threads / conflict #94

29 newly added in the last 14 days mark read

1. 5 March 1946 new

   Churchill's Iron Curtain speech

   Winston Churchill declares that an iron curtain has descended across Europe, dividing the Soviet east from the free west. The phrase named the Cold War that would split the world for the next four decades.

2. March 1947 new

   The Truman Doctrine and the policy of containment

   also in 1947: the postwar order is built

   President Truman pledges American support to nations resisting communism, launching the strategy of containment that would guide US policy for the whole Cold War. It committed the United States to a global contest with the Soviet Union.

3. April 1948 new

   The Marshall Plan rebuilds Western Europe

   also in The passing of the torch: how the American century replaced the British one

   The United States pours billions of dollars into rebuilding war-torn Western Europe under the Marshall Plan, first proposed by Secretary of State George Marshall in 1947. Washington framed it as recovery aid; it also bound Western economies to the American orbit and was rejected by Stalin for the Soviet bloc. The plan drew the economic line of the Cold War.

4. June 1948 new

   The Berlin Blockade and Airlift

   The Soviet Union blockades West Berlin, and the Western allies keep the city alive with a massive airlift for nearly a year. It was the first great confrontation of the Cold War and cemented the division of Germany.

5. April 1949 new

   NATO is founded

   Twelve Western nations sign the North Atlantic Treaty, pledging that an attack on one is an attack on all. NATO tied the United States permanently to the defense of Western Europe and became the military anchor of the Western bloc for the rest of the Cold War.

6. August 1949 new

   The Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb

   The Soviet Union detonates its first atomic bomb, years earlier than many in Washington expected. The American monopoly on nuclear weapons was over, opening the arms race that would define the Cold War. Soviet espionage inside the US Manhattan Project is widely documented as having sped the effort.

7. October 1949 new

   Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War

   Mao Zedong proclaims the People's Republic of China after the Communists defeat the Nationalists, who flee to Taiwan. The world's most populous country joined the communist camp, alarming Washington and widening the Cold War from Europe into Asia.

8. February 1950 new

   McCarthyism and the American Red Scare

   Senator Joseph McCarthy claims to hold a list of communists inside the US government, fueling a national panic over subversion. Loyalty hearings and blacklists followed across government, Hollywood, and academia. Real Soviet espionage existed, but McCarthy's sweeping and often baseless accusations ruined many innocent careers before he was discredited in 1954.

9. 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953 new

   Korean War

   North Korea invades the South, drawing in UN forces led by the United States and then Chinese armies. The war kills around three million people and ends in an armistice near the original border, which still divides Korea.

10. May 1955 new

    The Warsaw Pact answers NATO

    The Soviet Union binds its Eastern European satellites into the Warsaw Pact, a military alliance to mirror NATO. Europe was now split into two armed camps facing each other across the Iron Curtain.

11. November 1956 new

    The Hungarian Uprising is crushed

    A popular revolt against Soviet control in Hungary is crushed by Red Army tanks. It showed the limits of the West's rhetoric of liberation and the iron grip Moscow held over its bloc.

12. May 1960 new

    The U-2 incident exposes American spy flights

    Soviet air defenses shoot down an American U-2 spy plane deep inside Soviet territory and capture its pilot, Francis Gary Powers. Washington first denied the mission, then was caught out when Moscow produced the pilot. The affair wrecked a planned Paris summit and hardened tensions.

13. c. 1960 new

    The Sino-Soviet split fractures the communist world

    also in Curriculum, programming, and propaganda

    Ideological and national rivalry drives Communist China and the Soviet Union apart, ending their alliance and by 1969 leading to armed border clashes. The split shattered the image of a single monolithic communist bloc and later opened the way for Nixon's opening to China.

14. 1961 new

    Bay of Pigs invasion fails

    The 1,500 men landed at the Bay of Pigs in southern Cuba on April 17, 1961 were destroyed within seventy-two hours by Castro's militia. Quigley calls the bungled CIA operation the most shameful event in US history since World War II.

    • As a result of these errors, the 1,500 men landed at the Bay of Pigs in southern Cuba on April 17, 1961 were destroyed in seventy-two hours by Castro's speedily mobilized and well-armed militia.

      Tragedy and Hope , p. 940-942
15. August 1961 new

    The Berlin Wall goes up

    East Germany seals off West Berlin with a wall of concrete and barbed wire to stop the flood of refugees fleeing to the West. The Berlin Wall became the physical symbol of a divided Europe and stood for twenty-eight years.

16. 1962 new

    Cuban Missile Crisis

    also in Hinges of history, JFK: the presidency and the assassination, Russia, the USSR, and Ukraine

    The Cuban Crisis of October 1962 brought the United States and Soviet Union to the edge of an unwanted war and revealed to both the need to ease tension, marking the end of the period begun in 1945.

    • the Cuban Crisis of October 1962, somewhat like the Fashoda Crisis of 1898, by bringing the United States and the Soviet Union to the edge of a war that neither wanted, revealed to both the mutual balance of error and the need to do something about it.

      Tragedy and Hope , p. 729-731
17. August 1968 new

    The Prague Spring is crushed

    Warsaw Pact troops invade Czechoslovakia to end its experiment in 'socialism with a human face'. The crushing of the Prague Spring confirmed that reform within the Soviet bloc would not be tolerated.

18. May 1972 new

    Detente and the SALT treaties

    Nixon and Brezhnev sign the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, opening an era of detente that eased tensions and capped the nuclear arms race. For a decade the superpowers sought coexistence rather than confrontation.

19. 1 August 1975 new

    Helsinki Accords

    also in State, law, and coercion, The law of nations

    Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, in which 35 states accepted postwar borders and committed to human rights principles. Dissidents across the Soviet bloc used its pledges against their governments.

20. 1979 new

    Soviet invasion of Afghanistan

    also in Covert operations, coups, and blowback

    KGB paramilitaries chased Hafizullah Amin through his Kabul palace as Soviet tanks reached their staging areas during the December 1979 invasion.

    • Disguised KGB paramilitaries were still chasing Hafizullah Amin through the hallways of his Kabul palace, Soviet tanks had barely reached their first staging areas

      Ghost Wars

    • On November 26, the Politburo secretly decided to send troops to Kabul, kill Amin, and impose a friendlier regime.

      Overthrow - Americas century of regime change from Hawaii

    • On Christmas Eve, thousands of Soviet troops marched over pontoon bridges across the Amu Darya river into Afghanistan, and others landed at the airport in Kabul.

      Overthrow - Americas century of regime change from Hawaii

    • When Russian troops invaded Afghanistan at the end of 1979

      The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers

    • the debilitating war in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989;

      The Grand Chessboard - American Primacy And Its Geostrategic

    • According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979

      Esoteric Hollywood II: More Sex, Cults and Symbols in Film

    • The Soviet Union condemned the American invasion, comparing it to “a daring cavalry attack of armed-to-the-teeth white 29 Grenada 1979-1984 settlers on a village of Redskins”.

      Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II , p. 275-277

    • Antonov transport planes loaded with Soviet airborne troops landed at Kabul’s international airport as darkness fell on Christmas Eve.

      Ghost Wars
21. 31 August 1980 new

    Solidarity rises in Poland

    also in Freedom movements: how the colonized won their independence

    Strikes at the Gdansk shipyard led to Solidarity, the first independent trade union in the Soviet bloc, under Lech Walesa. The government banned it and imposed martial law, but the movement survived underground. Its return in 1989 helped bring down communist rule in Poland.

22. March 1983 new

    Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative

    President Reagan announces the Strategic Defense Initiative, a plan for a space-based missile shield nicknamed 'Star Wars'. The costly renewed arms race strained the Soviet economy in the Cold War's final phase.

23. September 1983 new

    The shootdown of Korean Air Lines Flight 007

    Soviet fighters shoot down a Korean Air Lines passenger jet that had strayed into Soviet airspace, killing all 269 people aboard. Moscow claimed the plane was on a spy mission; the West condemned it as the massacre of civilians. The incident deepened East-West hostility during one of the tensest years of the Cold War.

24. November 1983 new

    The Able Archer nuclear scare

    A large NATO command exercise called Able Archer 83 rehearsed procedures for nuclear war. Some Soviet leaders, already fearing a surprise Western first strike, reportedly mistook the drill for real preparations and placed forces on alert. Historians still debate how close the scare came to catastrophe, but it is often cited as a dangerous misreading that sobered leaders on both sides.

25. December 1987 new

    The INF Treaty scraps a class of nuclear missiles

    Reagan and Gorbachev sign the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the first agreement to eliminate an entire class of nuclear weapons. Backed by intrusive on-site inspections, it marked a real thaw and showed that Gorbachev's new thinking could translate into arms cuts.

26. 1989 new

    Fall of the Berlin Wall

    also in Hinges of history, Russia, the USSR, and Ukraine

    The Berlin Wall, the greatest symbol of the Cold War, began to crack. The chief of the CIA's Soviet division watched it happen on CNN, with no worthwhile spies left to report from Moscow.

    • When it began to crack one night in November 1989, the chief of the Soviet division of the clandestine service, Milt Bearden, sat speechless at headquarters, staring at CNN.

      Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
27. December 1989 new

    The Malta Summit declares the Cold War over

    Weeks after the Berlin Wall fell, George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev meet at Malta and declare the Cold War at an end. Forty years of superpower confrontation gave way, briefly, to talk of a new world order.

28. October 1990 new

    German reunification

    Less than a year after the Wall fell, East and West Germany reunite into a single state within NATO. Reunification undid the central division of postwar Europe and confirmed that the Soviet grip on the East had ended.

29. December 1991 new

    The collapse of the Soviet Union

    After a failed hardline coup in August, the Soviet republics break away one by one, and on 25 December Gorbachev resigns as the red flag comes down over the Kremlin. The Soviet Union formally dissolves into fifteen independent states. The event ended the Cold War outright and left the United States as the world's sole superpower.