The Cold War soon spread from Europe to the rest of the world. In 1949, the victory of the Chinese Communists in the Chinese civil war brought a new Communist regime and intensified American fears about the spread of communism. Shortly thereafter, the Korean War turned the Cold War into a worldwide struggle, eventually leading to a system of military alliances around the globe.
THE KOREAN WAR The removal of Korea from Japanese control had been one of the stated objectives of the Allies in World War II, and on the eve of the Japanese surrender in August 1945, the Soviet Union and the United States agreed to divide the country into two separate occupation zones at the 38th parallel. They originally planned to hold national elections after the restoration of peace to reunify Korea under an independent government. But as U.S.-Soviet relations deteriorated, two separate governments emerged in Korea, a Communist one in the north (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or North Korea) and an anti-Communist one (Republic of Korea or South Korea) in the south.Tensions between the two governments ran high along the dividing line, and on June 25, 1950, with the apparent approval of Stalin, North Korean troops invaded South Korea. The Americans, seeing this as yet another example of Communist aggression and expansion, gained the support of the United Nations and intervened by sending American troops to turn back the invasion. By September, United Nations forces (mostly Americans and South Koreans) under the command of General Douglas MacArthur marched northward across the 38th parallel with the aim of unifying Korea under a single non-Communist government. But Mao Zedong (mow zee-DAHNG) (1893-1976), the leader of Communist China, sent Chinese forces into the fray and forced MacArthur’s troops back to South Korea.
To many Americans, the Chinese intervention in Korea was clear evidence that China intended to promote communism throughout Asia. In fact, China’s decision to enter the war was probably motivated in large part by the fear that hostile U.S. forces might be stationed on the Chinese frontier. When two more years of fighting failed to produce a conclusive victory, an armistice was finally signed in 1953. The boundary line between North and South Korea remained roughly at the 38th parallel. To many Americans, the policy of containing communism had succeeded in Asia, just as it had earlier in Europe, though at the cost of losing more than 33,000 men in the war. The Chinese invasion also hardened Western attitudes against the new Chinese government and led to China’s isolation from the major capitalist powers for two decades. As a result, China was forced to rely almost entirely on the Soviet Union, with which it had signed a pact of friendship and cooperation in early 1950.
THE FIRST VIETNAM WAR A struggle began in French Indochina after World War II, when the Indochinese Communist Party led by Ho Chi Minh (HOH CHEE MIN) (1890-1969) formed a multiparty nationalist alliance called the Vietminh (vee-et-MIN) Front and seized power in northern and central Vietnam. When the negotiations between Ho’s government and the returning French collapsed, war broke out in December 1946.For three years, the Vietminh gradually increased in size and effectiveness. What had begun as an anti-colonial struggle by Ho Chi Minh’s Vietminh Front against the French soon became entangled in the Cold War as both the United States and the new Communist government in China began to intervene in the conflict in the early 1950s. China began to provide military assistance to the Vietminh to protect its own borders from hostile forces. The Americans supported the French but pressured the French government to prepare for an eventual transition to a non-Communist government in Vietnam.
At the Geneva Conference in 1954, with the French public tired of fighting the “dirty war” in Indochina, the French agreed to a peace settlement with Ho Chi Minh’s Vietminh. Vietnam was temporarily divided into a northern Communist half (known as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and a non-Communist southern half based in Saigon (sy-GAHN) (known eventually as the Republic of Vietnam). Elections were to be held in two years to create a unified government.
ESCALATION OF THE COLD WAR The Korean and Vietnamese experiences seemed to confirm American fears of Communist expansion and reinforced American determination to contain Soviet power. In the mid-1950s, the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969) adopted a policy of massive retaliation, which advocated the full use of American nuclear bombs to counteract even a Soviet ground attack in Europe, although there was no evidence that Stalin ever planned such an attack. Meanwhile, American military alliances were extended around the world. Eisenhower claimed, “The freedom we cherish and defend in Europe and in the Americas is no different from the freedom that is imperiled in Asia.” The Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) of Great Britain, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey, and the United States was intended to prevent the Soviet Union from expanding at the expense of its southern neighbors. In addition, Australia, Britain, France, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, and the United States formed the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). By the mid-1950s, the United States found itself allied militarily with forty-two states around the world.Despite the escalation of the Cold War, hopes for a new era of peaceful coexistence also appeared. The death of Stalin in 1953 caused some people in the West to think that the new Soviet leadership might adopt more flexible policies. But this optimism proved premature. A summit conference at Geneva in 1955 between President Eisenhower and Nikolai Bulganin (nyik-uh-LY bool-GAN-yin) (1895-1975), then the leader of the Soviet government, produced no real benefits. A year later, all talk of rapprochement (ra-prohsh-MAHN) between East and West temporarily ceased when the Soviet Union used its armed forces to crush Hungary’s attempt to assert its independence from Soviet control.
ANOTHER BERLIN CRISIS A crisis over Berlin also added to the tension in the late 1950s. In August 1957, the Soviet Union had launched its first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and, shortly thereafter, Sputnik I, the first space satellite. Fueled by partisan political debate, fears of a “missile gap” between the United States and the Soviet Union seized the American public. Nikita Khrushchev (nuh-KEE-tuh KHROOSH-chawf) (1894-1971), the new leader of the Soviet Union, attempted to take advantage of the American frenzy over missiles to solve the problem of West Berlin. Khrushchev had said that Berlin was like “the testicles of the West: every time I want to make the West scream, I squeeze on Berlin.”4 West Berlin had remained a “Western island” of prosperity in the midst of the relatively poverty-stricken East Germany. Many East Germans also managed to escape East Germany by fleeing through West Berlin.In November 1958, Khrushchev announced that unless the West removed its forces from West Berlin within six months, he would turn over control of the access routes to Berlin to the East Germans. Unwilling to accept an ultimatum that would have abandoned West Berlin to the Communists, Eisenhower and the West stood firm, and Khrushchev eventually backed down.
The crisis was revived when John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) became the American president. During a summit meeting in Vienna in June 1961, Khrushchev threatened Kennedy with another six-month ultimatum over West Berlin. Kennedy left Vienna convinced of the need to deal firmly with the Soviet Union, and Khrushchev was forced once again to back off. Frustrated, Khrushchev conspired with Walter Ulbricht, the East German leader, to build a wall around West Berlin to cut off the flow of refugees to the West. On August 13, 1961, East German workers under military supervision began the construction of the Berlin Wall. Within a few months, more than 100 miles of wall, topped by numerous watchtowers, surrounded West Berlin. Since access from West Germany into West Berlin was still permitted, the Americans acquiesced and accepted the wall’s existence. The Berlin Wall became a powerful symbol of a divided Europe. And Khrushchev, determined to achieve some foreign policy success, soon embarked on an even more dangerous venture in Cuba.
THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS The Cold War confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union reached frightening levels during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In 1959, a left-wing revolutionary named Fidel Castro (fee-DELL KASStroh) (b. 1927) had overthrown the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista (FULL-jen-see-oh bah-TEES-tuh) (1901-1973) and established a Soviet-supported totalitarian regime. In 1961, an American-supported attempt to invade Cuba via the Bay of Pigs and overthrow Castro’s regime ended in utter failure. The next year, in 1962, the Soviet Union decided to station nuclear missiles in Cuba. The United States was not prepared to allow nuclear weapons within such close striking distance of the American mainland, even though it had placed nuclear weapons in Turkey within easy range of the Soviet Union. Khrushchev was quick to point out that “your rockets are in Turkey. You are worried by Cuba... because it is 90 miles from the American coast. But Turkey is next to US.”5 When U.S. intelligence discovered that a Soviet fleet carrying missiles was heading to Cuba, President Kennedy decided to blockade Cuba and prevent the fleet from reaching its destination. This approach to the problem had the benefit of delaying confrontation and giving the two sides time to find a peaceful solution (see the box above). Khrushchev agreed to turn back the fleet if Kennedy pledged not to invade Cuba. In a conciliatory letter to Kennedy, Khrushchev wrote:We and you ought not to pull on the ends of the rope in which you have tied the knot of war, because the more the two of us pull, the tighter that knot will be tied. And a moment may come when that knot will be tied too tight that even he who tied it will not have the strength to untie it.... Let us not only relax the forces pulling on the ends of the rope, let us take measures to untie that knot. We are ready for this.6
The Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world frighteningly close to nuclear war. Indeed, in 1992, a high-ranking Soviet officer revealed that short-range rockets armed with nuclear devices would have been used against American troops if the United States had invaded Cuba, an option that President Kennedy fortunately had rejected. The intense feeling that the world might have been annihilated in a few days had a profound influence on both sides. A hotline communication system between Moscow and Washington was installed in 1963 to expedite rapid communication between the two superpowers in a time of crisis. In the same year, the two powers agreed to ban nuclear tests in the atmosphere, a step that served to lessen the tensions between the two nations.