The Cold War discusses the period within the Cold War

Cold War

The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

 from the death of Soviet

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 leader Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

 in 1953 to the Cuban Missile Crisis

Cuban Missile Crisis

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation among the Soviet Union, Cuba and the United States in October 1962, during the Cold War...

 in 1962. Following the death of Stalin unrest occurred in the Eastern Bloc

Eastern bloc

The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...

, while there was a calming of international tensions, the evidence of which can be seen in the signing of the Austrian State Treaty reuniting Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

, and the Geneva Accords

Geneva accords

The Geneva Accords, known formally as the agreements on the settlement of the situation relating to Afghanistan, were signed on 14 April 1988 between Afghanistan and Pakistan, with the United States and the Soviet Union serving as guarantors....

 ending fighting in Indochina

Indochina

The Indochinese peninsula, is a region in Southeast Asia. It lies roughly southwest of China, and east of India. The name has its origins in the French, Indochine, as a combination of the names of "China" and "India", and was adopted when French colonizers in Vietnam began expanding their territory...

. However, this "thaw" was only partial with an expensive arms race

Arms race

The term arms race, in its original usage, describes a competition between two or more parties for the best armed forces. Each party competes to produce larger numbers of weapons, greater armies, or superior military technology in a technological escalation...

 continuing during the period.

Eisenhower and Khrushchev

When Dwight D. Eisenhower

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...

 was sworn in as U.S. President

President of the United States

The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....

 in 1953, the Democrats

Democratic Party (United States)

The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...

 lost their two-decades-long control of the U.S. presidency. Under Eisenhower, however, the United States' Cold War policy remained essentially unchanged. Whilst a thorough rethinking of foreign policy was launched (known as "Operation Solarium"), the majority of emerging ideas (such as a "rollback of Communism" and the liberation of Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...

) were quickly regarded as unworkable. An underlying focus on the containment

Containment

Containment was a United States policy using military, economic, and diplomatic strategies to stall the spread of communism, enhance America’s security and influence abroad, and prevent a "domino effect". A component of the Cold War, this policy was a response to a series of moves by the Soviet...

 of Soviet communism remained to inform the broad approach of U.S. foreign policy.

While the transition from the Truman

Harry S. Truman

Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States . As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president and the 34th Vice President of the United States , he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his...

 to the Eisenhower presidencies was a conservative-moderate in character, the change in the Soviet Union was immense. With the death of Joseph Stalin (who led the Soviet Union from 1928 and through the Great Patriotic War) in 1953, his former right-hand man Nikita Khrushchev

Nikita Khrushchev

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...

 was named First Secretary of the Communist Party

General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the title given to the leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. With some exceptions, the office was synonymous with leader of the Soviet Union...

.

During a subsequent period of collective leadership

Collective leadership

Collective leadership or Collectivity of leadership , was considered an ideal form of governance in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics...

, Khrushchev gradually consolidated his hold on power. At a speechhttp://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1956khrushchev-secret1.html to the closed session of the Twentieth Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Communist Party of the Soviet Union

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...

, February 25, 1956, Nikita Khrushchev shocked his listeners by denouncing Stalin's personality cult

Cult of personality

A cult of personality arises when an individual uses mass media, propaganda, or other methods, to create an idealized and heroic public image, often through unquestioning flattery and praise. Cults of personality are usually associated with dictatorships...

 and many crimes that occurred under Stalin's leadership. Although the contents of the speech were secret, it was leaked to outsiders, thus shocking both Soviet allies and Western observers. Khrushchev was later named premier of the Soviet Union

Premier of the Soviet Union

The office of Premier of the Soviet Union was synonymous with head of government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics . Twelve individuals have been premier...

 in 1958.

The impact on Soviet politics was immense. The speech stripped Khrushchev's remaining Stalinist rivals of their legitimacy in a single stroke, dramatically boosting the First Party Secretary's power domestically. Khrushchev was then able to ease restrictions, freeing some dissidents and initiating economic policies that emphasized commercial goods rather than just coal

Coal

Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...

 and steel

Steel

Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...

 production.

Conflicting objectives

When Eisenhower entered office in 1953, he was committed to two possibly contradictory goals: maintaining — or even heightening — the national commitment to counter the spread of Soviet influence; and satisfying demands to balance the budget, lower taxes, and curb inflation

Inflation

In economics, inflation is a rise in the general level of prices of goods and services in an economy over a period of time.When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services. Consequently, inflation also reflects an erosion in the purchasing power of money – a...

. The most prominent of the doctrines to emerge out of this goal was "massive retaliation," which Secretary of State John Foster Dulles

John Foster Dulles

John Foster Dulles served as U.S. Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1959. He was a significant figure in the early Cold War era, advocating an aggressive stance against communism throughout the world...

 announced early in 1954. Eschewing the costly, conventional ground forces of the Truman administration, and wielding the vast superiority of the U.S. nuclear

Nuclear weapon

A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. The first fission bomb test released the same amount...

 arsenal and covert intelligence, Dulles defined this approach as "brinksmanship" in a January 16, 1956, interview with Life: pushing the Soviet Union to the brink of war in order to exact concessions.

Eisenhower inherited from the Truman administration a military budget of roughly US$42 billion, as well as a paper (NSC-141) drafted by Acheson, Harriman, and Lovett calling for an additional $7–9 billion in military spending. With Treasury Secretary George Humphrey leading the way, and reinforced by pressure from Senator

United States Senate

The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...

 Robert Taft

Robert Taft

Robert Alphonso Taft , of the Taft political family of Cincinnati, was a Republican United States Senator and a prominent conservative statesman...

 and the cost-cutting mood of the Republican Congress, the target for the new fiscal year (to take effect on July 1, 1954) was reduced to $36 billion. While the Korean armistice was on the verge of producing significant savings in troop deployment and money, the State and Defense Departments were still in an atmosphere of rising expectations for budgetary increases. Humphrey wanted a balanced budget and a tax cut in February 1955, and had a savings target of $12 billion (obtaining half of this from cuts in military expenditures).

Although unwilling to cut deeply into defense, the President also wanted a balanced budget and smaller allocations for defense. "Unless we can put things in the hands of people who are starving to death we can never lick communism

Communism

Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...

", he told his cabinet. Moreover, Eisenhower feared that a bloated "military-industrial complex

Military-industrial complex

Military–industrial complex , or Military–industrial-congressional complex is a concept commonly used to refer to policy and monetary relationships between legislators, national armed forces, and the industrial sector that supports them...

" (a term he popularized) "would either drive U.S. to war— or into some form of dictatorial government" and perhaps even force the U.S. to "initiate war at the most propitious moment." On one occasion, the former commander of the greatest amphibious invasion force in history

D-Day

D-Day is a term often used in military parlance to denote the day on which a combat attack or operation is to be initiated. "D-Day" often represents a variable, designating the day upon which some significant event will occur or has occurred; see Military designation of days and hours for similar...

 privately exclaimed, "God help the nation when it has a President who doesn't know as much about the military as I do."

In the meantime, however, attention was being diverted elsewhere in Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

. The continuing pressure from the "China lobby" or "Asia firsters," who had insisted on active efforts to restore Chiang Kai-shek

Chiang Kai-shek

Chiang Kai-shek was a political and military leader of 20th century China. He is known as Jiǎng Jièshí or Jiǎng Zhōngzhèng in Mandarin....

 to power was still a strong domestic influence on foreign policy. In April 1953 Senator Robert Taft

Robert Taft

Robert Alphonso Taft , of the Taft political family of Cincinnati, was a Republican United States Senator and a prominent conservative statesman...

 and other powerful Congressional Republicans suddenly called for the immediate replacement of the top chiefs of the Pentagon, particularly the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Omar Bradley

Omar Bradley

Omar Nelson Bradley was a senior U.S. Army field commander in North Africa and Europe during World War II, and a General of the Army in the United States Army...

. To the so-called "China lobby" and Taft, Bradley was seen as having leanings toward a Europe-first orientation, meaning that he would be a possible barrier to new departures in military policy that they favored. Another factor was the vitriolic accusations of McCarthyism

McCarthyism

McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...

, where large portions of the U.S. government allegedly contained covert communist agents or sympathizers. But after the mid-term elections in 1954 — and censure by the Senate — the influence of Joseph McCarthy

Joseph McCarthy

Joseph Raymond "Joe" McCarthy was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957...

 ebbed after his unpopular accusations against the Army

United States Army

The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...

.

Eisenhower administration strategy

— Admiral Hyman Rickover addressing U.S. Senate Committee on Defense Preparedness on January 6, 1958
The administration attempted to reconcile the conflicting pressures from the "Asia firsters" and pressures to cut federal spending while continuing to fight the Cold War effectively. On May 8, 1953, the President and his top advisors tackled this problem in "Operation Solarium", named after the White House

White House

The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...

 sunroom where the president conducted secret discussions. Although it was not traditional to ask military men to consider factors outside their professional discipline, the President instructed the group to strike a proper balance between his goals to cut government spending and an ideal military posture.

The group weighed three policy options for the next year's military budget: the Truman-Acheson approach of containment and reliance on conventional forces; threatening to respond to limited Soviet "aggression" in one location with nuclear weapons; and serious "liberation" based on an economic response to the Soviet political-military-ideological challenge to Western hegemony: propaganda

Propaganda

Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....

 campaigns and psychological warfare

Psychological warfare

Psychological warfare , or the basic aspects of modern psychological operations , have been known by many other names or terms, including Psy Ops, Political Warfare, “Hearts and Minds,” and Propaganda...

. The third option was strongly rejected.
Eisenhower and the group (consisting of Allen Dulles, Walter Bedell Smith

Walter Bedell Smith

Walter Bedell "Beetle" Smith was a senior United States Army general who served as General Dwight D. Eisenhower's chief of staff at Allied Forces Headquarters during the Tunisia Campaign and the Allied invasion of Italy...

, C.D. Jackson

Charles Douglas Jackson

General Charles Douglas Jackson was an expert on psychological warfare who served in the Office of Strategic Services in World War II and later as Special Assistant to the President in the Eisenhower administration....

, and Robert Cutler

Robert Cutler

Robert Cutler was a U.S. government official. He was the first person appointed to the newly created position of National Security Advisor during the Eisenhower Administration, serving between 1953 and 1955, and again from 1957 to 1958...

) instead opted for a combination of the first two, one that confirmed the validity of containment, but with reliance on the American air-nuclear deterrent. This was geared toward avoiding costly and unpopular ground wars, such as Korea.

The Eisenhower administration viewed the atomic bomb as an integral part of U.S. defense, hoping that they would bolster the relative capabilities of the U.S. vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. The administration also reserved the prospects of using them, in effect, as a weapon of first resort, hoping to gain the initiative while reducing costs. By wielding the nation's nuclear superiority, the new Eisenhower-Dulles approach was a cheaper form of containment geared toward offering Americans "more bang for the buck."

Thus, the administration increased the number of nuclear warheads from 1,000 in 1953 to 18,000 by early 1961. Despite overwhelming U.S. superiority, one additional nuclear weapon was produced each day. The administration also exploited new technology. In 1955 the eight-engined B-52 Stratofortress

B-52 Stratofortress

The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress is a long-range, subsonic, jet-powered strategic bomber operated by the United States Air Force since the 1950s. The B-52 was designed and built by Boeing, who have continued to provide maintainence and upgrades to the aircraft in service...

 bomber, the first true jet bomber designed to carry nuclear weapons, was developed.

In 1962, the United States had more than eight times as many bombs and missile warheads than the USSR: 27,297 to 3,332.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis

Cuban Missile Crisis

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation among the Soviet Union, Cuba and the United States in October 1962, during the Cold War...

 the U.S. had 142 Atlas and 62 Titan I

Titan I

The Martin Marietta SM-68A/HGM-25A Titan I was the United States' first multistage ICBM . Incorporating the latest design technology when designed and manufactured, the Titan I provided an additional nuclear deterrent to complement the U.S. Air Force's SM-65 Atlas missile...

 ICBMs, mostly in hardened underground silos.

In 1961, the U.S. deployed 15 Jupiter IRBM

Jupiter (missile)

The PGM-19 Jupiter was the first medium-range ballistic missile of the United States Air Force . It was a liquid-fueled rocket using RP-1 fuel and LOX oxidizer, with a single Rocketdyne LR70-NA rocket engine producing 667 kN of thrust...

s (intermediate-range ballistic missiles) at İzmir

Izmir

Izmir is a large metropolis in the western extremity of Anatolia. The metropolitan area in the entire Izmir Province had a population of 3.35 million as of 2010, making the city third most populous in Turkey...

, Turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

, aimed at the western USSR's cities, including Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

. Given its 1500 miles (2,414 km) range, Moscow was only 16 minutes away. The U.S. could also launch 1000 miles (1,609.3 km)-range Polaris

UGM-27 Polaris

The Polaris missile was a two-stage solid-fuel nuclear-armed submarine-launched ballistic missile built during the Cold War by Lockheed Corporation of California for the United States Navy....

 SLBMs from submerged submarines.

Soviet Strategy

In 1960 and 1961, Khrushchev tried to impose the concept of nuclear deterrence on the military. Nuclear deterrence holds that the reason for having nuclear weapons is to discourage their use by a potential enemy. With each side deterred from war because of the threat of its escalation into a nuclear conflict, Khrushchev believed, "peaceful coexistence" with capitalism would become permanent and allow the inherent superiority of socialism to emerge in economic and cultural competition with the West.

Khrushchev hoped that exclusive reliance on the nuclear firepower of the newly created Strategic Rocket Forces

Strategic Rocket Forces

The Strategic Missile Troops or Strategic Rocket Forces of the Russian Federation or RVSN RF , transliteration: Raketnye voyska strategicheskogo naznacheniya Rossiyskoy Federatsii, literally Missile Troops of Strategic Designation of the Russian Federation) are a military branch of the Russian...

 would remove the need for increased defense expenditures. He also sought to use nuclear deterrence to justify his massive troop cuts; his downgrading of the Ground Forces, traditionally the "fighting arm" of the Soviet armed forces; and his plans to replace bombers with missiles and the surface fleet with nuclear missile submarines. However, during the Cuban Missile Crisis

Cuban Missile Crisis

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation among the Soviet Union, Cuba and the United States in October 1962, during the Cold War...

 the USSR had only four R-7 Semyorka

R-7 Semyorka

The R-7 was a Soviet missile developed during the Cold War, and the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile. The R-7 made 28 launches between 1957 and 1961, but was never deployed operationally. A derivative, the R-7A, was deployed from 1960 to 1968...

s and few R-16

R-16

The R-16 was the first successful intercontinental ballistic missile deployed by the Soviet Union. In the West it was known by the NATO reporting name SS-7 Saddler, and within Russia, it carried the GRAU index 8K64.- Description :...

s intercontinental missiles deployed in vulnerable surface launchers. In 1962 the Soviet submarine fleet

Hotel class submarine

The Hotel class is the general NATO classification for a type of nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine that was originally put into service by the Soviet Union around 1959. The Soviet designation is Project 658.-Design:...

 had only 8 submarines with short range missiles which could be launched only from submarines that surfaced and lost their hidden submerged status.

Khrushchev's attempt to introduce a nuclear doctrine limited to deterrence into Soviet military thought misfired. Discussion of nuclear war in the first authoritative Soviet monograph on strategy since the 1920s, Marshal Vasilii Sokolovskii's

Vasily Sokolovsky

Vasily Danilovich Sokolovsky was a Soviet military commander.Sokolovsky was born into a peasant family in Kozliki, a small town in the province of Grodno, near Białystok in Poland . He worked as a teacher in a rural school, where he took part in a number of protests and demonstrations against the...

 "Military Strategy" (published in 1962, 1963, and 1968) and in the 1968 edition of "Marxism-Leninism on War and the Army", focused upon the use of nuclear weapons for fighting rather than for deterring a war. Should such a war break out, both sides would pursue the most decisive aims with the most forceful means and methods. Intercontinental ballistic missiles and aircraft would deliver massed nuclear strikes on the enemy's military and civilian objectives. The war would assume an unprecedented geographical scope, but Soviet military writers argued that the use of nuclear weapons in the initial period of the war would decide the course and outcome of the war as a whole. Both in doctrine and in strategy, the nuclear weapon reigned supreme.

Mutually Assured Destruction

An important part of the developing stability was based on the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). While the Soviets acquired atomic weapons in 1949, it took years for them to reach parity with the United States. In the meantime, the Americans developed the hydrogen bomb, which the Soviets matched during the era of Khrushchev. New methods of delivery such as submarine

Submarine

A submarine is a watercraft capable of independent operation below the surface of the water. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability...

s and ICBM's meant that both superpowers could easily devastate the other, perhaps even after a first strike

First strike

In nuclear strategy, a first strike is a preemptive surprise attack employing overwhelming force. First strike capability is a country's ability to defeat another nuclear power by destroying its arsenal to the point where the attacking country can survive the weakened retaliation while the opposing...

 by the opposition.

This fact often made leaders on both sides extremely reluctant to take risks, fearing that some small flare-up could ignite a war that could wipe out all of human civilization. Nonetheless, leaders of both nations pressed on with military and espionage plans to do in the other side. At the same time, different avenues were attempted to try to advance their causes; these began to encompass athletics

Sport

A Sport is all forms of physical activity which, through casual or organised participation, aim to use, maintain or improve physical fitness and provide entertainment to participants. Sport may be competitive, where a winner or winners can be identified by objective means, and may require a degree...

 (with the Olympics becoming a battleground between ideologies as well as athletes) and culture (with respective countries supporting pianist

Pianist

A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...

s, chess

Chess

Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...

 players, and movie directors).

One of the most important forms of non-violent competition was the space race

Space Race

The Space Race was a mid-to-late 20th century competition between the Soviet Union and the United States for supremacy in space exploration. Between 1957 and 1975, Cold War rivalry between the two nations focused on attaining firsts in space exploration, which were seen as necessary for national...

. The Soviets jumped out to an early lead in 1957 with the launching of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, followed by the first manned flight. The success of the Soviet space program

Soviet space program

The Soviet space program is the rocketry and space exploration programs conducted by the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics from the 1930s until its dissolution in 1991...

 was a great shock to the United States, which had believed itself to be ahead technologically. The ability to launch objects into orbit was especially ominous because it meant Soviet missiles could target anywhere on the planet.

Soon after, the Americans had a space program of their own but remained behind the Soviets until the mid-1960s. American President John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy

John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....

 launched an unprecedented effort, promising that by the end of the 1960s Americans would land on the moon, which they did, thus beating the Soviets to one of the most important objectives in the space race.

Another alternative to outright battle was the shadow war that was taking place in the world of espionage. There was a series of shocking spy scandals in the west, most notably that involving the Cambridge Five

Cambridge Five

The Cambridge Five was a ring of spies, recruited in part by Russian talent spotter Arnold Deutsch in the United Kingdom, who passed information to the Soviet Union during World War II and at least into the early 1950s...

. The Soviets had several high profile defections to the west, such as the Petrov Affair

Petrov Affair

The Petrov Affair was a dramatic Cold War spy incident in Australia in April 1954, concerning Vladimir Petrov, Third Secretary of the Soviet embassy in Canberra.- History :...

. Funding for the KGB

KGB

The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...

, CIA and lesser organizations such as MI6 and the Stasi

Stasi

The Ministry for State Security The Ministry for State Security The Ministry for State Security (German: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS), commonly known as the Stasi (abbreviation , literally State Security), was the official state security service of East Germany. The MfS was headquartered...

 increased greatly as their agents and influence spread around the world.

In 1957 the CIA started the programme of reconnaissance flights over the USSR territory using Lockheed U-2

Lockheed U-2

The Lockheed U-2, nicknamed "Dragon Lady", is a single-engine, very high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft operated by the United States Air Force and previously flown by the Central Intelligence Agency . It provides day and night, very high-altitude , all-weather intelligence gathering...

 spyplanes. When such a plane was shot down over the Soviet Union on May 1, 1960 (1960 U-2 incident) at first, the United States government denied the plane's purpose and mission, but was forced to admit its role as a covert surveillance

Surveillance

Surveillance is the monitoring of the behavior, activities, or other changing information, usually of people. It is sometimes done in a surreptitious manner...

 aircraft when the Soviet government revealed that it had captured the pilot, Gary Powers

Gary Powers

Francis Gary Powers was an American pilot whose Central Intelligence Agency U-2 spy plane was shot down while flying a reconnaissance mission over Soviet Union airspace, causing the 1960 U-2 incident.- Early life :...

, alive and was in possession of its largely intact remains. Coming just over two weeks before a scheduled East-West Summit in Paris, the incident caused a collapse in the talks and a marked deterioration in relations.

Eastern Bloc events

As the Cold War became an accepted element of the international system, the battlegrounds of the earlier period began to stabilize. A de facto buffer zone

Buffer zone

A buffer zone is generally a zonal area that lies between two or more other areas , but depending on the type of buffer zone, the reason for it may be to segregate regions or to conjoin them....

 between the two camps was set up in Central Europe

Central Europe

Central Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...

. In the south, Yugoslavia

Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was the Yugoslav state that existed from the abolition of the Yugoslav monarchy until it was dissolved in 1992 amid the Yugoslav Wars. It was a socialist state and a federation made up of six socialist republics: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia,...

 became heavily allied to the other European communist states. Meanwhile, Austria had become neutral.

1953 East Germany uprising

Following large numbers of East Germans traveled west through the only "loophole" left in the Eastern Bloc emigration restrictions

Eastern Bloc emigration and defection

Eastern Bloc emigration and defection was a point of controversy during the Cold War. After World War II, emigration restrictions were imposed by countries in the Eastern Bloc, which consisted of the Soviet Union and its satellite states in Eastern and Central Europe...

, the Berlin sector border, the East German government then raised "norms" -- the amount each worker was required to produce—by 10%. Already disaffected East Germans, who could see the relative economic successes of West Germany within Berlin, became enraged, provoking large street demonstrations and strikes. A major emergency was declared and the Soviet Red Army

Red Army

The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...

 intervened.

Creation of the Warsaw Pact

In 1955, the Warsaw Pact

Warsaw Pact

The Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance , or more commonly referred to as the Warsaw Pact, was a mutual defense treaty subscribed to by eight communist states in Eastern Europe...

 was formed partly in response to NATO's inclusion of West Germany

West Germany

West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....

 and partly because the Soviets needed an excuse to retain Red Army

Red Army

The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...

 units in potentially problematic Hungary

People's Republic of Hungary

The People's Republic of Hungary or Hungarian People's Republic was the official state name of Hungary from 1949 to 1989 during its Communist period under the guidance of the Soviet Union. The state remained in existence until 1989 when opposition forces consolidated in forcing the regime to...

. For 35 years, the Pact perpetuated the Stalinist concept of Soviet national security based on imperial expansion and control over satellite regimes in Eastern Europe. Through its institutional structures, the Pact also compensated in part for the absence of Joseph Stalin's personal leadership, which had manifested itself since his death in 1953. While Europe remained a central concern for both sides throughout the Cold War, by the end of the 1950s the situation was frozen. Alliance obligations and the concentration of forces in the region meant that any incident could potentially lead to an all-out war, and both sides thus worked to maintain the status quo. Both the Warsaw Pact and NATO maintained large militaries and modern weapons to possibly defeat the other military alliance.

1956 Polish protests

In Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 demonstrations by workers demanding better conditions

Poznan 1956 protests

The Poznań 1956 protests, also known as Poznań 1956 uprising or Poznań June , were the first of several massive protests of the Polish people against the communist government of the People's Republic of Poland...

 began on June 28, 1956, at Poznań

Poznan

Poznań is a city on the Warta river in west-central Poland, with a population of 556,022 in June 2009. It is among the oldest cities in Poland, and was one of the most important centres in the early Polish state, whose first rulers were buried at Poznań's cathedral. It is sometimes claimed to be...

's Cegielski Factories and were met with violent repression. A crowd of approximately 100,000 gathered in the city center near the UB secret police

Secret police

Secret police are a police agency which operates in secrecy and beyond the law to protect the political power of an individual dictator or an authoritarian political regime....

 building. 400 tanks and 10,000 soldiers of the Polish Army under General Stanislav Poplavsky

Stanislav Poplavsky

Stanislav Gilyarovich Poplavsky was a general in the Soviet and Polish armies.-Biography:He was born in Imperial Russia, in the vicinity of Kiev. His family was ethnically Polish, and in his younger years he considered himself a Pole...

 were ordered to suppress the demonstration and during the pacification

Peace

Peace is a state of harmony characterized by the lack of violent conflict. Commonly understood as the absence of hostility, peace also suggests the existence of healthy or newly healed interpersonal or international relationships, prosperity in matters of social or economic welfare, the...

 fired at the protesting civilians. The death toll was placed between 57 and 78 people, including 13-year-old Romek Strzałkowski. Hundreds of people sustained injuries.

Hungarian Revolution of 1956

After Stalinist dictator Mátyás Rákosi was replaced by Imre Nagy

Imre Nagy

Imre Nagy was a Hungarian communist politician who was appointed Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the People's Republic of Hungary on two occasions...

 following Stalin's death and Polish

People's Republic of Poland

The People's Republic of Poland was the official name of Poland from 1952 to 1990. Although the Soviet Union took control of the country immediately after the liberation from Nazi Germany in 1944, the name of the state was not changed until eight years later...

 reformist Władysław Gomułka was able to enact some reformist requests, large numbers of protesting Hungarians compiled a list of Demands of Hungarian Revolutionaries of 1956

Demands of Hungarian Revolutionaries of 1956

On October 23, 1956, a group of Hungarian students compiled a list of sixteen points containing key national policy demands. Following an anti-Soviet protest march through the Hungarian capital of Budapest, the students attempted to enter the city's main broadcasting station to read their demands...

, including free secret-ballot elections, independent tribunals, and inquiries into Stalin and Rákosi Hungarian activities. Under the orders of Soviet defense minister Georgy Zhukov

Georgy Zhukov

Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov , was a Russian career officer in the Red Army who, in the course of World War II, played a pivotal role in leading the Red Army through much of Eastern Europe to liberate the Soviet Union and other nations from the Axis Powers' occupation...

, Soviet tanks entered Budapest. Protester attacks at the Parliament forced the collapse of the government.

The new government that came to power during the revolution formally disbanded the Hungarian secret police, declared its intention to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact

Warsaw Pact

The Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance , or more commonly referred to as the Warsaw Pact, was a mutual defense treaty subscribed to by eight communist states in Eastern Europe...

 and pledged to re-establish free elections. The Soviet Politburo

Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

The Politburo , known as the Presidium from 1952 to 1966, functioned as the central policymaking and governing body of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.-Duties and responsibilities:The...

 thereafter moved to crush the revolution with a large Soviet force invading Budapest and other regions of the country. Approximately 200,000 Hungarians fled Hungary, some 26,000 Hungarians were put on trial by the new Soviet-installed János Kádár

János Kádár

János Kádár was a Hungarian communist leader and the General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, presiding over the country from 1956 until his forced retirement in 1988. His thirty-two year term as General Secretary makes Kádár the longest ruler of the People's Republic of Hungary...

 government and, of those, 13,000 were imprisoned. Imre Nagy was executed, along with Pál Maléter

Pál Maléter

Pál Maléter was born to Hungarian parents in Eperjes, a city in the northern part of Historical Hungary, today part of Slovakia. He was the military leader of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution....

 and Miklós Gimes, after secret trials in June 1958. By January 1957, the Hungarian government had suppressed all public opposition. These Hungarian government's violent oppressive actions alienated many Western Marxists

Marxism

Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...

, yet strengthened communist control in all the European communist states, cultivating the perception that communism was both irreversible and monolithic.

Berlin Crisis of 1961

The crucial sticking point was still Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 after the Allies

Allies of World War II

The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...

 merged their occupation zones to form the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949. In response Soviets declared their section, the German Democratic Republic

German Democratic Republic

The German Democratic Republic , informally called East Germany by West Germany and other countries, was a socialist state established in 1949 in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany, including East Berlin of the Allied-occupied capital city...

, an independent nation. Neither side acknowledged the division, however, and on the surface both maintained a commitment to a united Germany under their respective governments.

Germany was an important issue because it was regarded as the power center of the continent, and both sides believed that it could be crucial to the world balance of power. While both might have preferred a united neutral Germany, the risks of it falling into the enemy's camp for either side were too high, and thus the temporary post-war occupation zones became permanent borders.

In November 1958, Soviet Premier Khrushchev issued an ultimatum giving the Western powers six months to agree to withdraw from Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 and make it a free, demilitarized city. At the end of that period, Khrushchev declared, the Soviet Union would turn over to East Germany complete control of all lines of communication with West Berlin; the western powers then would have access to West Berlin only by permission of the East German government. The United States, Great Britain, and France replied to this ultimatum by firmly asserting their determination to remain in West Berlin

West Berlin

West Berlin was a political exclave that existed between 1949 and 1990. It comprised the western regions of Berlin, which were bordered by East Berlin and parts of East Germany. West Berlin consisted of the American, British, and French occupation sectors, which had been established in 1945...

 and to maintain their legal right of free access to that city.

In 1959 the Soviet Union withdrew its deadline and instead met with the Western powers in a Big Four foreign ministers' conference. Although the three-month-long sessions failed to reach any important agreements, they did open the door to further negotiations and led to Premier Khrushchev's visit to the United States in September 1959. At the end of this visit, Khrushchev and President Eisenhower stated jointly that the most important issue in the world was general disarmament and that the problem of Berlin and "all outstanding international questions should be settled, not by the application of force, but by peaceful means through negotiations."

However, in June 1961 Premier Khrushchev created a new crisis over the status of West Berlin when he again threatened to sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany, which he said, would end existing four-power agreements guaranteeing American, British, and French access rights to West Berlin. The three powers replied that no unilateral treaty could abrogate their responsibilities and rights in West Berlin, including the right of unobstructed access to the city.

As the confrontation over Berlin escalated, on 25 July President Kennedy requested an increase in the Army's total authorized strength from 875,000 to approximately 1 million men, along with increase of 29,000 and 63,000 men in the active duty strength of the Navy and the Air Force. Additionally, he ordered that draft calls be doubled, and asked the Congress for authority to order to active duty certain ready reserve units and individual reservists. He also requested new funds to identify and mark space in existing structures that could be used for fall-out shelters in case of attack, to stock those shelters with food, water, first-aid kits and other minimum essentials for survival, and to improve air-raid warning and fallout detection systems.

During the early months of 1961, the government actively sought a means of halting the emigration of its population to the West. By the early summer of 1961, East German President Walter Ulbricht apparently had persuaded the Soviets that an immediate solution was necessary and that the only way to stop the exodus was to use force. This presented a delicate problem for the Soviet Union because the four-power status of Berlin specified free travel between zones and specifically forbade the presence of German troops in Berlin.

During the spring and early summer, the East German regime procured and stockpiled building materials for the erection of the Berlin Wall

Berlin Wall

The Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin...

. Although this extensive activity was widely known, few outside the small circle of Soviet and East German planners believed that East Germany would be sealed off.

On June 15, 1961, two months before the construction of the Berlin Wall started, First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party

Socialist Unity Party of Germany

The Socialist Unity Party of Germany was the governing party of the German Democratic Republic from its formation on 7 October 1949 until the elections of March 1990. The SED was a communist political party with a Marxist-Leninist ideology...

 and Staatsrat

Staatsrat

In the German Democratic Republic , the State Council was the collective head of state from 1960 to 1990.-Origins:...

 chairman Walter Ulbricht

Walter Ulbricht

Walter Ulbricht was a German communist politician. As First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party from 1950 to 1971 , he played a leading role in the creation of the Weimar-era Communist Party of Germany and later in the early development and...

 stated in an international press conference, "Niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten!" (No one has the intention to erect a wall). It was the first time the colloquial term Mauer (wall) had been used in this context.

On Saturday August 12, 1961, the leaders of East Germany attended a garden party at a government guesthouse in Döllnsee, in a wooded area to the north of East Berlin, and Walter Ulbricht signed the order to close the border and erect a Wall.

At midnight the army, police, and units of the East German army began to close the border and by morning on Sunday August 13, 1961 the border to West Berlin had been shut. East German troops and workers had begun to tear up streets running alongside the barrier to make them impassable to most vehicles, and to install barbed wire entanglements and fences along the 156 km (96.9 mi) around the three western sectors and the 43 km (26.7 mi) which actually divided West and East Berlin. Approximately 32,000 combat and engineer troops were used in building the Wall. Once their efforts were completed, the Border Police assumed the functions of manning and improving the barrier. East German tanks and artillery were present to discourage interference by the West and presumably to assist in the event of large-scale riots.

On 30 August 1961, President John F. Kennedy had ordered 148,000 Guardsmen and Reservists to active duty in response to East German moves to cut off allied access to Berlin. The Air Guard's share of that mobilization was 21,067 individuals. ANG units mobilized in October included 18 tactical fighter squadrons, 4 tactical reconnaissance squadrons, 6 air transport squadrons, and a tactical control group. On 1 November; the Air Force mobilized three more ANG fighter interceptor squadrons. In late October and early November, eight of the tactical fighter units flew to Europe with their 216 aircraft in operation "Stair Step," the largest jet deployment in the Air Guard's history. Because of their short range, 60 Air Guard F-104 interceptors were airlifted to Europe in late November. The United States Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) lacked spare parts needed for the ANG's aging F-84s and F-86s. Some units had been trained to deliver tactical nuclear weapons, not conventional bombs and bullets. They had to be retrained for conventional missions once they arrived on the continent. The majority of mobilized Air Guardsmen remained in the U.S. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/berlin.htm

The four powers governing Berlin (France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

, the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

, and the United States) had agreed at the 1945 Potsdam Conference

Potsdam Conference

The Potsdam Conference was held at Cecilienhof, the home of Crown Prince Wilhelm Hohenzollern, in Potsdam, occupied Germany, from 16 July to 2 August 1945. Participants were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States...

 that Allied personnel would not be stopped by East German police in any sector of Berlin. But on 22 October 1961, just two months after the construction of the Wall, the US Chief of Mission in West Berlin, E. Allan Lightner, was stopped in his car (which had occupation forces license plates) while going to a theatre in East Berlin. Army General Lucius D. Clay

Lucius D. Clay

General Lucius Dubignon Clay was an American officer and military governor of the United States Army known for his administration of Germany immediately after World War II. Clay was deputy to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1945; deputy military governor, Germany 1946; commander in chief, U.S....

 (Retired), U.S. President

President of the United States

The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....

 John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy

John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....

's Special Advisor in West Berlin, decided to demonstrate American resolve.

The attempts of a US diplomat to enter the East Berlin were backed by US troops. This led to the stand-off between US and East German tanks at Checkpoint Charlie

Checkpoint Charlie

Checkpoint Charlie was the name given by the Western Allies to the best-known Berlin Wall crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War....

 on 27–28 October 1961. The stand-off was resolved only after direct talks between Ulbricht and Kennedy.

The Berlin Crisis saw US Army troops facing East German Army troops in a stand-off, until the East German government backed down. The crisis ended in the summer of 1962 and the personnel returned to the United States. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/berlin.htm

During the crisis KGB

KGB

The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...

 prepared an elaborate subversion and disinformation plan "to create a situation in various areas of the world which would favor dispersion of attention and forces by the USA and their satellites, and would tie them down during the settlement of the question of a German peace treaty and West Berlin". Оn 1 August 1961 this plan was approved by CPSU Central Committee

Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , abbreviated in Russian as ЦК, "Tse-ka", earlier was also called as the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party ...

. http://www.videofact.com/english/cia_kgb.html

Cuban Revolution

The East garnered a huge victory when they formed an alliance with Cuba

Cuba

The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

 after Fidel Castro

Fidel Castro

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...

's successful revolution in 1959. This was a major coup for the Soviet Union, which had garnered an ally only miles from the American coast.

Before the fall of the pro-U.S. Batista regime

Fulgencio Batista

Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar was the United States-aligned Cuban President, dictator and military leader who served as the leader of Cuba from 1933 to 1944 and from 1952 to 1959, before being overthrown as a result of the Cuban Revolution....

, U.S. interests had owned four-fifths of the stakes in the island's utilities, nearly half of its sugar

Sugar

Sugar is a class of edible crystalline carbohydrates, mainly sucrose, lactose, and fructose, characterized by a sweet flavor.Sucrose in its refined form primarily comes from sugar cane and sugar beet...

, and nearly all of its mining industries. The U.S. could manipulate the Cuban economy at a whim by merely tinkering with the island's financial services or by tinkering with government quotas and tariff

Tariff

A tariff may be either tax on imports or exports , or a list or schedule of prices for such things as rail service, bus routes, and electrical usage ....

s on sugar — the country's staple export commodity. The U.S. landed Marines three times in efforts to support its interests between the ratification of the Platt Amendment

Platt Amendment

The Platt Amendment of 1901 was a rider appended to the Army Appropriations Act presented to the U.S. Senate by Connecticut Republican Senator Orville H. Platt replacing the earlier Teller Amendment. Approved on May 22, 1903, it stipulated the conditions for the withdrawal of United States troops...

 in 1902 and the Revolution in 1959, although it had not directly occupied the country since 1909.

Castro then signed a trade agreement in February 1960 with communist states, which would emerge as a market for the island's agricultural commodities (and a new source for machinery, heavy industrial equipment, and technicians) that could replace the country's traditional patron — the United States. Overthrowing the new regime became a focus for the CIA.

Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis

Hoping to copy the success of Guatemala and Iran in 1961, the CIA, noting the large wave of emigration to the U.S. after Castro took power, trained and armed a group of Cuban exiles who landed at the Bay of Pigs

Bay of Pigs

The Bay of Pigs is an inlet of the Gulf of Cazones on the southern coast of Cuba. By 1910, it was included in Santa Clara Province, and then instead to Las Villas Province by 1961, but in 1976, it was re-assigned to Matanzas Province, when the original six provinces of Cuba were re-organized into...

 where they were to attempt to spark an uprising against the Castro regime. The assault failed miserably, however. Afterwards, Castro publicly declared himself a Marxist-Leninist

Leninism

In Marxist philosophy, Leninism is the body of political theory for the democratic organisation of a revolutionary vanguard party, and the achievement of a direct-democracy dictatorship of the proletariat, as political prelude to the establishment of socialism...

 and set up Cuba as the first Communist state

Communist state

A communist state is a state with a form of government characterized by single-party rule or dominant-party rule of a communist party and a professed allegiance to a Leninist or Marxist-Leninist communist ideology as the guiding principle of the state...

 in the Americas and continued to nationalize virtually all major industries in the country.

The Soviet government seized on the abortive invasion as a rationale for the placing of Soviet troops on Cuba. It was also decided to position on Cuba medium-range nuclear missiles which could strike many points in the U.S. at once.

In response, President John F. Kennedy quarantined the island, and after several intense days the Soviets decided to retreat in return for promises from the U.S. not to invade Cuba and to pull missiles out of Turkey. After this brush with nuclear war

Nuclear warfare

Nuclear warfare, or atomic warfare, is a military conflict or political strategy in which nuclear weaponry is detonated on an opponent. Compared to conventional warfare, nuclear warfare can be vastly more destructive in range and extent of damage...

, the two leaders banned nuclear tests in the air and underwater after 1962. The Soviets also began a huge military buildup. The retreat undermined Khrushchev, who was ousted soon afterwards and replaced by Leonid Brezhnev

Leonid Brezhnev

Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev  – 10 November 1982) was the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , presiding over the country from 1964 until his death in 1982. His eighteen-year term as General Secretary was second only to that of Joseph Stalin in...

.

The Cuban Revolution led to Kennedy's initiation of the "Alliance for Progress

Alliance for Progress

The Alliance for Progress initiated by U.S. President John F. Kennedy in 1961 aimed to establish economic cooperation between the U.S. and South America.-Origin and goals:...

" program. The program was to provide billions of dollars of loans and aid over the course of the 1960s for economic development in order to stave off socialist

Socialism

Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...

 revolution. The Alliance also contained counterinsurgency measures, such as the establishment of the Jungle Warfare School in the Panama Canal Zone

Panama Canal Zone

The Panama Canal Zone was a unorganized U.S. territory located within the Republic of Panama, consisting of the Panama Canal and an area generally extending 5 miles on each side of the centerline, but excluding Panama City and Colón, which otherwise would have been partly within the limits of...

 and the training of police forces.

Decolonization

The Korean War

Korean War

The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...

 marked a shift in the focal point of the Cold War, from postwar Europe to East Asia. After this point, proxy battles in the Third World became an important arena of superpower competition.

The Eisenhower administration adjusted U.S. policy to the impact of decolonization

Decolonization

Decolonization refers to the undoing of colonialism, the unequal relation of polities whereby one people or nation establishes and maintains dependent Territory over another...

. This shifted the focus of 1947-1949 away from war-torn Europe. By the early 1950s, the NATO alliance had already integrated Western Europe into the system of mutual defense pacts, providing safeguards against subversion or neutrality in the bloc. The Marshall Plan

Marshall Plan

The Marshall Plan was the large-scale American program to aid Europe where the United States gave monetary support to help rebuild European economies after the end of World War II in order to combat the spread of Soviet communism. The plan was in operation for four years beginning in April 1948...

 had already rebuilt a functioning Western economic system, thwarting the electoral appeal of the radical left. When economic aid had ended the dollar shortage and stimulated private investment for postwar reconstruction, in turn sparing the U.S. from a crisis of over-production and maintaining demand for U.S. exports, the Eisenhower administration began to focus on other regions.

The combined effects of two great European wars had weakened the political and economic domination of Latin America

Latin America

Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages  – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...

, Asia, Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

, and the Middle East

Middle East

The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...

 by European powers. This led to a series of waves of African and Asian decolonization

Decolonization

Decolonization refers to the undoing of colonialism, the unequal relation of polities whereby one people or nation establishes and maintains dependent Territory over another...

 following the Second World War; a world that had been dominated for over a century by Western imperialist colonial powers was transformed into a world of emerging African, Middle Eastern, and Asian nations. The sheer number of nation states increased drastically.

The Cold War started placing immense pressure on developing nations to align with one of the superpower factions. Both promised substantial financial, military, and diplomatic aid in exchange for an alliance, in which issues like corruption and human rights abuses were overlooked or ignored. When an allied government was threatened, the superpowers were often prepared and willing to intervene.

In such an international setting, the Soviet Union propagated a role as the leader of the "anti-imperialist" camp, currying favor in the Third World as being a more staunch opponent of colonialism than many independent nations in Africa and Asia. Khrushchev broadened Moscow's policy by establishing new relations with India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

 and other key non-aligned, non-communist states throughout the Third World. Many countries in the emerging Non-Aligned Movement

Non-Aligned Movement

The Non-Aligned Movement is a group of states considering themselves not aligned formally with or against any major power bloc. As of 2011, the movement had 120 members and 17 observer countries...

 developed a close relation with Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

.

In an exercise of the new "rollback" polices, acting on the doctrines of Dulles, Eisenhower thwarted Soviet intervention, using the CIA to overthrow unfriendly governments. In the Arab world, the focus was pan-Arab nationalism. U.S. companies had already invested heavily in the region, which contained the world's largest oil reserves. The U.S. was concerned about the stability and friendliness of governments in the region, upon which the health of the U.S. economy increasingly grew to depend.

Defense pacts

The Eisenhower administration attempted to formalize its alliance system through a series of pacts. Its East Asian allies were joined into the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization

Southeast Asia Treaty Organization

The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization was an international organization for collective defense in Southeast Asia created by the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty, or Manila Pact, signed in September 1954 in Manila, Philippines. The formal institution of SEATO was established on 19 February...

 (SEATO) while friends in Latin America were placed in the Organization of American States

Organization of American States

The Organization of American States is a regional international organization, headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States...

. The ANZUS

ANZUS

The Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty is the military alliance which binds Australia and New Zealand and, separately, Australia and the United States to cooperate on defence matters in the Pacific Ocean area, though today the treaty is understood to relate to attacks...

 alliance was signed between the US, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

 and New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

. None of these groupings was as successful as NATO had been in Europe.

John Foster Dulles, a rigid anti-communist, focused aggressively on Third World politics. He intensified efforts to "integrate" the entire noncommunist Third World into a system of mutual defense pacts, travelling almost 500,000 miles in order to cement new alliances. Dulles initiated the Manila Conference in 1954, which resulted in the SEATO pact that united eight nations (either located in Southeast Asia or with interests there) in a neutral defense pact. This treaty was followed in 1955 by the Baghdad Pact, later renamed the Central Treaty Organization

Central Treaty Organization

The Central Treaty Organization was formed in 1955 by Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. It was dissolved in 1979.U.S...

 (CENTO), uniting the "northern tier" countries of the Middle East—Turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

, Iraq

Iraq

Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....

, Iran

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

, and Pakistan

Pakistan

Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

—in a defense organization.

Many Third World nations, however, did not want to align themselves with either of the superpowers. The Non-Aligned Movement

Non-Aligned Movement

The Non-Aligned Movement is a group of states considering themselves not aligned formally with or against any major power bloc. As of 2011, the movement had 120 members and 17 observer countries...

, led by India, Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

, and Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

, attempted to unite the third world against what was seen as imperialism by both the East and the West.

Soviet influence and nationalism

Dulles, along with most U.S. foreign policy-makers of the era, considered many Third World nationalists and "revolutionaries" as being essentially under the influence, if not control, of the Warsaw Pact. Ironically, in War, Peace, and Change (1939), he had called Mao Zedong

Mao Zedong

Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...

 an "agrarian reformer," and during World War II he had deemed Mao's followers "the so called 'Red Army faction'." But he no longer recognized indigenous roots in the Chinese Communist Party by 1950. In War or Peace, an influential work denouncing the containment policies of the Truman administration, and espousing an active program of "liberation," he writes:

Thus the 450,000,000 people in China have fallen under leadership that is violently anti-American, and takes its inspiration and guidance from Moscow... Soviet Communist leadership has won a victory in China which surpassed what Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 was seeking and we risked war to avert."

Behind the scenes, Dulles could explain his policies in terms of geopolitics. But publicly, he used the moral and religious reasons that he believed Americans preferred to hear, even though he was often criticized by observers at home and overseas for his strong language.

Two of the leading figures of the interwar and early Cold War period who viewed international relations from a "realist

Realism (international relations)

In the study of international relations, Realism or political realism prioritizes national interest and security over ideology, moral concerns and social reconstructions...

" perspective, diplomat George Kennan

George F. Kennan

George Frost Kennan was an American adviser, diplomat, political scientist and historian, best known as "the father of containment" and as a key figure in the emergence of the Cold War...

 and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr

Reinhold Niebuhr

Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr was an American theologian and commentator on public affairs. Starting as a leftist minister in the 1920s indebted to theological liberalism, he shifted to the new Neo-Orthodox theology in the 1930s, explaining how the sin of pride created evil in the world...

, were troubled by Dulles' moralism and the method by which he analyzed Soviet behavior. Kennan agreed the argument that the Soviets even had a world design after Stalin's death, being far more concerned with maintaining control of their own bloc. But the underlying assumptions of a monolithic world communism, directed from the Kremlin, of the Truman-Acheson containment after the drafting of NSC-68 http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/nsc-68/nsc68-1.htm were essentially compatible with those of the Eisenhower-Dulles foreign policy. The conclusions of Paul Nitze

Paul Nitze

Paul Henry Nitze was a high-ranking United States government official who helped shape Cold War defense policy over the course of numerous presidential administrations.-Early life, education, and family:...

's National Security Council

United States National Security Council

The White House National Security Council in the United States is the principal forum used by the President of the United States for considering national security and foreign policy matters with his senior national security advisors and Cabinet officials and is part of the Executive Office of the...

 policy paper were as follows:

What is new, what makes the continuing crisis, is the polarization of power which inescapably confronts the slave society with the free… the Soviet Union, unlike previous aspirants to hegemony, is animated by a new fanatic faith, antithetical to our own, and seeks to impose its absolute authority… [in] the Soviet Union and second in the area now under [its] control… In the minds of the Soviet leaders, however, achievement of this design requires the dynamic extension of their authority... To that end Soviet efforts are now directed toward the domination of the Eurasian land mass." http://occawlonline.pearsoned.com/bookbind/pubbooks/nash5e_awl/medialib/timeline/docs/sources/theme_primarysources_Military_2_20.html

Mossadegh and the CIA in Iran

The United States also reacted with alarm as it watched developments in Iran

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

, which had been in a state of instability since 1951.

Through the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), the British had a monopoly on the transporting, pumping, and refining of oil in most of Iran. The company paid production royalties to the government of the Shah— placed on the throne by the British in 1941. But the royalties and salaries to Iranian employees were smaller, considering that the company's earnings were ten times greater than its expenses. Iran suffered from poverty, and nationalists insisted that controlling the company could alleviate this.

Many Iranians demanded that a higher share of the company's earnings be paid. In response, the AIOC replied that it had a binding agreement with the Shah until 1993, and collaborated with some Iranian political forces to draft a report opposing nationalization. In February 1951, the Iranian prime minister, suspected of being involved with the report, was assassinated. He replaced by nationalist Mohammed Mossadegh. Later that year the new prime minister nationalized his nation's British-owned oil wells.

As the Iranians moved toward seizing the reserves, the Truman administration attempted to mediate. Later, the Eisenhower administration, convinced that Iran was developing communist ties, used the CIA, joining forces with Iran's military leaders to overthrow Iran's government. Mossadegh drew on the Tudeh, the Communist Party of Iran, for much of his support. However, by 1953 the party had begun to criticize him as a U.S. puppet state

Puppet state

A puppet state is a nominal sovereign of a state who is de facto controlled by a foreign power. The term refers to a government controlled by the government of another country like a puppeteer controls the strings of a marionette...

. Since the Tudeh was the strongest Communist party in the Middle East, the Eisenhower administration cited a potential communist takeover in the Middle East to justify intervention. Mossadeq invoked the communist threat to gain American concessions. The premier perceived that as Iran's economy suffered and fears of communist takeover gripped the U.S. government, the U.S. would abandon Britain and rescue him from his predicament.

To replace Mossadegh, the U.S. favored the young Mohammed Reza Pahlevi. In return, Pahlevi promised to allow U.S. companies to share in the development of his nation's reserves. According to CIA documents made public in 2000, the U.S. provided guns, trucks, armored cars, and radio communications in the CIA-assisted 1953 coup, which elevated Pahlevi from his position as that of a constitutional monarch to that of an absolute ruler. With Mossadeq out of the way, oil profits were then divided between the Shah's regime and a new international consortium. The British were awarded 40% of the country's oil revenues, five U.S. firms (Gulf

Gulf Oil

Gulf Oil was a major global oil company from the 1900s to the 1980s. The eighth-largest American manufacturing company in 1941 and the ninth-largest in 1979, Gulf Oil was one of the so-called Seven Sisters oil companies...

, SOCONY-Vacuum, Standard Oil of California, Standard Oil of New Jersey, and Texaco

Texaco

Texaco is the name of an American oil retail brand. Its flagship product is its fuel "Texaco with Techron". It also owns the Havoline motor oil brand....

) won another 40%, and the rest went to Royal Dutch Shell

Royal Dutch Shell

Royal Dutch Shell plc , commonly known as Shell, is a global oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the fifth-largest company in the world according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine and one of the six...

 and Compagnie Française des Pétroles. The profits were divided evenly between the consortium and Iran.

Since the turn of the century the United States had been trying to get into the Iranian oil fields only to encounter British competition. The breakthrough for the U.S. was made possible by the Cold War-era ties to the Shah and under the guidance of the State Department official Herbert Hoover, Jr.

Herbert Hoover, Jr.

Herbert Charles Hoover was the son of President of the United States Herbert Hoover; a successful engineer and businessman; a special envoy of the American government; and served as United States Under Secretary of State from 1954 to 1957.-Early years, 1903—1928:Herbert Hoover, Jr...

, who had gained a great deal of experience in the complexities of the international oil problem as a private businessman.

Latin America

The Eisenhower-Dulles approach to foreign policy did not establish the use of covert means to overthrow unfriendly governments, but increasingly relied on clandestine CIA operations.

Throughout much of Latin America, reactionary oligarchies ruled through their alliances with the military elite and United States. Although the nature of the U.S. role in the region was established many years before the Cold War, the Cold War gave U.S. interventionism a new ideological tinge. But by the mid-20th century, much of the region passed through a higher state of economic development, which bolstered the power and ranks of the lower classes. This left calls for social change and political inclusion more pronounced, thus posing a challenge the strong U.S. influence over the region's economies. By the 1960s, Marxists

Marxism

Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...

 gained increasing influence throughout the regions, prompting fears in the United States that Latin American instability posed a threat to U.S. national security.

Throughout the Cold War years, the U.S. acted as a barrier to socialist revolutions and targeted populist and nationalist governments that were aided by the communists. The CIA overthrew other governments suspected of turning procommunist, such as Guatemala

Guatemala

Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...

 in 1954 under Jacobo Arbenz Guzman

Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán

Colonel Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán was a Guatemalan military officer and politician who served as Defense Minister of Guatemala from 1944–1951, and as President of Guatemala from 1951 to 1954....

. The CIA Operation PBSUCCESS

Operation PBSUCCESS

The 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état was a covert operation organized by the United States Central Intelligence Agency to overthrow Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán, the democratically-elected President of Guatemala....

 eventually led to the 1954 coup that removed Arbenz from power. The operation drew on an initial plan first considered in 1951 to oust Arbenz named Operation PBFORTUNE

Operation PBFORTUNE

Operation PBFORTUNE was the name of a contingency plan drafted by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in 1951 that outlined a method of ousting Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz if he was deemed a Communist threat in the hemisphere...

. Arbenz, who was supported by some local communists, was ousted shortly after he had redistributed 178000 acres (720.3 km²) of United Fruit Company

United Fruit Company

It had a deep and long-lasting impact on the economic and political development of several Latin American countries. Critics often accused it of exploitative neocolonialism and described it as the archetypal example of the influence of a multinational corporation on the internal politics of the...

 land in Guatemala

Guatemala

Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...

. United Fruit had long monopolized the transportation and communications region there, along with the main export commodities, and played a major role in Guatemalan politics. Arbenz was out shortly afterwards, and Guatemala came under control of a repressive military regime.

Future Latin American revolutionaries shifted to guerrilla tactics, particularly following the Cuban Revolution

Cuban Revolution

The Cuban Revolution was an armed revolt by Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement against the regime of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista between 1953 and 1959. Batista was finally ousted on 1 January 1959, and was replaced by a revolutionary government led by Castro...

. Arbenz fell when his military had deserted him. Since then, some future Latin American social revolutionaries and Marxists, most notably Fidel Castro

Fidel Castro

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...

 and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua

Nicaragua

Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...

 made the army and governments parts of a single unit and eventually set up single party states. Overthrowing such regimes would require a war, rather than a simple CIA operation, the landing of Marines

United States Marine Corps

The United States Marine Corps is a branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for providing power projection from the sea, using the mobility of the United States Navy to deliver combined-arms task forces rapidly. It is one of seven uniformed services of the United States...

, or a crude invasion scheme like the Bay of Pigs Invasion

Bay of Pigs Invasion

The Bay of Pigs Invasion was an unsuccessful action by a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba, with support and encouragement from the US government, in an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. The invasion was launched in April 1961, less than three months...

.

French Indochina

Two U.S. pilots were killed in action during the siege of Dien Bien Phu. The Battle of Dien Bien Phu (French: Bataille de Diên Biên Phu; Vietnamese: Chiến dịch Điện Biên Phủ) was the climactic battle of the First Indochina War between French Union forces of the French Far East Expeditionary Corps, and Vietnamese Viet Minh communist revolutionary forces. The battle occurred between March and May 1954, and culminated in a massive French defeat that effectively ended the war. Dien Bien Phu was "the first time that a non-European colonial independence movement had evolved through all the stages from guerrilla bands to a conventionally organized and equipped army able to defeat a modern Western occupier in pitched battle."[4]

As a result of blunders in the French decision making process, the French undertook to create an air-supplied base at Dien Bien Phu, deep in the hills of Vietnam. Its purpose was to cut off Viet Minh supply lines into the neighboring French protectorate of Laos, at the same time drawing the Viet Minh into a battle that would cripple them. Instead, the Viet Minh, under General Vo Nguyen Giap, surrounded and besieged the French, who were unaware of the Viet Minh's possession of heavy artillery (including anti-aircraft guns) and their ability to move such weapons to the mountain crests overlooking the French encampment. The Viet Minh occupied the highlands around Dien Bien Phu, and were able to fire down accurately onto French positions. Tenacious fighting on the ground ensued, reminiscent of the trench warfare of World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

. The French repeatedly repulsed Viet Minh assaults on their positions. Supplies and reinforcements were delivered by air, although as the French positions were overrun and the anti-aircraft fire took its toll, fewer and fewer of those supplies reached them. After a two month siege, the garrison was overrun and most French surrendered. Despite the loss of most of their best soldiers, the Viet Minh marshalled their remaining forces and pursued those French who did flee into the wilderness, routing them and ending the battle.

Shortly after the battle, the war ended with the 1954 Geneva accords, under which France agreed to withdraw from its former Indochinese colonies. The accords partitioned the country in two; fighting later resumed, in 1959, among rival Vietnamese forces as the Vietnam War

Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...

 (Second Indochina War).

Indochina

The U.S. intervention with the greatest ramifications was in Indochina

Indochina

The Indochinese peninsula, is a region in Southeast Asia. It lies roughly southwest of China, and east of India. The name has its origins in the French, Indochine, as a combination of the names of "China" and "India", and was adopted when French colonizers in Vietnam began expanding their territory...

. Between 1954 and 1961, the administration dispatched economic aid and 695 military advisors to the Republic of Vietnam

South Vietnam

South Vietnam was a state which governed southern Vietnam until 1975. It received international recognition in 1950 as the "State of Vietnam" and later as the "Republic of Vietnam" . Its capital was Saigon...

 (RVN), which was battling the National Liberation Front (NLF) guerrillas, which drew its ranks from the southern peasantry and was backed by North Vietnam

North Vietnam

The Democratic Republic of Vietnam , was a communist state that ruled the northern half of Vietnam from 1954 until 1976 following the Geneva Conference and laid claim to all of Vietnam from 1945 to 1954 during the First Indochina War, during which they controlled pockets of territory throughout...

, which in turn was backed by the Soviet Union and China. The RVN was later absorbed by its communist counterpart to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Vietnam

Vietnam

Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...

 remains one of the world's five remaining Communist state

Communist state

A communist state is a state with a form of government characterized by single-party rule or dominant-party rule of a communist party and a professed allegiance to a Leninist or Marxist-Leninist communist ideology as the guiding principle of the state...

s.

Suez Crisis

The Middle East in the Cold War was an area of extreme importance and also great instability. The region lay directly south of the Soviet Union, who traditionally had great influence in Turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

 and Iran

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

. The area also had vast reserves of oil, not crucial for either superpower in the 1950s (who each held large oil reserves on their own) but essential for the rapidly rebuilding American allies in Europe and Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

.

The original American plan for the Middle East was to form a defensive perimeter along the north of the region. Thus Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan signed the Baghdad Pact and joined CENTO. The Eastern response was to seek influence in states such as Syria

Syria

Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....

 and Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

. Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria made arms deals to Egypt and Syria, giving Warsaw Pact members a strong presence in the region. Egypt, a former British protectorate, was one of the region's most important prizes with a large population and political power throughout the region. British forces were thrown out by General Gamal Abdel Nasser

Gamal Abdel Nasser

Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein was the second President of Egypt from 1956 until his death. A colonel in the Egyptian army, Nasser led the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 along with Muhammad Naguib, the first president, which overthrew the monarchy of Egypt and Sudan, and heralded a new period of...

 in 1956, when he nationalized the Suez Canal

Suez Canal

The Suez Canal , also known by the nickname "The Highway to India", is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. Opened in November 1869 after 10 years of construction work, it allows water transportation between Europe and Asia without navigation...

. Syria was a former French protectorate.

Eisenhower persuaded the United Kingdom and France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 to retreat from a badly planned invasion

Suez Crisis

The Suez Crisis, also referred to as the Tripartite Aggression, Suez War was an offensive war fought by France, the United Kingdom, and Israel against Egypt beginning on 29 October 1956. Less than a day after Israel invaded Egypt, Britain and France issued a joint ultimatum to Egypt and Israel,...

 with Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

 that was launched to regain control of the canal from Egypt. While the Americans were forced to operate covertly, so as not to embarrass their allies, the Eastern Bloc nations made loud threats against the "imperialists" and worked to portray themselves as the defenders of the Third World. Nasser was later lauded around the globe, but especially in the Arab world. While both superpowers courted Nasser, the Americans balked at funding the massive Aswan High Dam project. The Warsaw Pact countries happily agreed, however, and signed a treaty of friendship and cooperation with the Egyptians and the Syrians.

Thus, the Suez stalemate was a turning point heralding an ever-growing rift between the Atlantic Cold War allies, which were becoming far less of a united monolith than they were in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. Italy, France, Spain, West Germany, Norway, Canada, and Britain also developed their own nuclear forces as well as a Common Market to be less dependent on the United States. Such rifts mirror changes in global economics. American economic competitiveness faltered in the face of the challenges of Japan and West Germany, which recovered rapidly from the wartime decimation of their respective industrial bases. The twentieth-century successor to the UK as the "workshop of the world," the United States found its competitive edge dulled in the international markets while at the same time it faced intensified foreign competition at home. Meanwhile, the Warsaw Pact countries were closely allied both militarily and economically. All Warsaw Pact nations had nuclear weapons and supplied other countries with weapons, supplies, and economic aid.

South Asia

The Indian subcontinent

Indian subcontinent

The Indian subcontinent, also Indian Subcontinent, Indo-Pak Subcontinent or South Asian Subcontinent is a region of the Asian continent on the Indian tectonic plate from the Hindu Kush or Hindu Koh, Himalayas and including the Kuen Lun and Karakoram ranges, forming a land mass which extends...

, except perhaps during the war in Afghanistan, was never a primary focus of superpower attention during the Cold War. Europe, East Asia, Latin American, and the Middle East were consistently viewed as being more important to the superpowers' interests. The countries of South Asia

South Asia

South Asia, also known as Southern Asia, is the southern region of the Asian continent, which comprises the sub-Himalayan countries and, for some authorities , also includes the adjoining countries to the west and the east...

, despite containing a fifth of the world's population, were not powerful economies like Japan or Western Europe. Unlike the Middle East with its oil, South Asia was lacking in vital natural resources. The United States' most important interest in the region, however, was the establishment of airfields that could be used as bases for U-2

Lockheed U-2

The Lockheed U-2, nicknamed "Dragon Lady", is a single-engine, very high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft operated by the United States Air Force and previously flown by the Central Intelligence Agency . It provides day and night, very high-altitude , all-weather intelligence gathering...

 flights over Soviet territory, or in case of wartime be home to nuclear bombers that could hit Central Asia

Central Asia

Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...

. Originally, both the Americans and Soviets felt the region would remain in the British sphere of influence, but this was not the case.

There were some strategic reasons to be involved in South Asia. The Americans hoped that the Pakistan

Pakistan

Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

i armed forces could be used to block any Soviet thrust into the crucial Middle East. It was also felt that as a large and high profile nation, India would be a notable prize if it fell into either camp. India, a fledgeling democracy, was never particularly in any grave danger of falling to insurgents or external pressure from a great power. It also did not wish to ally with the United States.

A key event in the South Asian arena of Cold War competition was the signing of the Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement between Pakistan and the United States in 1954. This pact would limit the later options of all the major powers in the region. The U.S. committed to remaining closely tied to Pakistan. For Pakistan, the U.S. alliance became a central tenet of its foreign policy, and despite numerous disappointments with it, it was always seen as far too valuable a connection to abandon. After the Sino-Soviet Split

Sino-Soviet split

In political science, the term Sino–Soviet split denotes the worsening of political and ideologic relations between the People's Republic of China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics during the Cold War...

, Pakistan also pursued close relations with China.

Soviet policy towards South Asia had closely paralleled that of the United States. At first the Soviets, like the Americans, had been largely uninterested in the region and maintained a neutral position in the Indo-Pakistani disputes. With the signing of the accords between Pakistan and the United States in 1954, along with the countries enlisting in CENTO and SEATO, the situation changed. In 1955, Bulganin and Khrushchev toured India and promised large quantities of financial aid and assistance in building industrial infrastructure. In Sringar, the capital of Kashmir

Kashmir

Kashmir is the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term Kashmir geographically denoted only the valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range...

, the Soviet leaders announced that the Soviet Union would abandon its neutralist position and back India in the ongoing Kashmir dispute.

Jawaharlal Nehru

Jawaharlal Nehru

Jawaharlal Nehru , often referred to with the epithet of Panditji, was an Indian statesman who became the first Prime Minister of independent India and became noted for his “neutralist” policies in foreign affairs. He was also one of the principal leaders of India’s independence movement in the...

 was skeptical, however, and for many of the same reasons that he had wished to avoid entanglements with the United States he also wished to keep India from being too closely attached to the Soviet Union. Although the USSR sent India some aid, and although Nehru became the first non-communist leader to address the people of the Soviet Union, the two nations remained relatively distant. After Khrushchev's ousting, the Soviets reverted to a neutralist position and moderated the aftermath of the 1965 war. Peace negotiations were held in the Central Asian town of Tashkent

Tashkent

Tashkent is the capital of Uzbekistan and of the Tashkent Province. The officially registered population of the city in 2008 was about 2.2 million. Unofficial sources estimate the actual population may be as much as 4.45 million.-Early Islamic History:...

.

By the late 1960s, Indian development efforts had again stalled. A large current accounts deficit had developed and a severe drought hit the agricultural sector hard. As with the downturn of a decade earlier, India again looked to outside assistance. However, relations were at a low ebb with the United States, which was largely precoccupied with Vietnam. On top of that, several smaller issues had turned American indifference into antipathy. Western international organizations such as the World Bank

World Bank

The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes.The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty...

 were also unwilling to commit money to India's development projects without Indian trade concessions.

Along with other Warsaw Pact nations, the Soviets began to provide extensive support for India's efforts to create an industrial base. In 1969, the two powers negotiated a treaty of friendship that would make non-alignment little more than a pretext. Two years later, when faced with a growing crisis in East Pakistan

East Pakistan

East Pakistan was a provincial state of Pakistan established in 14 August 1947. The provincial state existed until its declaration of independence on 26 March 1971 as the independent nation of Bangladesh. Pakistan recognized the new nation on 16 December 1971. East Pakistan was created from Bengal...

 (now Bangladesh

Bangladesh

Bangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...

), India signed the agreement.

South Asia and the Sino-Soviet Split

Before the Sino-Soviet Split, tensions between China and India complicated Soviet Union's efforts to maintain close relations with both of Asia's leading emerging nations. In March 1959, China suppressed a revolt in Tibet

1959 Tibetan uprising

The 1959 Tibetan uprising, or 1959 Tibetan Rebellion began on 10 March 1959, when a revolt erupted in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, which had been under the effective control of the Communist Party of China since the Seventeen Point Agreement in 1951...

, leading to open conflict between China and India. On March 31, the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual and temporal ruler, fled to India, where he was granted asylum over China's protest. India later backed a move in the United Nations

United Nations

The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...

 general assembly to enter into a full debate on charges of Chinese suppression of human rights

Human rights

Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...

 in Tibet over the objections of the Soviet Union, Poland, Yugoslavia, Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, North Korea, and Mongolia. However, despite the Warsaw Pact's, Mongolia's, and North Korea's objections to the Indian-backed debate in the UN, Mao grew increasingly frustrated with the Soviet Union's rather muted and reluctant backing of Chinese actions in Tibet.

China's active presence in Tibet preceded a much more dangerous confrontation between India and China. Successive Chinese governments had rejected the Sino-Indian border dictated by the British Empire in the early 20th century, called the McMahon Line

McMahon Line

The McMahon Line is a line agreed to by Great Britain and Tibet as part of Simla Accord, a treaty signed in 1914. Although its legal status is disputed by China, it is the effective boundary between China and India....

. As China built outposts along what China thought to be its borders, India built more outposts in the disputed area to drive out the Chinese, in what would be known as the Forward Policy. Charges and countercharges of border violation and aggression were exchanged along the frontier. On September 9, a few days before his departure for the U.S., Janos Kadar of Hungary attempted to mediate the disputes between China and India, hoping to appeal to his friendly relations in both parties. Khruschev and Alexander Dubček

Alexander Dubcek

Alexander Dubček , also known as Dikita, was a Slovak politician and briefly leader of Czechoslovakia , famous for his attempt to reform the communist regime during the Prague Spring...

 of Czechoslovakia also appealed to China and India. However, China’s reaction to the Soviet, Hungarian, and Czechoslovakian appeal for "peaceful coexistence" with the West and India was not seen as encouraging; and the fallout of the tensions along the Himalayas

Himalayas

The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya for short, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau...

 caused worldwide speculation over the Warsaw Pact-Chinese alliance, which was based on common ideological, political, and military interests.

By the time the Sino-Indian border dispute developed into full fledged fighting in the 1962 Sino-Indian War

Sino-Indian War

The Sino-Indian War , also known as the Sino-Indian Border Conflict , was a war between China and India that occurred in 1962. A disputed Himalayan border was the main pretext for war, but other issues played a role. There had been a series of violent border incidents after the 1959 Tibetan...

, the alliance between the world's two leading communist powers was irreparably shattered. Although the Warsaw Pact nations backed China's October 1962 peace offer, urging Nehru to accept it, Albania's and Romania's offer to deliver MiG

Mig

-Industry:*MiG, now Mikoyan, a Russian aircraft corporation, formerly the Mikoyan-Gurevich Design Bureau*Metal inert gas welding or MIG welding, a type of welding using an electric arc and a shielding gas-Business and finance:...

 fighter planes to India sent and Sino-Albanian and Sino-Romanian relations into crisis. This also turned China against other Eastern European communist states. By the end of 1963, the Eastern Bloc and China were engaging in open polemic

Polemic

A polemic is a variety of arguments or controversies made against one opinion, doctrine, or person. Other variations of argument are debate and discussion...

s against each other, opening up a period of unhidden hostility between the former allies that lasted for the remainder of the Cold War era.

Africa

One of the first decolonized nations to request Eastern aid was the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Democratic Republic of the Congo

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a state located in Central Africa. It is the second largest country in Africa by area and the eleventh largest in the world...

, under Patrice Lumumba

Patrice Lumumba

Patrice Émery Lumumba was a Congolese independence leader and the first legally elected Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo after he helped win its independence from Belgium in June 1960. Only ten weeks later, Lumumba's government was deposed in a coup during the Congo Crisis...

. A large number of United Nations peacekeepers from NATO nations and other NATO allies had been in the Congo since independence was established from Belgium in 1960. The U.S. used them to shut down air traffic and prevent Eastern arms and troops from getting into the country. However, some Eastern weapons managed to get in from other countries. The peacekeepers decided to remove Lumumba and backed Colonel Joseph Mobutu in a coup in which Lumumba was killed. The Congolese crisis had the effect of alienating from both the West and the East some in the third world who saw the East as weak and impotent, and the West unethical and unscrupulous.

Culture and Media

During this period, Cold War themes first entered mainstream culture as a public preoccupation. The 1959 film On the Beach

On the Beach (1959 film)

On the Beach is a post-apocalyptic drama film based on Nevil Shute's 1957 novel of the same name. The film features Gregory Peck , Ava Gardner , Fred Astaire and Anthony Perkins...

, for example, depicted a gradually dying, post-apocalyptic world that remained after a nuclear Third World War.

James Bond

James Bond

James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...

 first appeared in a 1954; the films were loosely connected to the Cold War, but fans loved the beautiful women, exotic locations, tricky gadgets, and death-defying stunts, and probably paid less attention to the politics. Bond movies followed the political climate in depicting Soviets and "Red" Chinese.

Frederick Forsyth

Frederick Forsyth

Frederick Forsyth, CBE is an English author and occasional political commentator. He is best known for thrillers such as The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, The Fourth Protocol, The Dogs of War, The Devil's Alternative, The Fist of God, Icon, The Veteran, Avenger, The Afghan and The Cobra.-...

's formula spy novels sold in the hundreds of thousands. The Fourth Protocol, whose title refers to a series of conventions that, if broken, will lead to nuclear war and that are now all broken except for the fourth and last thread, was made into a major film starring Michael Caine

Michael Caine

Sir Michael Caine, CBE is an English actor. He won Academy Awards for best supporting actor in both Hannah and Her Sisters and The Cider House Rules ....

. The point of such novels—like that of American movies of the 1950s, such as My Son John, Kiss Me Deadly

Kiss Me Deadly

Kiss Me Deadly is a 1955 film noir drama produced and directed by Robert Aldrich starring Ralph Meeker. The screenplay was written by A.I. Bezzerides, based on the Mickey Spillane Mike Hammer mystery novel Kiss Me, Deadly. Kiss Me Deadly is often considered a classic of the noir genre. The film...

, and The Manchurian Candidate

The Manchurian Candidate

The Manchurian Candidate , by Richard Condon, is a political thriller novel about the son of a prominent US political family who is brainwashed into being an unwitting assassin for the Communist Party....

—is to vilify the "enemy within," the treacherous peace movement activists, and simple Labour Party voters who, by 1988, were marching against the Cold War.

See also

• History of the Soviet Union (1953–1964)
• History of the United States (1945–1964)
  History of the United States (1945–1964)
  For the United States, 1945 to 1964 was an era of economic growth and prosperity which saw the victorious powers of World War II confronting each other in the Cold War and the triumph of the Civil Rights Movement that ended Jim Crow segregation in the South....
  
  
• Timeline of Events in the Cold War
  Timeline of events in the Cold War
  -1945:*February 4: The Yalta Conference occurs, deciding the post-war status of Germany. The Allies of World War II divide Germany into four occupation zones. The Allied nations agree that free elections are to be held in all countries occupied by Nazi Germany...
  
  
• McCloy-Zorin Accords
  McCloy-Zorin Accords
  Conceived by Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, the 1961 McCloy-Zorin Accords between the USA and the Soviet Union established a foundation or "roadmap" for all future negotiations and international treaties with regard to nuclear and general and complete disarmament under effective...