeze movement. Marshall Plan and Czechoslovak coup d'tat

Map of Cold-War era Europe and the Near East showing countries that receivedMarshall Plan aid. The red columns show the relative amount of total aid per nation.

European economic alliances Main articles: Marshall Plan and Czechoslovak coup d'tat of 1948 In early 1947, Britain, France and the United States unsuccessfully attempted to reach an agreement with the Soviet Union for a plan envisioning an economically self-sufficient Germany, including a detailed accounting of the industrial plants, goods and infrastructure

already removed by the Soviets. In June 1947, in accordance with the Truman Doctrine, the United States enacted the Marshall Plan, a pledge of economic assistance for all European countries willing to participate, including the Soviet Union. The plan's aim was to rebuild the democratic and economic systems of Europe and to counter perceived threats to Europe's balance of power, such as communist parties seizing control through revolutions or elections. The plan also stated that European prosperity was contingent upon German economic recovery. One month later, Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947, creating a unified Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the National Security Council. These would become the main bureaucracies for US policy in the Cold War. Stalin believed that economic integration with the West would allow Eastern Bloc countries to escape Soviet control, and that the US was trying to buy a pro-US re-alignment of Europe. Stalin therefore prevented Eastern Bloc nations from receiving Marshall Plan aid. The Soviet Union's alternative to the Marshall plan, which was purported to involve Soviet subsidies and trade with eastern Europe, became known as the Molotov Plan (later institutionalized in January 1949 as the Comecon). Stalin was also fearful of a reconstituted Germany; his vision of a post-war Germany did not include the ability to rearm or pose any kind of threat to the Soviet Union. In early 1948, following reports of strengthening "reactionary elements", Soviet operatives executed a coup d'tat of 1948 in Czechoslovakia, the only Eastern Bloc state that the Soviets had permitted to retain democratic structures. The public brutality of the coup shocked Western powers more than any event up to that point, set in a motion a brief scare that war would occur and swept away the last vestiges of opposition to the Marshall Plan in the United States Congress. The twin policies of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan led to billions in economic and military aid for Western Europe, Greece, and Turkey. With US assistance, the Greek military won its civil war, The Italian Christian Democrats defeated the powerful CommunistSocialist alliance in the elections of 1948. Increases occurred in intelligence and espionage activities, Eastern Bloc defections and diplomatic expulsions . Berlin Blockade and airlift

C-47s unloading at Tempelhof Airport in Berlin during the Berlin Blockade. Main article: Berlin Blockade The United States and Britain merged their western German occupation zones into "Bizonia" (1 January 1947, later "Trizonia" with the addition of France's zone, April 1949). As part of the economic rebuilding of Germany, in early 1948, representatives of a number of Western European governments and the United States announced an agreement for a merger of western German areas into a federal governmental system. In addition, in accordance with the Marshall Plan, they began to re-industrialize and rebuild the German economy, including the introduction of a new Deutsche Mark currency to replace the old Reichsmark currency that the Soviets had debased. Shortly thereafter, Stalin instituted the Berlin Blockade (24 June 1948 12 May 1949), one of the first major crises of the Cold War, preventing food, materials and supplies from arriving in West Berlin. The United States, Britain, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and several other countries began the massive "Berlin airlift", supplying West Berlin with food and other provisions. The Soviets mounted a public relations campaign against the policy change. Once again the East Berlin communists attempted to disrupt the Berlin municipal elections (as they have done in the 1946 elections), which were held on December 5, 1948 and produced a turnout of 86.3% and an overwhelming victory for the non-Communist parties. The results effectively divided the city into East and West versions of its former self. 300,000 Berliners demonstrated and urged the international airlift to continue, and the US accidentally created "Operation Vittles", which supplied candy to German children. In May 1949, Stalin backed down and lifted the blockade.

NATO beginnings and Radio Free Europe

President Truman signs the National Security Act Amendment of 1949 with guests in the Oval Office. Britain, France, the United States, Canada and eight other western European countries signed the North Atlantic Treaty of April 1949, establishing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). That August, the first Soviet atomic device was detonated in Semipalatinsk,Kazakh SSR. Following Soviet refusals to participate in a German rebuilding effort set forth by western European countries in 1948,the US, Britain and France spearheaded the establishment of West Germany from the three Western zones of occupation in April 1949.The Soviet Union proclaimed its zone of occupation in Germany the German Democratic Republic that October. Media in the Eastern Bloc was an organ of the state, completely reliant on and subservient to the communist party, with radio and television organizations being state-owned, while print media was usually owned by political organizations, mostly by the local communist party. Soviet propaganda used Marxist philosophy to attack capitalism, claiming labor exploitation and warmongering imperialism were inherent in the system. Along with the broadcasts of the British Broadcasting Corporation and the Voice of America to Eastern Europe, a major propaganda effort begun in 1949 was Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, dedicated to bringing about the peaceful demise of the Communist system in the Eastern Bloc. Radio Free Europe attempted to achieve these goals by serving as a surrogate home radio station, an alternative to the controlled and party-dominated domestic press. Radio Free Europe was a product of some of the most prominent architects of America's early Cold War strategy, especially those who believed that the Cold War would eventually be fought by political rather than military means, such as George F. Kennan. American policymakers, including Kennan and John Foster Dulles, acknowledged that the Cold War was in its essence a war of ideas. The United States, acting through the CIA, funded a long

list of projects to counter the Communist appeal among intellectuals in Europe and the developing world. In the early 1950s, the US worked for the rearmament of West Germany and, in 1955, secured its full membership of NATO. In May 1953, Beria, by then in a government post, had made an unsuccessful proposal to allow the reunification of a neutral Germany to prevent West Germany's incorporation into NATO. Chinese Civil War and SEATO In 1949, Mao Zedong's People's Liberation Army defeated Chiang Kai-shek's United Statesbacked Kuomintang (KMT) Nationalist Government in China, and the Soviet Union promptly created an alliance with the newly formed People's Republic of China. Chiang and his KMT government retreated to the island of Taiwan. Confronted with the communist revolution in China and the end of the American atomic monopoly in 1949, the Truman administration quickly moved to escalate and expand the containment policy. In NSC-68, a secret 1950 document, the National Security Council proposed to reinforce pro-Western alliance systems and quadruple spending on defense. United States officials moved thereafter to expand containment into Asia, Africa, and Latin America, in order to counter revolutionary nationalist movements, often led by communist parties financed by the USSR, fighting against the restoration of Europe's colonial empires in South-East Asia and elsewhere. In the early 1950s (a period sometimes known as the "Pactomania"), the US formalized a series of alliances with Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand and the Philippines (notably ANZUS in 1951 and SEATO in 1954), thereby guaranteeing the United States a number of long-term military bases. Korean War One of the more significant impacts of containment was the outbreak of the Korean War. In June 1950, Kim Il-Sung's North Korean People's Army invaded South Korea. To Joseph Stalin's surprise, the UN Security Council backed the defense of South Korea, though the Soviets were then boycotting meetings in protest that Taiwan and not Communist China held a permanent seat on the Council. A UN force of personnel from South Korea, the United States, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Canada, Australia, France, South Africa, the Philippines, the Netherlands, Belgium, New Zealand and other countries joined to stop the invasion.

General Douglas MacArthur, UN Command CiC (seated), observes the naval shelling of Incheon from the USS Mt. McKinley, 15 September 1950. Among other effects, the Korean War galvanised NATO to develop a military structure. Public opinion in countries involved, such as Great Britain, was divided for and against the war. Many feared an escalation into a general war with Communist China, and even nuclear war. The strong opposition to the war often strained Anglo-American relations. For these reasons British officials sought a speedy end to the conflict, hoping to unite Korea under United Nations auspices and withdrawal of all foreign forces. Even though the Chinese and North Koreans were exhausted by the war and were prepared to end it by late 1952, Stalin insisted that they continue fighting, and the Armistice was approved only in July 1953, after Stalin's death. North Korean leader Kim Il Sung created a highly centralized and brutal dictatorship, according himself unlimited power and generating a formidable cult of personality. In the South, thecorrupt American-backed strongman Syngman Rhee pursued a comparable system of totalitarian rule. Albeit Rhee was overthrown after popular protests against his rigged re-election victory in 1960, South Korea subsequently fell under a period of military rule that lasted until the re-establishment of a multi-party system in 1987. Crisis and escalation (195362)

Khrushchev, Eisenhower and De-Stalinization In 1953, changes in political leadership on both sides shifted the dynamic of the Cold War. Dwight D. Eisenhower was inaugurated president that January. During the last 18 months of the Truman administration, the American defense budget had quadrupled, and Eisenhower moved to reduce military spending by a third while continuing to fight the Cold War effectively.

After the death of Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev became the Soviet leader following the deposition and execution of Lavrentiy Beria and the pushing aside of rivals Georgy Malenkovand Vyacheslav Molotov. On February 25, 1956, Khrushchev shocked delegates to the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party by cataloguing and denouncing Stalin's crimes. As part of a campaign of de-Stalinization, he declared that the only way to reform and move away from Stalin's policies would be to acknowledge errors made in the past. On November 18, 1956, while addressing Western ambassadors at a reception at the Polish embassy in Moscow, Khrushchev used his famous "Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you" expression, shocking everyone present. He later claimed that he had not been talking about nuclear war, but rather about the historically determined victory of communism over capitalism. In 1961, Khrushchev declared that even if the USSR was behind the West, within a decade its housing shortage would disappear, consumer goods would be abundant, and within two decades, the "construction of a communist society" in the USSR would be completed "in the main". Eisenhower's secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, initiated a "New Look" for the containment strategy, calling for a greater reliance on nuclear weapons against US enemies in wartime. Dulles also enunciated the doctrine of "massive retaliation", threatening a severe US response to any Soviet aggression. Possessing nuclear superiority, for example, allowed Eisenhower to face down Soviet threats to intervene in the Middle East during the 1956 Suez Crisis.

Warsaw Pact and Hungarian Revolution

Map of the Warsaw Pact countries While Stalin's death in 1953 slightly relaxed tensions, the situation in Europe remained an uneasy armed truce. The Soviets, who had already created a network of mutual assistance treaties in the Eastern Bloc by 1949, established a formal alliance therein, the Warsaw Pact, in 1955. The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 occurred shortly after Khrushchev arranged the removal of Hungary's Stalinist leader Mtys Rkosi. In response to a popular uprising, the new regime

formally disbanded the secret police, declared its intention to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact and pledged to re-establish free elections. The Soviet army invaded. Thousands of Hungarians were arrested, imprisoned and deported to the Soviet Union, and approximately 200,000 Hungarians fled Hungary in the chaos. Hungarian leader Imre Nagy and others were executed following secret trials. From 1957 through 1961, Khrushchev openly and repeatedly threatened the West with nuclear annihilation. He claimed that Soviet missile capabilities were far superior to those of the United States, capable of wiping out any American or European city. However, Khrushchev rejected Stalin's belief in the inevitability of war, and declared his new goal was to be "peaceful coexistence". This formulation modified the Stalin-era Soviet stance, where international class struggle meant the two opposing camps were on an inevitable collision course where Communism would triumph through global war; now, peace would allow capitalism to collapse on its own, as well as giving the Soviets time to boost their military capabilities, which remained for decades until Gorbachev's later "new thinking" envisioning peaceful coexistence as an end in itself rather than a form of class struggle. The events in Hungary produced ideological fractures within the Communist parties of the world, particularly in Western Europe, with great decline in membership as many in both western and communist countries felt disillusioned by the brutal Soviet response. The communist parties in the west would never recover from the effect the Hungarian Revolution had on their membership, a fact that was immediately recognized by some, such as the Yugoslavian politician Milovan Djilas who shortly after the revolution was crushed said that "The wound which the Hungarian Revolution inflicted on communism can never be completely healed" America's pronouncements concentrated on American strength abroad and the success of liberal capitalism. However, by the late 1960s, the "battle for men's minds" between two systems of social organization that Kennedy spoke of in 1961 was largely over, with tensions henceforth based primarily on clashing geopolitical objectives rather than ideology.

Berlin Ultimatum and European integration

The maximum territorial extent of countries in the world under Soviet influence, after the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and before the official Sino-Soviet split of 1961 During November 1958, Khrushchev made an unsuccessful attempt to turn all of Berlin into an independent, demilitarized "free city", giving the United States, Great Britain, and France a sixmonth ultimatum to withdraw their troops from the sectors they still occupied in West Berlin, or he would transfer control of Western access rights to the East Germans. Khrushchev earlier explained to Mao Zedong that "Berlin is the testicles of the West. Every time I want to make the West scream, I squeeze on Berlin." NATO formally rejected the ultimatum in mid-December and Khrushchev withdrew it in return for a Geneva conference on the German question. More broadly, one hallmark of the 1950s was the beginning of European integrationa fundamental by-product of the Cold War that Truman and Eisenhower promoted politically, economically, and militarily, but which later administrations viewed ambivalently, fearful that an independent Europe would forge a separate dtente with the Soviet Union, which would use this to exacerbate Western disunity.

Worldwide competition

1961 Soviet postage stampdemanding freedom for African nations.

1961 Soviet stamp commemorating Patrice Lumumba, prime minister of the Republic of the Congo. Nationalist movements in some countries and regions, notably Guatemala, Indonesia and Indochina were often allied with communist groups, or perceived in the West to be allied with communists. In this context, the United States and the Soviet Union increasingly competed for influence by proxy in the Third World as decolonization gained momentum in the 1950s and early 1960s; additionally, the Soviets saw continuing losses by imperial powers as presaging the eventual victory of their ideology. Both sides were selling armaments to gain influence. The United States made use of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to do away with a string of unfriendly Third World governments and to support allied ones. In 1953, President Eisenhower's Central Intelligence Agency implemented Operation Ajax, a covert operation aimed at the overthrow of the Iranian Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh. The popularly-elected and non-aligned Mosaddegh had been a Middle Eastern nemesis of Britain since nationalizing the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951. Churchill told the United States that Mosaddegh was "increasingly turning towards communism" and was moving Iran towards the Soviet sphere. The pro-Western shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, assumed control as an autocratic monarch. The shah's policies included the banning of the communist Tudeh Party and general suppression of political dissent by SAVAK, the shah's domestic security and intelligence agency. In Guatemala, a CIA-backed military coup ousted the left-wing President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmn in 1954. The post-Arbenz government, a military junta headed by Carlos Castillo

Armas, returned nationalized American property, set up a National Committee of Defense Against Communism, and decreed a Preventive Penal Law Against Communism at the request of the United States. In the Republic of the Congo, newly independent from Belgium since June 1960, the CIAcultivated President Joseph Kasa-Vubu ordered the dismissal of the democratically-elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba and the Lumumba cabinet in September; Lumumba called for KasaVubu's dismissal instead. In the ensuing Congo Crisis, the CIA-backed Colonel Mobutu quickly mobilized his forces to seize power through a military coup d'tat. In British Guiana, the leftist People's Progressive Party (PPP) candidate Cheddi Jagan won the position of chief minister in a colonially-administered election in 1953, but was quickly forced to resign from power after Britain's suspension of the still-dependent nation's constitution. Embarrassed by the landslide electoral victory of Jagan's allegedly Marxist party, the British imprisoned the PPP's leadership and maneuvered the organization into a divisive rupture in 1955, engineering a split between Jagan and his PPP colleagues. Jagan again won the colonial elections in 1957 and 1961; despite Britain's shift to a reconsideration of its view of the left-wing Jagan as a Soviet-style communist at this time, the United States pressured the British to withhold Guyana's independence until an alternative to Jagan could be identified, supported, and brought into office. Worn down by the communist guerrilla war for Vietnamese independence and handed a watershed defeat by communist Vietminh rebels at the 1954 Battle of in Bin Ph, the French accepted a negotiated abandonment of their colonial stake in Vietnam. Peace accords signed in Geneva left Vietnam divided between a pro-Soviet administration in North Vietnam and a proWestern administration in South Vietnam at the 17th parallel north. Between 1954 and 1961, Eisenhower's United States sent economic aid and military advisers to strengthen South Vietnam's pro-Western regime against communist efforts to destabilize it. Many emerging nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America rejected the pressure to choose sides in the East-West competition. In 1955, at the Bandung Conference in Indonesia, dozens of Third World governments resolved to stay out of the Cold War. The consensus reached at Bandung culminated with the creation of the Belgrade-headquartered Non-Aligned Movement in 1961. Meanwhile, Khrushchev broadened Moscow's policy to establish ties with India and other key neutral states. Independence movements in the Third World transformed the post-war order into a more pluralistic world of decolonized African and Middle Eastern nations and of rising nationalism in Asia and Latin America.

Sino-Soviet split, space race, ICBMs

Charting the progress of the Space Racein 1957-1975. The period after 1956 was marked by serious setbacks for the Soviet Union, most notably the breakdown of the Sino-Soviet alliance, beginning the Sino-Soviet split. Mao had defended Stalin when Khrushchev attacked him after his death in 1956, and treated the new Soviet leader as a superficial upstart, accusing him of having lost his revolutionary edge. For his part, Khrushchev, disturbed by Maos glib attitude toward nuclear war, referred to the Chinese leader as a "lunatic on a throne". After this, Khrushchev made many desperate attempts to reconstitute the Sino-Soviet alliance, but Mao considered it useless and denied any proposal. The Chinese-Soviet animosity spilled out in an intra-communist propaganda war. Further on, the Soviets focused on a bitter rivalry with Mao's China for leadership of the global communist movement. On the nuclear weapons front, the United States and the USSR pursued nuclear rearmament and developed long-range weapons with which they could strike the territory of the other. In August 1957, the Soviets successfully launched the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and in October, launched the first Earth satellite, Sputnik. The launch of Sputnik inaugurated the Space Race. This culminated in the Apollo Moon landings, which astronaut Frank Borman later described as "just a battle in the Cold War."

Cuban Revolution and the Bay of Pigs Invasion

Flag of the 26th July Movement. In Cuba, the 26th of July Movement seized power in January 1959, toppling President Fulgencio Batista, whose unpopular regime had been denied arms by the Eisenhower administration. Diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States continued for some time after Batista's fall, but President Eisenhower deliberately left the capital to avoid meeting Cuba's young revolutionary leader Fidel Castro during the latter's trip to Washington in April, leaving Vice President Richard Nixon to conduct the meeting in his place. Eisenhower's officials were not sure as to whether Castro was a communist, but hostile toward the Cubans' efforts to decrease their economic reliance on the United States. In January 1961, just prior to leaving office, Eisenhower formally severed relations with the Cuban government. In April 1961, the administration of newly-elected American President John F. Kennedy mounted an unsuccessful CIA-organized ship-borne invasion of the island at Playa Girn and Playa Larga in Las Villas Province a failure that publicly humiliated the United States. Castro responded by embracing Marxism-Leninism, and the Soviet Union pledged to provide support. Berlin Crisis of 1961

Soviet tanks face US tanks at Checkpoint Charlie, on October 27, during the Berlin Crisis of 1961

Main articles: Berlin Crisis of 1961, Berlin Wall, and Eastern Bloc emigration and defection The Berlin Crisis of 1961 was the last major incident in the Cold War regarding the status of Berlin and postWorld War II Germany. By the early 1950s, the Soviet approach to restricting emigration movement was emulated by most of the rest of the Eastern Bloc. However, hundreds of thousands of East Germans annually emigrated to West Germany through a "loophole" in the system that existed between East and West Berlin, where the four occupying World War II powers governed movement. The emigration resulted in a massive "brain drain" from East Germany to West Germany of younger educated professionals, such that nearly 20% of East Germany's population had migrated to West Germany by 1961. That June, the Soviet Union issued a new ultimatumdemanding the withdrawal of Allied forces from West Berlin. The request was rebuffed, and on August 13, East Germany erected a barbed-wire barrier that would eventually be expanded through construction into the Berlin Wall, effectively closing the loophole.

Cuban Missile Crisis and Khrushchev ouster

A U.S. Navy P-2 of VP-18 flying over a Soviet freighter during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Continuing to seek ways to oust Castro following the Bay of Pigs Invasion, Kennedy and his administration experimented with various ways of covertly facilitating the overthrow of the Cuban government. Significant hopes were pinned on a covert program named the Cuban Project, devised under the Kennedy administration in 1961. In February 1962, Khrushchev learned of the American plans regarding Cuba: a "Cuban project" approved by the CIA and stipulating the overthrow of the Cuban government in October, possibly involving the American military and yet one more Kennedy-ordered operation to assassinate Castro. Preparations to install Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba were undertaken in response.

Alarmed, Kennedy considered various reactions, and ultimately responded to the installation of nuclear missiles in Cuba with a naval blockade and presented an ultimatum to the Soviets. Khrushchev backed down from a confrontation, and the Soviet Union removed the missiles in return for an American pledge not to invade Cuba again. The Cuban Missile Crisis (OctoberNovember 1962) brought the world closer to nuclear war than ever before. It further demonstrated the concept of mutually assured destruction that neither nuclear power was prepared to use nuclear weapons fearing total destruction via nuclear retaliation. The aftermath of the crisis led to the first efforts in the nuclear arms race at nuclear disarmament and improving relations, although the Cold War's first arms control agreement, the Antarctic Treaty, had come into force in 1961. In 1964, Khrushchev's Kremlin colleagues managed to oust him, but allowed him a peaceful retirement. Accused of rudeness and incompetence, he was also credited with ruining Soviet agriculture and bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Khrushchev had become an international embarrassment when he authorized construction of the Berlin Wall, a public humiliation for Marxism-Leninism.

Confrontation through dtente (196279)

The United States reached the moon in 1969a milestone in the space race.

United States Navy F-4 Phantom IIintercepts a Soviet Tupolev Tu-95 D aircraft in the early 1970s In the course of the 1960s and 1970s, Cold War participants struggled to adjust to a new, more complicated pattern of international relations in which the world was no longer divided into two clearly opposed blocs. From the beginning of the post-war period, Western Europe and Japan rapidly recovered from the destruction of World War II and sustained strong economic growth through the 1950s and 1960s, with per capita GDPs approaching those of the United States, while Eastern Bloc economies stagnated. As a result of the 1973 oil crisis, combined with the growing influence of Third World alignments such as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the NonAligned Movement, less-powerful countries had more room to assert their independence and often showed themselves resistant to pressure from either superpower. Meanwhile, Moscow was forced to turn its attention inward to deal with the Soviet Union's deep-seated domestic economic problems. During this period, Soviet leaders such as Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin embraced the notion of dtente. French NATO withdrawal The unity of NATO was breached early in its history, with a crisis occurring during Charles de Gaulle's presidency of France from 1958 onwards. De Gaulle protested at the United States' strong role in the organization and what he perceived as a special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom. In a memorandum sent to President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan on 17 September 1958, he argued for the creation of a tripartite directorate that would put France on an equal footing with the United States and the United Kingdom, and also for the expansion of NATO's coverage to include geographical areas of interest to France, most notably French Algeria, where France was waging a counter-insurgency and sought NATO assistance.

Considering the response given to be unsatisfactory, de Gaulle began the development of an independent French nuclear deterrent and in 1966 withdrew from NATO's military structures and expelled NATO troops from French soil. Czechoslovakia invasion In 1968, a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia called the Prague Spring took place that included "Action Program" of liberalizations, which described increasing freedom of the press, freedom of speech and freedom of movement, along with an economic emphasis on consumer goods, the possibility of a multiparty government, limiting the power of the secret police and potentially withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact. In answer to the Prague Spring, the Soviet army, together with most of their Warsaw Pact allies, invaded Czechoslovakia. The invasion was followed by a wave of emigration, including an estimated 70,000 Czechs initially fleeing, with the total eventually reaching 300,000. The invasion sparked intense protests from Yugoslavia, Romania and China, and from Western European communist parties.

Brezhnev Doctrine

Leonid Brezhnev and Richard Nixonduring Brezhnev's June 1973 visit to Washington; this was a high-water mark in dtente between the United States and the Soviet Union. In September 1968, during a speech at the Fifth Congress of the Polish United Workers' Party one month after the invasion of Czechoslovakia, Brezhnev outlined the Brezhnev Doctrine, in which he claimed the right to violate the sovereignty of any country attempting to replace Marxism-Leninism with capitalism. During the speech, Brezhnev stated: When forces that are hostile to socialism try to turn the development of some socialist country towards capitalism, it becomes not only a problem of the country concerned, but a common problem and concern of all socialist countries.

The doctrine found its origins in the failures of Marxism-Leninism in states like Poland, Hungary and East Germany, which were facing a declining standard of living contrasting with the prosperity of West Germany and the rest of Western Europe. Third World escalations

Alexei Kosygin (left) next to U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson (right) during the Glassboro Summit Conference In late April 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson landed some 22,000 troops in the Dominican Republic for a one-year occupation of the republic in an invasion codenamed Operation Power Pack, citing the threat of the emergence of a Cuban-style revolution in Latin America. Presidential elections held in 1966, during the occupation, handed victory to the conservativeJoaqun Balaguer. Although Balaguer enjoyed a real base of support from sectors of the elites as well as peasants, his formally runningDominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) opponent, former President Juan Bosch, did not actively campaign. The PRD's activists were violently harassed by the Dominican police and armed forces. In Indonesia, the hardline anti-communist General Suharto wrested control of the state from his predecessor Sukarno in an attempt to establish a "New Order". From 1965 to 1966, the military orchestrated the mass killing of an estimated half-million members and sympathizers of the Indonesian Communist Party and other leftist organizations. Escalating the scale of American intervention in the ongoing conflict between Ng nh Dim's South Vietnamese government and the communist National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF) insurgents opposing it, Johnson stationed some 575,000 troops in Southeast Asia to defeat the NLF and their North Vietnamese allies in the Vietnam War, but his costly policy weakened the US economy and, by 1975, ultimately culminated in what most of the world saw as a humiliating defeat of the world's most powerful superpower at the hands of one of the world's poorest nations.

In Chile, the Socialist Party candidate Salvador Allende won the presidential election of 1970, becoming the first democratically elected Marxist to become president of a country in the Americas. Backed by the CIA, General Augusto Pinochet carried out a violent coup against the government on September 11, 1973 and quickly consolidated all political power as a military dictator. Allende's reforms of the economy were rolled back and leftist opponents were killed or detained in internment camps under the Direccin de Inteligencia Nacional(DINA). Additionally, the continent-wide South American Operation Condor employed by dictators in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Uruguay, and Paraguay to suppress leftist dissent was backed by the United States, which (sometimes accurately) perceived Soviet or Cuban support behind these opposition movements. Displeasing the United States, Jamaica began pursuing closer relations with the Cuban government as a result of Michael Manley's election in 1972. The United States' covert response included financing Manley's political opponents, the instigation of mutiny in the Jamaican army, and the fitting out of a private mercernary army against the Manley government. Violence ensued. Moreover, the Middle East continued to be a source of contention. Egypt, which received the bulk of its arms and economic assistance from the USSR, was a troublesome client, with a reluctant Soviet Union feeling obliged to assist in both the 1967 Six-Day War (with advisers and technicians) and the War of Attrition (with pilots and aircraft) against pro-Western Israel. Despite the beginning of an Egyptian shift from a pro-Soviet to a pro-American orientation in 1972 (under Egypt's new leader Anwar El Sadat), rumors of imminent Soviet intervention on the Egyptians' behalf during the 1973 Yom Kippur War brought about a massive American mobilization that threatened to wreck dtente. Although pre-Sadat Egypt had been the largest recipient of Soviet aid in the Middle East, the Soviets were also successful in establishing close relations with communist South Yemen, as well as the nationalist governments of Algeria and Iraq. Indirect Soviet assistance to the Palestinian side of the IsraeliPalestinian conflict included support for Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). In Africa, Somali army officers led by Mohamed Siad Barre carried out a bloodless coup in 1969, creating the socialist Somali Democratic Republic. The Soviet Union vowed to support Somalia. Four years later, the pro-American Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie was overthrown in a 1974 coup by the Derg, a radical group of Ethiopian army officers led by the proSoviet Mengistu Haile Mariam, who built up relations with the Cubans and Soviets. When fighting between the Somalis and Ethiopians broke out in the 1977-1978 Somali-

EthiopianOgaden War, Barre lost his Soviet support and allied with the United States. Cuban troops took part in the war on the side of the Ethiopians. The 1974 Portuguese Carnation Revolution against the authoritarian Estado Novo returned Portugal to a multi-party system and facilitated the independence of the Portuguese colonies Angola and East Timor. In Africa, where Angolan rebels had waged a multi-faction independence war against Portuguese rule since 1961, a two-decade civil war replaced the anticolonial struggle as fighting erupted between the communist People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), backed by the Cubans and Soviets, and the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA), backed by the United States, the People's Republic of China, and Mobutu's government in Zaire. The United States, the apartheid government of South Africa, and several other African governments also supported a third faction, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). Without bothering to consult the Soviets in advance, the Cuban government sent its troops to fight alongside the MPLA. Apartheid South Africa sent troops to support the UNITA, but the MPLA, bolstered by Cuban personnel and Soviet assistance, eventually gained the upper hand. In Southeast Asia, the colony of East Timor unilaterally declared independence under the leftwing Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (Fretilin) in November 1975. Supported by Australia and the United States, Suharto's Indonesia invaded in December the beginning of an occupation that would last a quarter-century. Sino-American re-approachment

Richard Nixon meets with Mao Zedong in 1972. As a result of the SinoSoviet split, tensions along the ChineseSoviet border reached their peak in 1969, and United States President Richard Nixon decided to use the conflict to shift the balance of power towards the West in the Cold War. The Chinese had sought improved relations with the Americans in order to gain advantage over the Soviets as well.

In February 1972, Nixon announced a stunning rapprochement with Mao's China by traveling to Beijing and meeting with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. At this time, the USSR achieved rough nuclear parity with the United States; meanwhile, the Vietnam War both weakened America's influence in the Third World and cooled relations with Western Europe. Although indirect conflict between Cold War powers continued through the late 1960s and early 1970s, tensions were beginning to ease. Nixon, Brezhnev, and dtente

Leonid Brezhnev and Jimmy Carter sign SALT II treaty, June 18, 1979, in Vienna Main articles: Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, Helsinki Accords, and Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Following his China visit, Nixon met with Soviet leaders, including Brezhnev in Moscow. These Strategic Arms Limitation Talks resulted in two landmark arms control treaties: SALT I, the first comprehensive limitation pact signed by the two superpowers, and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which banned the development of systems designed to intercept incoming missiles. These aimed to limit the development of costly anti-ballistic missiles and nuclear missiles. Nixon and Brezhnev proclaimed a new era of "peaceful coexistence" and established the groundbreaking new policy of dtente (or cooperation) between the two superpowers. Meanwhile, Brezhnev attempted to revive the Soviet economy, which was declining in part because of heavy military expenditures. Between 1972 and 1974, the two sides also agreed to strengthen their economic ties, including agreements for increased trade. As a result of their meetings, dtente would replace the hostility of the Cold War and the two countries would live mutually. Meanwhile, these developments coincided with the "Ostpolitik" of West German Chancellor Willy Brandt. Other agreements were concluded to stabilize the situation in Europe,

culminating in the Helsinki Accords signed at the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe in 1975. Late 1970s deterioration of relations In the 1970s, the KGB, led by Yuri Andropov, continued to persecute distinguished Soviet personalities such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov, who were criticising the Soviet leadership in harsh terms. Indirect conflict between the superpowers continued through this period of dtente in the Third World, particularly during political crises in the Middle East, Chile, Ethiopia, and Angola. Although President Jimmy Carter tried to place another limit on the arms race with a SALT II agreement in 1979, his efforts were undermined by the other events that year, including the Iranian Revolution and the Nicaraguan Revolution, which both ousted pro-US regimes, and his retaliation against Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in December. Second Cold War (197985) The term second Cold War has been used by some historians to refer to the period of intensive reawakening of Cold War tensions and conflicts in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Tensions greatly increased between the major powers with both sides becoming more militaristic.

Soviet war in Afghanistan During December 1979, approximately 75,000 Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan in order to support the Marxist government formed by ex-Prime-minister Nur Muhammad Taraki, assassinated that September by one of his party rivals. In a post-Afghan War interview conducted by French weekly newsmagazine Le Nouvel Observateur, President Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski stated that the president had already signed a directive to provide aid to the anticommunist mujahideen insurgency against the pro-Soviet PDPA government of Afghanistan in July, some six months prior to the Soviet military intervention. Asked by the interviewer if he had regrets, given that "the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan" and that "people didn't believe them," Carter responded to the Soviet intervention by withdrawing the SALT II treaty from the Senate, imposing embargoes on grain and technology shipments to the USSR, and demanding a significant increase in military spending, and further announced that the United

States would boycott the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics. He described the Soviet incursion as "the most serious threat to the peace since the Second World War".

Reagan and Thatcher

Thatcher's Ministry meets with Reagan's Cabinet at the White House, 1981 In January 1977, four years prior to becoming president, Ronald Reagan bluntly stated, in a conversation with Richard V. Allen, his basic expectation in relation to the Cold War. "My idea of American policy toward the Soviet Union is simple, and some would say simplistic," he said. "It is this: We win and they lose. What do you think of that?" In 1980, Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter in the 1980 presidential election, vowing to increase military spending and confront the Soviets everywhere. Both Reagan and new British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher denounced the Soviet Union and its ideology. Reagan labeled the Soviet Union an "evil empire" and predicted that Communism would be left on the "ash heap of history". Despite anti-American sentiment in Iran as a result of the 1979 Iranian Revolution against the pro-American shah and an accompanying breakdown in relations with the new Ayatollah Khomeini government over the Iran hostage crisis, the Reagan administration reached out to the anti-communist Khomeini in an effort to recruit the theocracy into the American camp in the early 1980s. Then-CIA director William Casey described the Khomeini government as "faltering and [possibly] moving toward a moment of truth... The U.S. has almost no cards to play; the USSR has many." One mode of American support for the Iranians consisted of secret arms sales. In 1983, the CIA passed an extensive list of Iranian communists and other leftists secretly working in the Iranian government to Khomeini's administration. A Tower Commission report later observed that the list was utilized to take "measures, including mass executions that virtually eliminated the pro-Soviet infrastructure in Iran." By early 1985, Reagan's anti-communist position had developed into a stance known as the new Reagan Doctrine which, in addition to containment, formulated an additional right to subvert existing communist governments. Besides continuing Carters' policy of supporting the

Islamic opponents of the Soviet Union and the Soviet-backed PDPA government in Afghanistan, the CIA also sought to weaken the Soviet Union itself by promoting political Islam in the majority-Muslim Central Asian Soviet Union. Additionally, the CIA encouraged anti-communist Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency to train Muslims from around the world to participate in the jihad against the Soviet Union. Polish Solidarity movement and martial law Pope John Paul II provided a moral focus for anti-communism; a visit to his native Poland in 1979 stimulated a religious and nationalist resurgence centered on the Solidarity movementthat galvanized opposition and may have led to his attempted assassination two years later. In December 1981, Poland's Wojciech Jaruzelski reacted to the crisis by imposing a period of martial law. Reagan imposed economic sanctions on Poland in response. Mikhail Suslov, the Kremlin's top ideologist, advised Soviet leaders not to intervene if Poland fell under the control of Solidarity, for fear it might lead to heavy economic sanctions, representing a catastrophe for the Soviet economy. Soviet and US military and economic issues

US and USSR/Russian nuclear weapons stockpiles, 19452006

Delta 183 launch vehicle lifts off, carrying the Strategic Defense Initiative sensor experiment "Delta Star". Moscow had built up a military that consumed as much as 25 percent of the Soviet Union's gross national product at the expense of consumer goods and investment in civilian sectors. Soviet spending on the arms race and other Cold War commitments both caused and exacerbated deepseated structural problems in the Soviet system, which saw at least a decade of economic stagnation during the late Brezhnev years. Soviet investment in the defense sector was not driven by military necessity, but in large part by the interests of massive party and state bureaucracies dependent on the sector for their own power and privileges. The Soviet Armed Forces became the largest in the world in terms of the numbers and types of weapons they possessed, in the number of troops in their ranks, and in the sheer size of their militaryindustrial base. However, the quantitative advantages held by the Soviet military often concealed areas where the Eastern Bloc dramatically lagged behind the West.

After ten year old American Samantha Smith wrote a letter to Yuri Andropov expressing her fear of nuclear war, Andropov invited Smith to the Soviet Union. By the early 1980s, the USSR had built up a military arsenal and army surpassing that of the United States. Soon after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, President Carter began massively building up the United States military. This buildup was accelerated by the Reagan administration, which increased the military spending from 5.3 percent of GNP in 1981 to 6.5 percent in 1986, the largest peacetime defense buildup in United States history. Tensions continued intensifying in the early 1980s when Reagan revived the B-1 Lancer program that was canceled by the Carter administration, produced LGM-118 Peacekeepers, installed US cruise missiles in Europe, and announced his experimental Strategic Defense Initiative, dubbed "Star Wars" by the media, a defense program to shoot down missiles in mid-flight. With the background of a buildup in tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States, and the deployment of Soviet RSD-10 Pioneer ballistic missiles targeting Western Europe, NATO decided, under the impetus of the Carter presidency, to deploy MGM-31 Pershing and cruise missiles in Europe, primarily West Germany. This deployment would have placed missiles just 10 minutes' striking distance from Moscow. After Reagan's military buildup, the Soviet Union did not respond by further building its military because the enormous military expenses, along with inefficient planned manufacturing and collectivized agriculture, were already a heavy burden for the Soviet economy. At the same time, Reagan persuaded Saudi Arabia to increase oil production, even as other non-OPEC nations were increasing production. These developments contributed to the 1980s oil glut, which affected the Soviet Union, as oil was the main source of Soviet export

revenues. Issues with command economics, oil prices decreases and large military expenditures gradually brought the Soviet economy to stagnation. On September 1, 1983, the Soviet Union shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, a Boeing 747 with 269 people aboard, including sitting Congressman Larry McDonald, when it violated Soviet airspace just past the west coast of Sakhalin Island near Moneron Island an act which Reagan characterized as a "massacre". This act increased support for military deployment, overseen by Reagan, which stood in place until the later accords between Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. The Able Archer 83 exercise in November 1983, a realistic simulation of a coordinated NATO nuclear release, has been called most dangerous moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis, as the Soviet leadership keeping a close watch on it considered a nuclear attack to be imminent. US domestic public concerns about intervening in foreign conflicts persisted from the end of the Vietnam War. The Reagan administration emphasized the use of quick, low-cost counterinsurgency tactics to intervene in foreign conflicts. In 1983, the Reagan administration intervened in the multisided Lebanese Civil War, invaded Grenada, bombed Libya and backed the Central American Contras, anti-communist paramilitaries seeking to overthrow the Sovietaligned Sandinista government in Nicaragua. While Reagan's interventions against Grenada and Libya were popular in the United States, his backing of the Contra rebels was mired in controversy. Meanwhile, the Soviets incurred high costs for their own foreign interventions. Although Brezhnev was convinced in 1979 that the Soviet war in Afghanistan would be brief, Muslim guerrillas, aided by the US and other countries, waged a fierce resistance against the invasion. The Kremlin sent nearly 100,000 troops to support its puppet regime in Afghanistan, leading many outside observers to dub the war "the Soviets' Vietnam".However, Moscow's quagmire in Afghanistan was far more disastrous for the Soviets than Vietnam had been for the Americans because the conflict coincided with a period of internal decay and domestic crisis in the Soviet system. A senior US State Department official predicted such an outcome as early as 1980, positing that the invasion resulted in part from a "domestic crisis within the Soviet system. ... It may be that the thermodynamic law of entropy has ... caught up with the Soviet system, which now seems to expend more energy on simply maintaining its equilibrium than on improving itself. We could be seeing a period of foreign movement at a time of internal decay". The Soviets were not helped by their aged and sclerotic leadership either: Brezhnev, virtually incapacitated in his last years, was succeeded by Andropov and Chernenko, neither of whom lasted long. After Chernenko's death,

Reagan was asked why he had not negotiated with Soviet leaders. Reagan quipped, "They keep dying on me".

Final years (198591)

Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan sign the INF Treaty at the White House, 1987

Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1988. Gorbachev reforms By the time the comparatively youthful Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary in 1985, the Soviet economy was stagnant and faced a sharp fall in foreign currency earnings as a result of the downward slide in oil prices in the 1980s. These issues prompted Gorbachev to investigate measures to revive the ailing state. An ineffectual start led to the conclusion that deeper structural changes were necessary and in June 1987 Gorbachev announced an agenda of economic reform called perestroika, or restructuring. Perestroika relaxed the production quota system, allowed private ownership of businesses and paved the way for foreign investment. These measures were intended to redirect the country's resources from costly Cold War military commitments to more productive areas in the civilian sector. Despite initial skepticism in the West, the new Soviet leader proved to be committed to reversing the Soviet Union's deteriorating economic condition instead of continuing the arms race with the

West. Partly as a way to fight off internal opposition from party cliques to his reforms, Gorbachev simultaneously introduced glasnost, or openness, which increased freedom of the press and the transparency of state institutions. Glasnost was intended to reduce the corruption at the top of the Communist Party and moderate the abuse of power in the Central Committee. Glasnost also enabled increased contact between Soviet citizens and the western world, particularly with the United States, contributing to the accelerating dtente between the two nations. Thaw in relations In response to the Kremlin's military and political concessions, Reagan agreed to renew talks on economic issues and the scaling-back of the arms race. The first was held in November 1985 in Geneva, Switzerland. At one stage the two men, accompanied only by an interpreter, agreed in principle to reduce each country's nuclear arsenal by 50 percent. A second Reykjavk Summit was held in Iceland. Talks went well until the focus shifted to Reagan's proposed Strategic Defense Initiative, which Gorbachev wanted eliminated: Reagan refused. The negotiations failed, but the third summit in 1987 led to a breakthrough with the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). The INF treaty eliminated all nucleararmed, ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers (300 to 3,400 miles) and their infrastructure. EastWest tensions rapidly subsided through the mid-to-late 1980s, culminating with the final summit in Moscow in 1989, when Gorbachev and George H. W. Bush signed the START Iarms control treaty. During the following year it became apparent to the Soviets that oil and gas subsidies, along with the cost of maintaining massive troops levels, represented a substantial economic drain. In addition, the security advantage of a buffer zone was recognised as irrelevant and the Soviets officially declared that they would no longer intervene in the affairs of allied states in Eastern Europe. In 1989, Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan and by 1990 Gorbachev consented to German reunification, the only alternative being a Tiananmen scenario. When the Berlin Wall came down, Gorbachev's "Common European Home" concept began to take shape. On December 3, 1989, Gorbachev and Reagan's successor, George H. W. Bush, declared the Cold War over at the Malta Summit; a year later, the two former rivals were partners in the Gulf War against Iraq.

Faltering Soviet system

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. By 1989, the Soviet alliance system was on the brink of collapse, and, deprived of Soviet military support, the Communist leaders of theWarsaw Pact states were losing power. In the USSR itself, glasnost weakened the bonds that held the Soviet Union together and by February 1990, with the dissolution of the USSR looming, the Communist Party was forced to surrender its 73-year-old monopoly on state power. At the same time freedom of press and dissent allowed by glasnost and the festering "nationalities question" increasingly led the Union's component republics to declare their autonomy from Moscow, with the Baltic states withdrawing from the Union entirely. The 1989 revolutionary wave that swept across Central and Eastern Europe overthrew the Soviet-style communist states, such as Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria, Romania being the only Eastern-bloc country to topple its communist regime violently and execute its head of state. Soviet dissolution

Commonwealth of Independent States, the official end of the Soviet Union Gorbachev's permissive attitude toward Eastern Europe did not initially extend to Soviet territory; even Bush, who strove to maintain friendly relations, condemned the January 1991 killings in Latvia and Lithuania, privately warning that economic ties would be frozen if the violence continued. The USSR was fatally weakened by a failed coup and a growing number of Soviet republics, particularly Russia, who threatened to secede from the USSR. The Commonwealth of Independent States, created on December 21, 1991, is viewed as a successor entity to the Soviet Union but, according to Russia's leaders, its purpose was to "allow

a civilized divorce" between the Soviet Republics and is comparable to loose confederation. The USSR was declared officially dissolved on December 25, 1991.

Aftermath

NATO/CSTO

NATO has expanded eastwards into the former Warsaw Pact and parts of the former Soviet Union since the end of the Cold War. Following the Cold War, Russia cut military spending dramatically, creating a wrenching adjustment as the military-industrial sector had previously employed one of every five Soviet adults, meaning its dismantling left millions throughout the former Soviet Union unemployed. After Russia embarked on capitalist economic reforms in the 1990s, it suffered a financial crisis and a recession more severe than the US and Germany had experienced during the Great Depression. Russian living standards have worsened overall in the postCold War years, although the economy has resumed growth since 1999. The aftermath of the Cold War continues to influence world affairs. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the postCold War world is widely considered as unipolar, with the United States the sole remaining superpower. The Cold War defined the political role of the United

States in the postWorld War II world: by 1989 the US held military alliances with 50 countries, and had 526,000 troops posted abroad in dozens of countries, with 326,000 in Europe (two-thirds of which in west Germany) and about 130,000 in Asia (mainly Japan and South Korea). The Cold War also marked the apex of peacetime military-industrial complexes, especially in the USA, and large-scale military funding of science. These complexes, though their origins may be found as early as the 19th century, have grown considerably during the Cold War. The militaryindustrial complexes have great impact on their countries and help shape their society, policy and foreign relations. Military expenditures by the US during the Cold War years were estimated to have been $8 trillion, while nearly 100,000 Americans lost their lives in the Korean War and Vietnam War. Although the loss of life among Soviet soldiers is difficult to estimate, as a share of their gross national product the financial cost for the Soviet Union was far higher than that incurred by the United States. In addition to the loss of life by uniformed soldiers, millions died in the superpowers' proxy wars around the globe, most notably in Southeast Asia. Most of the proxy wars and subsidies for local conflicts ended along with the Cold War; interstate wars, ethnic wars, revolutionary wars, as well as refugee and displaced persons crises have declined sharply in the postCold War years. The aftermath of Cold War conflict, however, is not always easily erased, as many of the economic and social tensions that were exploited to fuel Cold War competition in parts of the Third World remain acute. The breakdown of state control in a number of areas formerly ruled by Communist governments has produced new civil and ethnic conflicts, particularly in the former Yugoslavia. In Eastern Europe, the end of the Cold War has ushered in an era of economic growth and an increase in the number of liberal democracies, while in other parts of the world, such as Afghanistan, independence was accompanied by state failure.

DTENTE 1970s During the course of the Cold War, tensions rose and fell many times. One period of relaxation developed in the early 1970s and became known as "Dtente," a French word meaning "release of tensions." It was hoped that the new relationship would herald a permanent improvement in relations between the U.S. and Soviet Union, but differences in outlook led to an increasing number of conflicts. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 effectively closed that chapter of the Cold War. this period was characterized by the signing of treaties such as the SALT I, SALT II, and the Helsinki Agreement. The first Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) treaty, agreed for both countries to halt the production of nuclear weapons and missiles. It was the first step towards solving one of the most important issues that was disabling any kind of relationship between the USSR and the US. The two superpowers also agreed to install a direct hotline between Washington DC and Moscow, the so called red telephone, enabling both countries to quickly interact with each other in a time of urgency. The SALT II pact of the late 70s continued the work of the SALT I talks, ensuring further reduction in arms by the Soviets and by the US. The Helsinki Accords, in which the Soviets promised to grant free elections in Europe, has been seen as a major concession to ensure peace by the Soviets. The 1970s witnessed dtente why? 1) The horrors of Vietnam shocked people 2) There was a growing fear of a nuclear holocaust especially with the growth in those countries that had nuclear weapons. Also both USA and USSR had huge stock of weapons.

SALT 1 SALT I is the common name for the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks Agreement, also known as Strategic Arms limitation Treaty. A series of meetings began in November 1969 and continued until May 1972 when agreement was reached between Richard Nixon (USA) and Leonid Brezhnev (Soviet Union) on the limitation of strategic ballistic missiles. One of the key stumbling blocks to agreement was how arms should be limited and which types of weapons should be included in the arrangements. The differing weapon structure of each side made comparison difficult. Nixon's visit to China in February 1972 seemed to exert pressure on the Soviet Union to reach an agreement and sign the treaty. The SALT 1 treaty outlined agreement in three areas: 1. The ABM Treaty (anti ballistic missile defenses). Each side was allowed to have only 100 ABMs on each of two sites, one for their capital city and one to protect their nuclear missiles. 2. The Interim Treaty Limits were placed on the number of ICBMs (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles) 1618 for USSR and 1054 USA; SLBMs (submarine launched Ballistic Missiles) 740 for both

countries. The Soviet Union was allowed more as America had greater capacity in other areas e.g. strategic bombers. However this treaty did not cover developments such as MIRVs (Multiple Independently target able Re-entry Vehicle) which were capable of carrying a collection of nuclear weapons on a single missile. In reality the Russian MIRV and the American Cruise Missile were being built whilst SALT 1 was finalized. 3. The Basic Principles Agreement This laid down some important rules for the conduct of nuclear warfare. The USA and the USSR pledged ' to do their utmost to avoid military confrontation ' and ' to exercise restraint' in international relations. The SALT 1 agreement was to last for five years therefore SALT 2 talks began in November 1972.

1975,Helsinki Agreement In contrast to relations in the Third World, dtente in Europe continued to make progress. In August 1975, two years of negotiations under the auspices of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) led to the Helsinki Accord. The final act consisted of three sets or baskets of agreement: 1. Basket One dealt with security issues and included; a) declaration on the importance of sovereignty and self-determination, the non use of force, the inviolability of frontiers, the principle of non-intervention in internal affairs and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. The first basket also includes a number of confidence-building measures, such as advance notification of large scale maneuvers, designed to reduce tension. 2. Basket Two outlined ways to increase East-West cooperation in fields of economics, science, technology, environment, as well as trade. 3. Basket Three dealt with humanitarian cooperation and contained provisions relating to the free flow of people, information, and ideas. Some critics complained that the Helsinki agreements legitimized the boundary changes imposed on Eastern Europe by the Soviets after the World War two. Nevertheless it played a positive role in breaking down barriers that divided Europe. SALT 11 As SALT I had been an interim agreement the intention was to negotiate further, however SALT II ran into difficulties. An outline agreement was proposed in 1974 at the Vladivostok summit between Leonid Brezhnev (Soviet Union) and US President Gerald Ford. This agreement set equal limits for missile launchers and strategic bombs but left out Cruise

missiles. The American Senate, in particular the right wing senators, saw all arms control as a mechanism for allowing the USSR 'to catch up with America' and so the agreement stalled. In 1977, Jimmy Carter, the newly elected American President, attempted to renegotiate the SALT II Treaty in order to reduce the number of Soviet Missiles. It took until 1979 for precise figures to be agreed and the SALT II treaty was signed by Brezhnev and Carter in June of that year. Despite reassurance from President Carter, the American Senate were growing very uneasy about the Soviet violation of previous agreements and in response refused to ratify the treaty in 1980. ACHIEVEMENTS OF DTENTE Treaties such as SALT (1972) and the Helsinki Agreements (1975) have been seen as the central achievements of Dtente. The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1963) and the Non-Proliferation Treaty (1968) are also important. SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty): agreement and the Basic Principle Agreement. Consisted of the ABM treaty, the interim

A) The ABM treaty reduced the tension caused by the destabilizing impact of defensive systems. (With ABM systems in place the ability to retaliate if hit by a nuclear missile was uncertain and therefore encouraged each side to strike first). B) The Interim Treaty meant that limit were placed on the number of ICBMs and SLBM and it was an important step towards limiting nuclear arms. C) The Basic Principles Agreement extended the guidelines to be used by both sides to minimize the development of nuclear war. The Helsinki Agreement: An agreement reached at a conference in Helsinki to discuss European security. At the conference the Warsaw Pact countries wished to secure US recognition of European borders established after the Second World War and the US saw this as an opportunity to gain concessions from the Soviet government in return. SALT II: It set equal limits for missile launchers and strategic bombers but left out cruise missiles where the US had a significant lead. Increasing conflict in the Third World led to the Senates rejection of SALT II in 1980. US-China relations: By 1972 relations between China and the US were good enough to allow Nixon to visit China as a guest of the government.

European Dtente (Ostpolitik): Ostpolitik played a major role in reducing tension in Europe and contributing to Dtente. It gave legal recognition and reinforcement to the division of Cold War Europe. Assessment The achievement of Dtente was that the superpower relations had been stabilized and risks minimized. Yet on substantial matters little was achieved: armaments had increased during this period and many of the agreements signed were ignored, as in the Helsinki Agreement, or withdrawn later, as in the case of SALT II. In addition, Dtente did not reduce tension in all areas of international relations. Europe was more stable, but tension between the USSR and China remained high. Conflict continued and even intensified in the Third World. Both the superpowers tried to take advantage of Dtente. This situation was to produce a lot of renewed suspicion and mistrust that led to the breakdown of Dtente in 1979. Dtente was not the beginning to an end of the Cold War but rather its continuation through other means.

THE NEW COLD WAR Reagan spent over 2 trillion dollars to build up US conventional and nuclear forces. His policies created a mushrooming US budget deficit. A key element in the build-up was the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), announced by Reagan in March 1983. SDI was a technologically ambitious and extremely expensive plan to develop a nationwide ballistic-missile defense system that would deploy weapons in outer space to destroy enemy missiles in flight. Popularly known as Star Wars, SDI threatened to violate several US-Soviet agreements. Many analysts regarded SDI as a dangerous and destabilizing attack on mutual deterrence, which was based on each sides ability to retaliate against nuclear attack. It might give the United States the capacity and confidence to launch a preemptive first strike. The SDI would accelerate the arms race as the Soviets would increase the numbers of their missiles in order to overwhelm US defenses. Reagans aim was to re-establish US military superiority, which he believed had been lost during dtente, regain the initiative in the Cold War and use the arms race to place great strain on the Soviet economy. The US military build-up was also part of an overall strategy of increasing US strength before engaging in arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union. In the deadlocked negotiations on the issue of intermediate-range nuclear forces in Europe, the Reagan administration put forth what became known as the zero option. The United States offered to cancel plans to deploy Pershing II IRBM and Tomahawk cruise missiles in exchange for the Soviets dismantling all their intermediate-range missiles in Europe and elsewhere. The proposal excluded air- and sea-based US forward based systems and the national nuclear forces of Great Britain and France. There is evidence that the United States put forth the zero option in the expectation that the Soviets would reject it (as they did), thus clearing the way for the deployment of the Pershing II and Tomahawk missiles. In the fall of 1983, NATO began deploying the missiles and the Soviets terminated the INF talks (The Treaty Between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Elimination of Their Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles Although opposed to the SALT II treaty, the Reagan administration decided in late 1981 to observe its provisions as long as the Soviets did likewise. In the meantime, the United States and the Soviet Union began new talks to reduce strategic weapons. The initial US proposal in the new negotiations, renamed Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START), required deep cuts in the Soviet Unions land-based missiles, the heart of its arsenal, while allowing the United States to proceed with the planned modernization of all parts of its strategic triad. The Soviets rejected the US proposal and the talks remained deadlocked until the Soviets canceled them in November 1983.

THE THIRD WORLD Reagan followed a confrontational policy toward Third World regimes he deemed hostile. The United States also provided increased military and other assistance to pro-US Third World regimes. The initial focus of US policy toward the Third World during the Reagans administration was El Salvador. The United States settled for a massive increase in military and economic assistance to El Salvador to prevent leftist guerrilla forces to take power In 1981 President Reagan authorized the CIA to support covert activity in the Nicaragua in order to overthrow the Nicaraguan government by organizing and supporting a military force of Nicaraguan exiles known as contra-revolutionaries or Contras. When the US Congress prohibited all aid to the Contras in May 1984, the Reagan administration supported them illegally by selling arms to Iran and diverts the profit to the Contras. This became known as the Iran-Contra Affair and its unveiling in late 1986 might have made Reagan more willing to reach arms control agreements with the Soviets Although US pressure on Nicaragua exacted a heavy toll, the Sandinistas remained in power. The United States was more successful in Grenada where a US invasion overthrew a leftist government in October 1983. In Afghanistan the Reagan administration continued the support of the mujahedins resistance to Soviet occupation both militarily and economically. The invasion in Grenada, coupled with increases in support for the Contras and the Afghan resistance led to a codification of US policy toward the Third World which became known as the Reagan Doctrine. The heart of it was US support for anti-communist insurgents fighting against Soviet-supported governments In Angola the United States continued to provide military and economic assistance to guerrilla forces led by UNITA, which had been fighting the Marxist-led government of the country since 1975. The United States also sent aid to non-communist resistance groups in Cambodia, which were battling the government installed by the Vietnamese in 1978. GORBACHEV AND THE END OF THE COLD WAR The problems in US-Soviet relations in the first half of the 1980s were intensified because of the deaths in quick succession of three Soviet leaders Brezhnev in November 1982, Yury Andropov in February 1984, and Konstantine Chernenko in March 1985 March 1985: Mikhail Gorbachev came to power. Took the initiative in the Cold War

The heart of his policies was glasnost (open debate on government policies) and perestroika (economic restructuring) Gorbachev wanted to end the Cold war and democratic renewal in the Soviet Union. Both were necessary for economic transformation in his country. Gorbachev focused first on arms control. Thought that a limited number of nuclear weapons provided sufficient security against US nuclear attack April 1985: To show his good will Gorbachev suspended the countermeasures applied in response to the NATO INF deployments and halted further deployment of SS 20s November 1985: Gorbachev and Reagan met in Geneva and established good personal relationship January 1986: Gorbachev unveiled a plan for complete nuclear disarmament to take place in three stages by the year of 2000. Stage One proposed that the United States and the Soviet Union reduce their intermediate-range nuclear forces to zero, and did not mention British, French, and Chinese forces.

THE REYKJAVK SUMMIT IN OCTOBER 1986 In October 1986 Reagan and Gorbachev held a Summit in Reykjavk. In the Summit Gorbachev put forth three proposals: Proposed a plan to cut US and Soviet strategic nuclear forces in half. (Accepted US definition of strategic weapons). Proposed that the United States and the Soviet Union should reduce their intermediaterange nuclear forces to zero (accepted Reagans zero option). Wanted to strengthen the ABM treaty from 1972 and confine the research of defenses to laboratories. The United States should quit the SDI program.

Although the two leaders almost reached agreements on eliminating nuclear weapons entirely, Reagans dogged defense of SDI prevented any agreement as the Soviet leader insisted that agreement on SDI was a prerequisite for progress on all arms control matters. Following Reykjavk, Gorbachev dropped his previous insistence that agreement on SDI was a prerequisite for progress on all arms control matters and accepted the zero option proposed by the United States in 1981. December 1987: The Intermediate Nuclear forces (INF) Treaty signed in Washington

. The INF Treaty marked the first arms reduction (as opposed to arms limitation) agreement of the Cold War.

December 1988: Gorbachev announced a 12 percent unilateral reduction in total Soviet conventional forces

Building on this momentum, Gorbachev turned his attention to conventional forces. In December 1988 he announced a 12 percent unilateral reduction in total Soviet conventional forces. Change of Soviet strategy. The cutbacks grew out of drastic revision of Soviet military strategy that replaced the previous objective of not losing a war with the West with the objective of preventing such a war. The new strategy also had important implications for Soviet policy toward Eastern Europe. Control of Eastern Europe was vital to Soviet security under the old strategy but the new Soviet security strategy no longer required maintaining a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. Economic factors played an important role in this changed strategy.

THE COLLAPSE OF THE COMMUNIST EASTERN EUROPE IN 1989 By the end of 1989 every pro-Soviet communist regime in Eastern Europe had collapsed. The chain of events started in Poland where a non-communist prime minister was appointed in August. In October the Hungarian communists split and the reformers formed a new party dedicated to democracy, legality, and socialism. On the night of November 9-10, 1989, the Berlin Wall, pre-eminent symbol of the Cold War division of Germany and Europe, was breached. The following month, the East German government ended the communist monopoly of power and announced free elections to be held in March 1990. The same day that the Berlin wall came down, the Bulgarian Communist Party deposed its longtime leader and promised reforms and free elections. In Czechoslovakia massive demonstrations and general strike led to the appointment of non-communist government on December 10. Only in Romania did the collapse of communist rule result in significant bloodshed

THE DEVELOPMENT FOLLOWING THE COLLAPSE OF EASTERN EUROPEAN COMMUNISM September 12, 1990: A treaty signed where the Soviets accepted German reunification as well as its membership in NATO October 3, 1990: The Federal Republic of Germany absorbed East Germany November 1990: NATO and the Warsaw Pact signed a treaty drastically reducing the size and armaments of their conventional forces in Europe (the CFE-treaty) ratified by the United States in November 1991 July 1, 1991: The Warsaw Pact formally dissolved

At the same time Gorbachev was working to repair relations with the PRC December 1991: The Soviet Union disssolved.

END OF THE COLD WAR IN THE THIRD WORLD February 1988: Gorbachev announced his intention to pull all Soviet troops from Afghanistan February 1989: the Soviet Union withdraws its forces from Afghanistan Gorbachev successfully pressured the Vietnamese to withdraw their troops from Cambodia in two stages in 1988 and 1989 December 1989: An agreement provided for the withdraw of all foreign forces from Angola by mid-1991 1990: The Soviets began cutting back military assistance and withdrawing their advisers from Ethiopia and the Cubans withdrew their combat forces and advisers at the same time 1987: Peace effort led by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Snchez ends the Cold War in Central America. The Sandinistas agreed to hold free elections in Nicaragua in February 1990.

WHY THE COLD WAR ENDED While most scholars agree that the Cold War ended when the leaders of the Soviet Union decided it was no longer worth fighting, the reason for the shift in Soviet policies is still in dispute. The disagreement can be classified as following: Reagans supporters and some scholars claim that the Soviets shifted to less confrontational policies in response to the US military build-up and political offensive. In this view, US actions raised the costs of confrontation and forced the Soviets into corner from which there was no escape save for surrender. Other scholars argue that the new generation of Soviet leaders that emerged in the 1980s had already concluded that the policies of their predecessors had been counterproductive and that continued conflict threatened their goal of overcoming the disastrous legacy of Stalinism, reforming their economy, democratizing their policies, and revitalizing their society. According to this analysis, US actions did not cause the changes in Soviet domestic and foreign policies and might have delayed them by providing opponents of reform with arguments against better relations with the West and the relaxation of internal control.

ECONOMIC MEASURES IN THE COLD WAR In order to ensure that spheres of influence were brought firmly under their control, the superpowers used economic measures Restoring the economies of Europe after the Second World War was a powerful weapon of the USA against the spread of communism, as well as securing its own markets (the Marshall Plan) Economic measures also played a significant role in the Berlin Blockade of 1948-9.

As the Cold War developed in the 1960s and 1970s offers of financial assistance became an important tool in securing the superpowers influence in the Third World.

Affects of cold war in the modern world:

Impact of cold war on developing nations: The Cold War had a vast impact on the developing nations, with vastly differing outcomes depending on all manner of factors: the geopolitics of the time, perceived strategic importance and so on. To give a 'broad brush' overview of the differences, one can look at the different regions of the developing world and how the impact was vastly different: East Asia In East Asia, China fell to the Communists in 1949. The countries around 'Red China' hurried to form alliances either with the US or with each other against the threat. It is often noted that Japan (though not technically a developing country in the 1950s, but still struggling to rebuild after WW2) was helped in this respect by the conflict in Korea, which boosted Japanese exports - an oft-quoted example being early transistor radios for American GIs. South Korea itself directly received large amounts of US aid. South East Asia In South East Asia, the Cold War had widely differing effects. Vietnam suffered several decades of bloody conflict that cost the lives of millions of Vietnamese people, as the US and its allies tried - ultimately unsuccessfully - to prevent reunification of the country under a Communist government. This conflict spilled over into Laos and Cambodia, which also both turned Communist in the mid 1970s (at the same time as the war in Vietnam ended). In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge, in attempting to implement an agrarian 'workers' paradise', killed millions of Cambodians through starvation and genocide - a legacy that means that Cambodia still ranks among the world's poorest countries.

In neighboring Thailand though, the story was happier - American aid, economic and military, flowed in to prevent this 'bastion of democracy' from falling to Communism. This led to high economic growth, and Communism was successfully repulsed. Many note though that, ironically, in order to keep Communism out and 'democracy' in, the country was ruled for most of the latter 20th Century by a military junta (which only last year - 2006 - seized power again from the democratically elected government) Others note that increased Western influence in Thailand - in particular the presence of US military personnel - led directly to the rise of HIV AIDS and the sex industry in Thailand. A similar story to the Philippines, where US support kept the highly corrupt and undemocratic Marcos in power for a generation. Like Thailand however, this must be viewed against a story of fairly high economic growth. Further to the south in South East Asia, Malaysia (with British military assistance) successfully crushed a Communist insurgency in a long 'Emergency' that lasted over the 1950s. With Communism crushed, Malaysia successfully implemented a high growth strategy that even now propels it forwards in terms of economic growth, but as with Thailand, it's democratic records is more questionable. Indonesia's brutal suppression of domestic Communists (with a massive death toll) was so bloody as to equal some of the worst excesses of Communism elsewhere. Central and South America In Central (and to a lesser extent South) America, the struggle against Communism and Communist insurgencies lead to US interventions which often resulted in protracted and bloody civil wars. Sub-Saharan Africa Across sub-Saharan Africa did the Cold War have perhaps the most enduring negative impact on the developing world. Cold War rivalries encountered newly-independent countries still struggling to find their feet. Both Communists and the 'Free World' found their champions in either the governments or 'freedom movements' in each particular country. Arms, money and other forms of support flowed, and the picture was (and still is) complicated further by the resource-rich nature of many of the countries involved. The results were often catastrophic Angola, for example, suffered one of the longest conflicts in modern history. Unlike in certain parts of East and South East Asia, there were very few Cold War 'success stories' in sub-Saharan Africa, as superpower interference had a negative influence almost everywhere.

MODERN COLD WAR Unstable and misunderstood Russia

Uni-polar world 9/11 revolutionized the world War on terror War in Afghanistan and Iraq by USA Threat to the Muslim Community Oil Crisis Chinese Factor Economic resurgence of Russia Media influences and war Rising Japanese, Chinese and Indian economies US policies and the 3RD World countries Euro vs. Dollar Economic war

Gorbachev reforms By the time the comparatively youthful Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary in 1985, the Soviet economy was stagnant and faced a sharp fall in foreign currency earnings as a result of the downward slide in oil prices in the 1980s. These issues prompted Gorbachev to investigate measures to revive the ailing state. An ineffectual start led to the conclusion that deeper structural changes were necessary and in June 1987 Gorbachev announced an agenda of economic reform called perestroika, or restructuring. Perestroika relaxed the production quota system, allowed private ownership of businesses and paved the way for foreign investment. These measures were intended to redirect the country's resources from costly Cold War military commitments to more profitable areas in the civilian sector. Despite initial skepticism in the West, the new Soviet leader proved to be committed to reversing the Soviet Union's deteriorating economic condition instead of continuing the arms race with the West. Partly as a way to fight off internal opposition from party cliques to his reforms, Gorbachev simultaneously introduced glasnost, or openness, which increased freedom of the press and the transparency of state institutions. Glasnost was intended to reduce the corruption at the top of the Communist Party and moderate the abuse of power in the Central Committee. Glasnost also enabled increased contact between Soviet citizens and the western world, particularly with the United States, contributing to the accelerating dtente between the two nations, Soviet Dissolution

By 1989, the Soviet alliance system was on the brink of collapse, and, deprived of Soviet military support, the Communist leaders of the Warsaw Pact states were losing power. In the USSR itself, glasnost weakened the bonds that held the Soviet Union together and by February 1990, with the dissolution of the USSR looming, the Communist Party was forced to surrender its 73-year-old monopoly on state power The USSR was fatally weakened by a failed coup and as a growing number of Soviet republics, particularly Russia, threatened to secede the USSR was declared officially dissolved on December 25, 1991. Uni Polar World: After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 that ended the Cold War, the postCold War world is considered as a uni polar world with the United States as the world's sole remaining superpower. There is now only one superpower. But that does not mean that the world is uni polar. A uni polar system would have one superpower, no significant major powers, and many minor powers. There has been some recent speculation that the United States is declining in relative power as the rest of the world rises to match its levels of economic and technological development. Citing economic hardships, Cold War allies becoming less dependent on the United States, a declining dollar, and the rise of other great powers around the world, some experts have suggested the possibility of the United States losing its superpower status in the future.

Unstable and Misunderstood Russia: After the dissolution of Soviet Union, Russia faced a lot of financial and economic crises that caused instability. But the recent technological & economic advancements in Russia have made it one of the contenders to be one of the next superpowers. So, most of the countries misunderstood Russia then & now again. 9/11 Revolutionized the World & War on Terror: The incident of 9/11 terrorist attacks not only changed the International politics but also affected the US image in the world especially amongst the third world countries mainly Muslim Countries. The American declaration of war against terror, which was a crusade against islam, throughout the world revolutionized the way international affairs and issues are approached and addressed. (Afghan war, Iraq war). Afghanistan war

During December 1979, approximately 75,000 Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan in order to support the Marxist government formed by ex-Prime-minister Nur Muhammad Taraki, assassinated that September by one of his party rivals. As a result, US President Jimmy Carter withdrew the SALT II treaty from the Senate, imposed embargoes on grain and technology shipments to the USSR, demanded a significant increase in military spending, and further announced that the United States would boycott the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics. He described the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan as "the most serious threat to the peace since the Second World War". Threat to Muslim Community: The biggest part of the modern cold war is the Muslim Community. Afghanistan has been the bone of contention throughout the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the US. This region again formed the basis of the Modern Cold War after the US intervention in Afghanistan after 9/11 terrorist attacks. US army launched an attack on Afghanis claiming that Afghanistan is a terrorist country. US continued this brutality in Iraq thus causing a threat to the Muslim World. US continuous intervention in the affairs of Iran, Pakistan, Libya and other Middle Eastern countries is also causing a lot of dissatisfaction and raised security concerns in the Muslim community. Chinese Factor China is one of the rising economies of the current century and strategically the most important player in the current scenario of the cold war. With the continuous advancements in virtually all the fields, China is tipped to be the next biggest superpower. The investment of US dollars in Chinese market has weakened the US economy and strengthened the Chinese economy. China continuously raises voices against the violent actions of US showing its increasing power status. China is projected to be the rising superpower with a huge population and a rapidly growing economy. The relations between China and the US have always been uneasy and there are serious disagreements in certain issues such as Taiwan etc. the Chinese are very uneasy about excessive US inter interference in Asia. The fact that the US still spends a huge amount of money on military and defense related expenses is worrisome to both China and Russia. The Chinese already have the worlds largest military as far as numbers are concerned and they are quickly improving their technological capabilities hence they are expected to openly challenge American supremacy in about a decade. Oil Crisis: The modern cold war is not the war to rule lands or nations. It is to take control of as much resources of the world as one can. US being the industrial country need a lot of oil resources, and the world is in oil crisis barring few countries in the Middle East. The dependence of the

superpower economy on the scarce oil resource is on e of the triggering point of cold war between US and the middle eastern countries. Tensions with Islamic World Many Muslims see the war against terror as a war against the Islamic world. This is because the United States has not clearly defined its enemies or its objectives for this war. The fact that the US provides unconditional support to Israel even when it violates international laws is another factor, which contributes to the feeling amongst many Muslims that the war against terror being led by the US is basically a new Crusade in which key Muslim countries are being attacked and conquered or weakened by the coalition of NonMuslims. Even though officially the Governments of most Muslim countries attempt to ally them with the US but the public opinion in almost all Muslim countries is primarily anti American, this means that the relations between the US and the Islamic world have a potential of deteriorating any time if the provocative US policies are not changed. The fact that Islamic model of government (i.e. The Khilafat) is based on a different ideology from both the capitalist and the socialist models also increases the chance that there is a cold war going on between the Islamic and western world. US and the third World Many third world countries are very uncomfortable with the western policies towards them some examples are Iran, North Korea etc as more and more countries get dissatisfied with the current status quo they may form alliances and coalitions against the western block and emerging powers like China can take advantage of that. Economic War For more than a decade the American capitalist model was considered to be the best and the US dollar had the monopoly of being the currency for foreign trade and transaction, but after the adaptation of the Euro by the European union the supremacy of the dollar was challenged and a substitute was available. More recently the recent economic meltdown and the collapse in the banking sectors in the US and other major capitalist economies the western capitalist model is being openly challenged by the Islamic, Socialist and other alternative schools of thought. Rising Indian, Chinese & Japanese Economies Academics and other qualified commentators sometimes identify potential superpowers thought to have a strong likelihood of being recognized as superpowers in the 21st century. The record of such predictions has not been perfect. For example in the 1980s some commentators thought Japan would become a superpower, due to its large GDP and high economic growth at the time. However the prediction has not come to fruition.

Due to their large markets, growing military strength, and economic potential and influence in international affairs, the Federative Republic of Brazil, the People's Republic of China, the European Union, Republic of India and the Russian Federation, are among the powers which are most often cited as having the ability to influence future world politics and reach the status of superpower in the 21st century. While some believe one (or more) of these countries may replace the United States as a superpower, others claim they will rise to rival, but not replace, the United States. EURO VS. DOLLAR The Euro has gained strength over dollar in the past decade or so mainly because it has a big part to do with how US import so much stuff such as oil. Also, the $13+ trillion dollar debt doesn't give the US Dollar much credibility either. However, the Euro has gained credibility over the years thus strengthening the EU and causing the cold economic war.

Media Influences and war The media advancement has also played an evil role in causing disagreement among the countries. The media enjoys the freedom of sharing views with public and taking public opinion which was not the case in the past. CONCLUSION From our findings in this research and presentation on the cold war the following points can be concluded: 1) The blame lies on nobody for the cause of the cold war, A key factor that contributed to hostilities between the US and USSR was lack of communication and misunderstandings between the two nations, although clearly it was the fight for a single super power! Such a situation must never be allowed to arise between any two nuclear-armed countries again because the result can easily be nuclear war and the destruction of all or most of humanity in the modern times. 2) The current policies being followed by the US and implemented on other nations by the US are increasingly alienating it and hostilities against the US and many other western nations are continuously on the rise. Nations are beginning to notice Americas selfish motives 3) One factor that is highlighted from studying the cold war is that both governments in the USA and the USSR insist that they were acting to defend their own nations against what they suspected were hostile ambitions of the other hence both the super powers were greatly motivated by fear.

4) One thing we can all learn from the Cold War is that all nations should consider each others security and other needs before embarking on new policies.