Cold War (1953-1962)
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| This article is part of the series Cold War |
| 1947-1953 |
| 1953-1962 |
| 1962-1991 |
New leadership in both superpowers
When President Eisenhower was sworn in as president in 1953, the Democrats lost their twenty year control of the US presidency. Under Eisenhower the United States' Cold War policy remained essentially unchanged. While a thorough rethinking of foreign policy known as "Operation Solarium" was launched, most of the ideas such as a thoroughgoing "rollback of Communism" and "liberation" of Eastern Europe were soon found to be unworkable. The basic focus on "containment" remained.
However, while the change from Truman to Eisenhower was a moderate one, seeing a continuation of most foreign and US policies, the change in the Soviet Union was immense. After the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev was named First Secretary of the Communist Party.
During a period of collective leadership, Khrushchev gradually consolidated his hold on power. At a speech to the closed session of the Twentieth Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, February 25, 1956, Nikita Khrushchev shocked his listeners by denouncing Stalin's crimes, unnecessary use of mass repression and his personality cult.1 Although the contents of the speech were secret, it was leaked to outsiders, thus shocking both Soviet allies and the West soon afterwards. Khrushchev also attacked the crimes committed by Stalin's closest associates. He was later named premier of the Soviet Union in 1958.
The impact on Soviet politics was immense. The speech stripped Khrushchev's remaining Stalinist rivals of their legitimacy in a single shot, dramatically boosting the First Party Secretary's power domestically. He was then able to ease restrictions, freeing some dissidents and initiating economic policies that emphasized commercial goods rather than coal and steel production.
"Massive retaliation" and "brinksmanship"
Conflicting objectives
When Eisenhower entered office in 1953, the new president 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. The most prominent of the doctrines to emerge out of this goal was "massive retaliation," which Secretary of State John Foster Dulles announced early in 1954. Eschewing the costly, conventional ground forces of the Truman administration, and wielding the vast superiority of the US nuclear 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 $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.2 With Treasury Secretary George Humphrey leading the way, and reinforced by pressure from Sen. Taft 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 savings. 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. Nothing, not even communism, seemed to obsess Eisenhower as much as his fear that capitalists would ruin their system by spending too much on defense. "Unless we can put things in the hands of people who are starving to death we can never lick Communism", he told his cabinet. Moreover, Ike feared that a bloated military-industrial complex (a term he popularized) "would either drive US to war— or into some form of dictatorial government" and perhaps even force "US to initiate war at the most propitious moment." On one occasion after thwarting the demands of private corporations and Congress for more defense spending, the former commander of the greatest amphibious invasion force in history privately exclaimed, "God help the nation when it has a President who doesn't know as much about the military as I do."3
In the meantime, however, US attention was being diverted elsewhere in Asia, especially due to domestic influence on foreign policy. The continuing pressure from the "China lobby" or "Asia firsters," who had insisted on active efforts to restore Chiang Kai-shek was still a strong domestic influence on foreign policy. In April 1953, for example, Sen. Robert Taft and other powerful Congressional Republicans suddenly called for the immediate appointments to the top chiefs the Pentagon, particularly with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Omar Bradley in mind. To the so-called "China lobby" and Taft, he 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. Then, there was the problem was the ever-ubiquitous McCarthyism. But after the mid-term elections in 1954 — and censure by the Senate — the influence of the Wisconsin demagogue ebbed after his witch-hunt against the Army.
Eisenhower administration strategy
The new 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 sunroom where the president conducted secret discussions. Although it was untraditional 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 a thoroughgoing economic response to the Soviet political-military-ideological challenge to Western hegemony: propaganda campaigns, and psychological warfare. The third option was strongly rejected.
Eisenhower and the group (consisting of Allen Dulles, Walter Bedell Smith, C.D. Jackson, and Robert Cutler) 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.
The Eisenhower administration viewed the atomic bomb as an integral part of US defense, hoping that they will bolster the relative capabilities of the US vis-ŕ-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 vis-ŕ-vis the Soviets while reducing costs. By wielding the nation's huge 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 US superiority, one additional nuclear weapon was produced each day. The administration also exploited new technology. In 1955 the eight-engined B-52 bomber, the first true jet bomber designed to carry nuclear weapons, was developed.
McCarthyism
For details see the main article McCarthyism.
Another important strand in American politics of this period was McCarthyism. Named after Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy this was a period of intense anti-communism which lasted from 1948 to about 1956. The government of the United States actively persecuted the Communist Party USA, its leadership, and others suspected of being communists. McCarthy's anticommunist crusade faltered in 1954 as his hearings were televised, for the first time, allowing the public and press to view firsthand his bullying tactics. The press also started to run stories about how McCarthy ruined many people's lives with accusations that were not supported by any evidence in some cases.
Europe and the founding of the Warsaw Pact
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 between the two camps was set up in central Europe. In the north Finland, while remaining capitalist and democratic, agreed to be neutral in the Cold War. In the South Yugoslavia, while communist, refused to bow to the Soviet Union and also insisted upon neutrality. By joint agreement in 1955 Austria, which had been divided by occupying powers since the war, was made neutral.
The crucial sticking point was still Germany after the Allies merged their occupation zones to form the Federal Republic of Germany which became sovereign in 1955. In response Soviets declared their section, the German Democratic Republic also an independent nation. Neither side acknowledged the division, however, and on the surface both maintained a commitment to a united Germany.
Germany was such 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.
The issue of Germany had been left unresolved. While the Soviets and Americans met and agreed to turn Austria into a neutral buffer area, neither side felt they could safely compromise on Germany.
An important problem for the Soviets developed, however, as ten of thousands of East Germans were fleeing to West. To stabilize his European position, Khrushchev created the Warsaw Pact in 1955 (to counter West German rearmament) and built the Berlin Wall in 1961 (to stop the Germans from leaving the communist East). The Warsaw Pact was formed by the Soviets to counter NATO. The Berlin Wall, however, took a great toll on the international image of the Soviet Union.
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. So, both the Soviets and the United States maintained large numbers of troops and nuclear weapons in Europe.
Mutually Assured Destruction
An important part of the developing stability was based on the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction. While the Soviets had had atomic weapons since 1949 it took well into the 1950s for them to reach parity with the United States. The Americans developed the hydrogen bomb. Nikita Khrushchev later increased Soviet power by developing a hydrogen bomb, and in 1957, by launching the first earth satellite. New methods of delivery such as submarines and ICBM meant that both superpowers could easily devastate the other, even after a first strike by the opposition.
This made leaders on both sides extremely reluctant to take risks, fearing that some spark in Berlin could ignite a war that could wipe out all of human civilization. Because of the unthinkable horror of all out war the United States and Soviet Union pursued different avenues to try to advance their causes. These included a great variety of areas such as athletics, with the Olympics becoming a battleground between ideologies as well as athletes. The two competed culturally supporting pianists and movie directors.
One of the most important forms of non-violent competition was the space race. The Soviets jumped out to an early lead in 1957 with the launching of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite. They followed this up with the first manned flight. The success of the Soviet space program 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 now hit anywhere on the planet.
The Americans soon had a space program of their own but remained behind the Soviets until the mid-1960s. American President John F. Kennedy launched an unprecedented effort when he promised 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. The mid-Cold War saw a series of shocking spy scandals in the west, most notably the Cambridge Five. The Soviets also saw several high profile defections to the west. Funding for the KGB, CIA and lesser organizations such as MI6 and the Stasi increased greatly as they spread around the world.
The rise of the Third World arena of conflict
Decolonization and the Cold War
The Korean War 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 would become an ever-important arena of superpower competition.
The Eisenhower administration adjusted U.S. policy to the impact of decolonization. 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 had already rebuilt a functioning Western economic system, thwarting the electoral appeal of the radical left. Now that 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 was ready to focus on other regions.
Just as Communist activities were not the root of the difficulties of Western Europe, but rather the root was the disruptive effect of the war on European society, they were not at the root of Western difficulties in the emerging nations. The combined effects of two great European wars had weakened the political and or economic domination of Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East by European powers. This led to a series of waves of African and Asian decolonization following the Second World War, a world that had been dominated for over a century by Western imperialist powers was now transformed into a pluralistic world of emerging African, Middle Eastern, and Asian nations; and of surging resistance to "Yankee imperialism" in Latin America. With the newly emerging nations of Africa and Asia entering the fold in the two decades after 1945, the world was becoming far more pluralistic.
The Cold War started placing immense pressure on developing nations to align with one of the superpower lead factions. Both superpowers promised substantial financial, military, and diplomatic aid in exchange for an alliance. The superpowers were also willing to overlook issues like corruption and human rights abuses when making these deals. When an allied government was threatened, the superpowers were also prepared to intervene.
In such an international setting, the Soviet Union relished in its role as the leader of the "anti-imperialist" camp, winning great favor in the Third World for being a stauncher opponent of colonialism than many independent nations in Africa and Asia; and it did not go unnoticed in the Third World that the so-called "free world" consisted by and large of North Atlantic imperialist powers. Khrushchev broadened Moscow's policy by establishing new relations with India and other key non-aligned, noncommunist states throughout the Third World.
In an exercise of the new "rollback" polices, acting on the doctrines of Dulles, Eisenhower thwarted Soviet intervention wielding US nuclear superiority and used the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to overthrow unfriendly governments. In the Arab world, the focus was pan-Arab nationalism. US companies had already invested heavily in the region; and since the region contained the world's largest oil reserves, the US was concerned about the stability and friendliness of the Arab regimes in the area, upon which the health of the US economy grew to depend.
"Defense pacts" in the Third World
The Eisenhower administration attempted to formalize its alliance system through a series of pacts. Its East Asian allies, Australia and New Zealand were joined into ASEAN while friends in Latin America were placed in the Organization of American States. None of these groupings were as successful as NATO had been in Europe.
A patrician, visceral anticommunist closely tied to the nation's financial establishment, John Foster Dulles was preoccupied with communism's challenge to US corporate power in the Third World. Dulles intensified the 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 that were modeled after NATO (though far weaker). Dulles initiated the Manila Conference in 1954, which resulted in the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (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 (CENTO), uniting the so-called northern tier countries of the Middle East—Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan—in a defense organization.
Many Third World nations, however, did not want to align themselves with either of the superpowers, so the US formed the Non-Aligned Movement. Lead by Nehru of India, Nasser of Egypt and Tito of Yugoslavia it attempted to unite the third world against what was seen as imperialism by both the East and the West.
Soviet "influence" and the problem of rising nationalisms in the Third World
Dulles, along with most US foreign policy-makers of the era, failed to distinguish indigenous Third World social revolutionaries and nationalists from Soviet influence. Ironically the Dulles before the publication of his April 1950 War or Peace— the Dulles of War, Peace, and Change (1939)— could do so. In 1938 he had called Mao Zedong, for instance, an "agrarian reformer," and during World War II he had deemed Mao's followers "the so called 'Red Army faction.'" 5 But he no longer recognized the indigenous roots of the Chinese Communist Party by 1950. In War or Peace, an influential work denouncing the "containment" 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 was seeking and we risked war to avert."6
Behind the scenes, Dulles could explain his policies by giving hard-headed geopolitical reasons. But publicly, he used the moral and religious reasons that he believed Americans preferred to hear, even though he was often laughed at by observers at home and overseas for mouthing platitudes.
Two of the leading figures of the interwar and early Cold War period who viewed international relations from a realist perspective, diplomat George Kennan and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, were troubled by Dulles' moralism and the crude way he analyzed Soviet behavior. Kennan rejected the point 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 were essentially compatible with those of the Eisenhower-Dulles foreign policy. The assumptions of Paul Nitze's National Security Council 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." [1] (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, 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 quite small, considering that the company's earnings were ten times greater than its expenses.7 Meanwhile Iran suffered from abject poverty and half of all newborns died at birth.
Iranian nationalists demanded a higher share of the company's earnings. In response, the AIOC replied that it had a binding agreement with the Shah until 1993, and collaborated with 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 and replaced by nationalist Mohammed Mossadegh. Later that year the new prime minister nationalized his nation's British-owned oil wells. Thus, the United States reacted with alarm as it watched Mossadegh, the nationalist prime minister of Iran, begin to resist the neocolonial presence of Western corporations in his nation.
As the Iranians moved toward seizing the reserves, the Truman administration tried to mediate. Later, the Eisenhower administration, convinced that Iran was developing Communist ties, used the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), joining forces with Iran's military leaders to overthrow Iran's government. To replace Mossadegh, the US favored elevating the young Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, from his position as that of a constitutional monarch to that of an absolute ruler. In return, the Shah allowed US companies to share in the development of his nation's reserves.
According to CIA documents finally made public in 2000, the US provided guns, trucks, armored cars, and radio communications in the CIA-assisted 1953 coup, which subjected Iranians to over a generation of rule by the Shah's state of terror and secret police.8 With Mossadeq out of the way, oil profits were then divided between the Shah's regime and a new international consortium; in turn the British were awarded 40% of the country's oil revenues, five US firms (Gulf, Socony Vacuum, Standard Oil of California, Standard Oil of New Jersey, and Texaco) won another 40%, and the rest went to Royal Dutch Shell and French Petroleum.9
Interestingly enough, since the turn of the century the United States had been trying to get into the Iranian oil fields only to encounter still British competition. Now the breakthrough for the US was made possible by ties to the Shah and under the guidance of the State Department official Herbert Hoover, Jr., who had gained a great deal of experience in the complexities of the international oil problem as a private businessman.
Popular anger in Iran, seething and repressed for a generation, eventually culminated in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which led to a hostage crisis. Secretary of State Madeline Albright apologized in 2000 for the '53 CIA role, stating (perhaps the obvious): "...it is easy to see now why so many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs."10
Latin America
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The Eisenhower-Dulles approach did not create, but heighten, the use of covert means, specifically the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), to overthrow unfriendly governments in the Third World.
However, the pattern of US intervention predated the Cold War. Since the Spanish American War in 1898, interventions against rebellions in Cuba and the Philippines were followed by the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine in 1904, when Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed that that the US assume the role of policeman to thwart changes to the status quo and upheavals in the Caribbean area. At the height of the Mexican Revolution roughly a decade later, US President Woodrow Wilson gave the use of economic and military force against Mexico a humanitarian and liberal rationale. Meanwhile, the scope of US investment continued to grow in the region.
Throughout much of Latin America, reactionary oligarchies ruled through their alliances with the military elite and United States. Although the nature of the US role in the region was established many years before the Cold War, it gave US interventionism a new ideological tinge.
But by the mid-20th century, however, much of the region passed through a higher state of economic development, which bolstered the power and ranks of the lower classes, and left calls for social change and political inclusion more pronounced, thus posing a challenge to US domination of the region's economies and politics.
The US acted as a barrier not only to socialist revolution, but also moderate social reform. The US targeted populist and nationalist governments. The CIA would overthrow other governments suspected of turning procommunist, such as Guatemala in 1954 under Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. Arbenz was ousted shortly after he had redistributed 178,000 acres (720 km²) of United Fruit Company land in Guatemala. 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 fell to one of the continent's most brutal military dictatorships for decades to come.
After the 1954 CIA-led coup that overthrew liberal nationalist reformer Arbenz in Guatemala, future Latin American revolutionaries would shift to guerrilla tactics. Arbenz, a moderate reformer and an elected president, fell when his military had deserted him. Since then, future Latin American social revolutionaries, most notably Fidel Castro and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua would make 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 marines, or a cruder invasion scheme like the Bay of Pigs Invasion.
Indochina
The American intervention with the greatest ramifications was that in Indochina. Between 1954 and 1961 the administration dispatched economic aid and 695 military advisers to South Vietnam, which was battling the National Liberation Front guerrillas, which drew their ranks from the South Vietnamese working class and peasantry. South Vietnam would later be absorbed by its Communist counterpart. Vietnam remains one of the world's five remaining Communist states.
The Suez Crisis and the Middle East
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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 and Russia had traditionally had great influence in Turkey and Iran. The area also had vast reserves of oil, not crucial for either superpower in the 1950s, but essential for the rapidly rebuilding American allies in Europe and Japan.
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 Soviet response was to try to hopscotch this line and seek influence in states such as Syria and Egypt. 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 forced out by General Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1956, when he nationalized the Suez Canal.
Eisenhower had to force Britain and France to retreat from a badly planned invasion with Israel that was launched to regain control of the canal from Egypt— a sign that the interest of the United States in the Middle East was much more than its strong support of Israel. While the Americans were forced to operate covertly, so as not to embarrass their allies, Khrushchev made loud threats against the "imperialists," and worked to portray himself as the defender of the Third World. The true hero to emerge, however, was Nasser who was lauded around the globe, but especially in the Arab world. While both superpowers courted Nasser the Americans baled at funding the massive Aswan High Dam project. The Soviets happily agreed, however, and signed a treaty of friendship and cooperation with the Egyptians.
The American offensive in the Third World had two short-run successes in installing friendly regimes in Guatemala and Iran, but it failed to install pro-US regimes that would be enduring and stable. Some setbacks were evident even in the 1950s. In particular, the first strain among the NATO alliance shattered the concept of the West as a united monolith.
Thus, the Suez stalemate was a turning point heralding an ever-growing rift between the Atlantic Cold War allies over US hegemony, which was becoming far less of a united monolith than it was in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. The West Europeans, with the exclusion of the British until 1971, also developed their own nuclear forces as well as an economy Common Market to be less dependent on Washington. Such rifts mirror changes in global economics. American economic competitiveness faltered in the face of the challenges of Japan and West Germany, which have recovered rapidly from the wartime decimation of the industrial bases. The twentieth-century successor to Britain as the "workshop of the world," the United States now finds its competitive edge dulled in the international markets while at the same time faced with intensified foreign competition at home.
In 1958, the US also sent troops into Lebanon to maintain its pro-US regime.
South Asia
The Indian subcontinent, except perhaps during the war in Afghanistan at the very end of the Cold War, was never a primary focus of superpower attention during the Cold War. Europe, East Asia, Latin American, and South East Asia, and the Middle East were consistently viewed as being more important to the superpowers' interests. The countries of South Asia, despite having a fifth 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, were airfields that could be used as bases for U-2 flights over Soviet territory, or in case of wartime be home to nuclear bombers that could hit Central Asia. 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 Pakistani 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 successful democracy, was never in particularly grave danger of falling to internal guerrilla-led revolution or external pressure from a great power. It also did not wish to ally with the United States. India became a leader in the Non-Aligned Movement.
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. From this point on, the US was committed to remaining closely tied to Pakistan. For Pakistan the US 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, Pakistan would also pursue close relations with China.
US behavior in South Asia during the Cold War has been criticized for supporting autocratic governments in Pakistan, and for contributing to the ongoing conflict between India and Pakistan over Kashmir.
Soviet policy towards South Asia had closely paralleled that of the United States. At first the Soviets, like the Americans, had been largely disinterested 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 help building industrial infrastructure. In Sringar, the capital of Kashmir, the joint Soviet leaders announced the Soviet Union would abandon its neutralist position and back India in the Kashmir dispute.
Jawaharlal Nehru 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 freely address the people of the Soviet Union, the two nations remained relatively distant. After Khrushchev's ousting, the Soviets had reverted to a neutral position and played the important role of neutral moderator after the 1965 war. The peace negotiations were held in the Central Asian town of Tashkent.
By the late 1960s, however, 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. On top of that, a number of smaller issues had turned American indifference into antipathy. The conflict in Vietnam had also been dominating the Johnson administration's concerns. Western international organizations such as the World Bank were also unwilling to commit money to India's development projects without Indian trade concessions.
The Soviets were more of a source of international support. Along with their Eastern European allies, 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 (now Bangladesh), India signed the agreement.
However, by the 1980s India had moved back into its traditional role as a leader of the Third World against both superpowers.
Africa
One of the first decolonized nations to request Soviet aid was the Congo, which while formally independent since 1960 was under control of Western mining interests. Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba requested aid from the USSR. The United States immediately mobilized to prevent changes to the economic and political status quo in the country. A large number of United Nations peacekeepers from Western nations had been in the Congo since independence, and the US used them to shut down the airport and prevent Soviet arms and advisors from getting to the country. The US decided to remove Lumumba and backed Colonel Joseph Mobutu in a coup that saw Lumumba killed and a pro-US regime installed. The affairs in the Congo alienated the Third World from both superpowers. The Soviets seemed weak and impotent, while the Americans unethical and unscrupulous.
Ghana CIA declassified documents also reveal CIA intervention in Ghana. An attempt was made on the life of the First President, Kwame Nkrumah, who was ousted eventually in a CIA-sponsored coup.
Threats and opportunities to Soviet influence
The 1950s left the pro-Soviet bloc in a precarious position. In 1956, the Soviet Union invaded Hungary which was in a state of revolution. While this revolution was not anti-communist, it was anti-Soviet. The crushing of the revolution in Hungary only saw muted criticism in the west. Hungary had been allied with the Axis Powers in World War II and the West was concurrently divided and discredited over the Suez Crisis.
Other events left the Soviet Government with little popular or international support at a period when the Soviet strategies of international institutions and peace projects had been popular. Sino-Soviet relations were deteriorating. In reality, the Communist world was never a monolith. Now, this was becoming more and more obvious.
Cuba
The Cuban Revolution
For details see the main article Cuban Revolution.
The Soviets garnered a huge victory when they formed an alliance with Cuba after Fidel Castro'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-US Batista regime, US interests had owned four fifths of the stakes in the island's utilities, nearly half of its sugar, and nearly all of its mining industries. The US could manipulate the Cuban economy at a whim by merely tinkering with the island's financial services or by tinkering with government quotas and tariffs on sugar — the country's staple export commodity. The US landed marines three times in efforts to support its interests between the ratification of the Platt Amendment in 1902 and the Revolution in 1959.
Hence, Cuban relations with the US started to deteriorate when Castro announced a program of agrarian reform in 1959, which met stiff US resistance. Notably, similar land redistribution policies were at the root of the ouster of Arbenz in 1954. Yet, Castro's subsequent moves were even bolder. The expropriation of US assets allowed him to finance new spending on social welfare. Overthrowing the new regime became a focus for the CIA. Around this time, Castro started to move closer to the communists in his popular 26th of July Movement in search of organized political support to carry out socioeconomic changes.
To out-maneuver US efforts to oust him, Castro signed a trade agreement in February 1960 with the Soviet Union, 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. Afterwards, Castro finally proclaimed himself a Marxist-Leninist.
The Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis
For details see the main articles Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Hoping to copy the success of Guatemala and Iran in 1961, the CIA trained and armed a group of Cuban exiles who landed at the Bay of Pigs where they were to attempt to mount a counter-revolution. The assault failed miserably, however. This threat to their ally encouraged the Soviet Union to place missiles in Cuba, hoping to protect their ally and demonstrate their commitment to Third World social revolutionaries.
Kennedy quarantined the island, and after a tense few days the Soviets decided to retreat in return for promises from the US not to invade Cuba and to pull missiles out of Turkey. After this brush with nuclear war, the two leaders banned nuclear tests in the air and underwater after 1962. The Soviets were also forced to begin a huge military buildup. The retreat also undermined Khrushchev, who was ousted soon afterwards.
To the annoyance of the United States government Fidel Castro's leadership in the immediate vicinity of US territory continues to this day.
Notes
1 Nikita Khrushchev's speech to Twentieth Party Congress can be read online (Internet Modern History Sourcebook) at [2] (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1956khrushchev-secret1.html).
2 Townsend Hoopes, The Devil and John Foster Dulles. (Boston, 1973), p. 193.
3 Quoted in Walter LaFeber, The American Age: United States Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad since 1750. (New York, 1992), p. 513.
4 "NSC-68. A Report to the National Security Council by the Executive Secretary on United States Objectives and Programs for National Security, April 14, 1950, Washington" (Hereafter cited "NSC-68.") The NSC-68 document may be found online at [3] (http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/nsc-68/nsc68-1.htm).
5 Quoted in Ronald W. Pruessen, John Foster Dulles: The Road to Power. (New York, 1982), p. 441.
6 Quoted in Mark G. Toulouse, The Transformation of John Foster Dulles. (New York, 1985), p. 227.
7 Richard H. Immerman, John Foster Dulles: Piety, Pragmatism, and Power in U.S. Foreign Policy. (Wilmington, Delaware, 1993), p. 65.
8 The New York Times, April 16, 2000, pp. 1, 14; Robert Engler, The Politics of Oil (New York, 1961), p. 206; Mary Ann Heiss, Empire and Nationhood (New York, 1997), is an especially important work on the role of the oil companies.
9 See Walter LaFeber, Russia, America, and the Cold War (New York, 2002), p. 162.
10 New York Times, April 16, 2000, p.14.
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Related topics
- History of the Soviet Union (1953-1985)
- History of the United States (1945-1964)
- History of the United States (1964-1980)