# The Cold War The forty-year contest between the United States and the Soviet Union that divided the world after 1945: the Iron Curtain and containment, the Berlin crises, NATO and the Warsaw Pact, the crushed revolts in Hungary and Prague, the nuclear arms race and detente, and the fall of the Soviet bloc under Reagan. *This story parallel: The bomb spreads* *This story parallel: Communism: rise and fall* *This story part of: Russia, the USSR, and Ukraine* *This story parallel: NASA and the space age* *This story parallel: Covert operations, coups, and blowback* *This story parallel: The military-industrial complex and Pax Americana* *This story part of: Military and security* *The Nazi bargains: Paperclip and the recruitment of the enemy part of this story* *The space race: rivalry, rendezvous, and spying part of this story* *The Congo: from Leopold to the resource wars parallel this story* *Client dictators: the strongmen the powers kept part of this story* *The United Nations: peace, power, and its failures parallel this story* *The Free World's clients: the West's unfree allies part of this story* *Somaliland and Somalia: partition, collapse, and an unrecognized state parallel this story* *Ethiopia: the empire that was never colonized parallel this story* *Lancaster House: the room where the empire negotiated its exits parallel this story* *The passing of the torch: how the American century replaced the British one parallel this story* *The petrodollar order: the dollar without gold parallel this story* *Communism and the colonized: the Comintern and the anti-colonial generation parallel this story* *Hastings Banda: the Anglicized doctor who ruled Malawi parallel this story* *Moi's Kenya: the Western-backed one-party state parallel this story* *The cultural Cold War: the CIA and the Congress for Cultural Freedom part of this story* *Democracy promotion: the soft-power apparatus parallel this story* *Capital and the totalitarianisms: who funded Stalin and Hitler led to this story* *Princes of the Yen: Japan built, bubbled, and broken part of this story* *Occupation Japan keeps the controls parallel this story* *How the West supported the Nazis: finance, appeasement, and Cold War bargains continues this story* ## 5 March 1946 — 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. ## March 1947 — The Truman Doctrine and the policy of containment 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. ## April 1948 — The Marshall Plan rebuilds Western Europe 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. ## June 1948 — 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. ## April 1949 — 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. ## August 1949 — 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. ## October 1949 — 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. ## February 1950 — 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. ## 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953 — 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. ## May 1955 — 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. ## November 1956 — 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. ## May 1960 — 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. ## c. 1960 — The Sino-Soviet split fractures the communist world 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. ## 1961 — 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 ## August 1961 — 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. ## 1962 — Cuban Missile Crisis 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 ## August 1968 — 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. ## May 1972 — 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. ## 1 August 1975 — Helsinki Accords 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. ## 1979 — Soviet invasion of Afghanistan 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 ## 31 August 1980 — Solidarity rises in Poland 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. ## March 1983 — 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. ## September 1983 — 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. ## November 1983 — 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. ## December 1987 — 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. ## 1989 — Fall of the Berlin Wall 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 ## December 1989 — 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. ## October 1990 — 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. ## December 1991 — 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.