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cold war

The Cold War was the struggle between the First World and the Second World to win over the hearts and minds of the Third World.

To defeat the Fascists in WWII, the capitalist democracies (that came to known as the First World) joined forces with their other enemy, the Soviet Union (which with other, later-formed communist states came to be known as the Second World). While the need for a military alliance became moot upon the defeat of the Fascists, the animosity between the First and Second worlds remained. To strengthen their political and economic standing in the world, the communist countries sought to convert other nations (then referred to as the Third World) to communism. The First World sought to stop the spread of communism to retain its prowess. The struggle for the allegiances of the Third World (later renamed on their own initiative as the Non-Aligned Movement) after WWII and before the collapse of the Soviet Union is called The Cold War.

The Marshall Plan, Truman Doctrine, nuclear proliferation and the “wars” in Korea and Viet Nam were merely aspects of the Cold War. Each side’s strategy was to increase its number of aligned nations while reducing the other’s in an attempt to achieve world dominance. The tactics employed ranged from monetary incentives to the assassination of leaders of the Non-Aligned countries. The break-up of the Soviet Union, and the democratization of Russia, has been viewed as a tacit admission that world-communism is not practicable. The cessation of active competition for the allegiances of the Non-Aligned nations constituted the end of the Cold War period in history.

The Cold War (c. 1945-1991) was the open yet restricted rivalry that developed after World War II between groups of nations practicing different ideologies and political systems. On one side was the Soviet Union and its allies, often referred to as the Eastern bloc. On the other side were the United States and its allies, usually referred to as the Western bloc. The struggle was called the Cold War because it did not actually lead to direct fighting between the superpowers (a "hot" war) on a wide scale.

While some believe that the term was first used by the American financier and presidential adviser Bernard Baruch during a Congressional debate in 1947, the actual inventer of the term was author George Orwell.

In an essay titled "You and the Atom Bomb" on October 19, 1945, Orwell wrote:

"''We may be heading not for general breakdown but for an epoch as horribly stable as the slave empires of antiquity. James Burnham's theory has been much discussed, but few people have yet considered its ideological implications--this is, the kind of world-view, the kind of beliefs, and the social structure that would probably prevail in a State which was once unconquerable and in a permanent state of 'cold war' with its neighbours.''"

The Cold War was characterized by mutual distrust, suspicion, and misunderstandings by both the United States and the Soviet Union, and their allies. At times, these conditions increased the likelihood of a third world war, which was widely considered to be probably escalate to nuclear war. The United States accused the Soviet Union of seeking to expand their version of communism throughout the world. The Soviets, meanwhile, charged the United States with practicing imperialism and attempting to stop revolutionary activity in other countries.

The Cold War is usually periodized roughly as having occurred from the end of World War II until the (*****) in the early 1990s. The Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan were some of the occasions when the tension between those two ideologies took the form of an armed conflict, but much of it was conducted by or against surrogates and through spies and traitors who were working undercover. In those conflicts, the major powers operated in good part by arming or funding surrogates, a development that lessened direct impact on the populations of the major powers.

In the strategic conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union a major arena was the strategy of technology (see also Deterrence theory). It also involved covert conflict through acts of espionage. Beyond the actual killing of intelligence service personnel, the Cold War was heavily manifest in the concerns about nuclear weapons. It was questioned as to whether wars could really be deterred by the mere existence of nuclear weapons. Another manifestation was in the propaganda wars between the United States and the USSR. Indeed, it was far from certain that a global nuclear war wouldn't result from smaller regional wars, which heightened the level of concern for each conflict. This tension shaped the lives of people around the world almost as much as the actual fighting did.

One major hotspot of conflict was Germany, particularly the city of Berlin. Arguably, the most vivid symbol of the Cold War was the Berlin Wall. The Wall isolated West Berlin (the portion of the city controlled by West Germany and the Allies) from East Berlin and the territory of East Germany, which completely surrounded it.

Historiography

There have been three distinct periods in the western study of the Cold War. For more than a decade after the end of World War II, few American historians saw any reason to challenge the official US interpretation of the beginning of the Cold War: That the breakdown of relations was a direct result of Stalin's violation of the Yalta accords, the imposition of Soviet-dominated governments on an unwilling Eastern Europe, and aggressive Soviet expansionism.

However, later historians, especially William Appleman Williams in his 1959 The Tragedy of American Diplomacy and Walter LaFeber in his 1967 America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-1968, articulated an overriding concern: US commitment to maintaining an "open door" for American trade in world markets. Some revisionist historians have argued that US provocations and imperial ambitions were at least equally to blame, if not more so. In short, historians have disagreed as to who was responsible for the breakdown of US-Soviet relations and whether the conflict between the two superpowers was inevitable. This revisionist approach reached its height during the Vietnam War when many began to view the American and Soviet empires as morally comparable.

In the later years of the Cold War, there were attempts to forge a post-revisionist synthesis by historians, and since the end of the Cold War, the post-revisionist school has come to dominate. Prominent post-revisionist historians include John Lewis Gaddis and Robert Grogin. Rather than attributing the beginning of the Cold War to either superpower, post-revisionist historians focused on mutual misperception, mutual reactivity, and shared responsibility between the superpowers. Borrowing from the realist school of international relations, the post-revisionists essentially accepted US European policy in Europe, such as US aid to Greece in 1947 and the Marshall Plan.

According to this synthesis, "Communistic activity" was not the root of the difficulties of Western Europe, but rather it was the disruptive effects of the war on the economic, political, and social structure of Europe. In addition, the Marshall Plan rebuilt a functioning Western economic system, thwarting the electoral appeal of the radical left. For Europe, economic aid ended the dollar shortage and stimulated private investment for postwar reconstruction. For the United States, the plan spared it from a crisis of over-production and maintained demand for American exports. The NATO alliance would serve to integrate Western Europe into the system of mutual defense pacts, thus providing safeguards against subversion or neutrality in the bloc. Rejecting the assumption that communism was an international monolith with aggressive designs on the "free world", the post-revisionist school nevertheless accepts US policy in Europe as a necessary reaction to cope with instability in Europe, which threatened to drastically alter the balance of power in a manner favorable to the USSR and devastate the Western economic and political system.

The role of intelligence agencies

The armies of the countries involved rarely had much participation in the Cold War; the war was primarily fought by intelligence agencies like the CIA (United States), MI6 (United Kingdom), BND (West Germany), Stasi (East Germany) and the KGB (USSR). The major world powers never entered armed conflict directly against each other.

The agent war of mutual espionage both of civilian and military targets may have caused most casualties of the Cold War. Agents were sent both to the east and the west, and spies were also recruited on location or forced into service. When detected, they were either killed instantly or exchanged for other agents. Spy airplanes and other surveillance aircraft were likewise regularly shot down upon detection.

Many observers of varied political persuasions today think that the United States acted in ways their own Constitution and national sentiment would not support (such as fighting undeclared wars without the explicit approval of Congress). Leaders in the U.S., both political and military, commonly cite the perceived threat to their security as justification for their actions. In many areas of the world, the local populations feel they were manipulated and abused by both powers. Much of the anti-Americanism in countries such as Afghanistan is attributed to the actions by the U.S. During the Soviet conflict with Afghanistan, the U.S. funded and armed the Mujahedeen in their fight to repel the Soviet occupation, but pulled out and left them to fend for themselves once the USSR had pulled out of the region.

Related articles

- Military decorations of the Cold War
- Canada in the Cold War

ar:حرب باردة
cy:Y Rhyfel Oer
de:Kalter Krieg
eo:Malvarma Milito
es:Guerra Fría
fi:Kylmä sota
fr:Guerre froide
he:המלחמה הקרה
hr:Hladni rat
it:Guerra Fredda


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cold
Cold can have the following meanings:

- Low temperatures, and/or the absence of heat
- Common cold, an infectious disease of the nose and throat
- Cold (band), a hard rock band
- Abbrevation for Computer Output to Laser Disk, see Enterprise Report Management (ERM)
- A James Bond novel, COLD by John Gardner

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "cold".  

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