Transcript Document

The Cold War, 1945-1990
“Perhaps the defeat of this little so-called
champion will be an example of how pathetically
weak your society has become.”
Rambo and the escalating Cold War
World politics
• Multipolar system
• Bipolar system (1945-1991)
• Unipolar system (1991-?)
• Creation of a vast system of alliances
organized around clear ideologies
• “‘Forces of good and evil are massed and
armed and opposed as rarely before in
history. Freedom is pitted against slavery,
lightness against dark.”
Characteristics of the bipolar system
• Dominant/hegemonic role of the two
superpowers
• Two rival military/political alliances
• Germany, a key player in European politics,
was divided into two states
• Structure of world politics underpinned by
threat of nuclear war
• Question: did this system provide a
fundamental stability to world politics?
• Blaming the USSR
• The Soviets were always the
aggressor.
• The USSR was always hostile to
the west.
• Soviet leadership had a grand
plan to capture the entire world for
Communism.
• International Communism was a
monolithic organization that was
controlled by the Soviet Union.
• Communism represented the
enslavement of peoples and was
never accepted willingly. It had to
be dictated by force.
•
Blaming the US
•
Through an enormous
sacrifice of lives and material,
the USSR won the war against
Hitler. The West never showed
an appropriate level of
gratitude.
The United States was
ideologically committed to the
annihilation of Communism
and would do anything to
achieve this.
Capitalist nations were
essentially imperialistic. They
attempted to colonize the
world in order to secure new
markets for their goods. The
attempt to expand American
power brought the US into
conflict with the USSR.
•
•
Containment
…the main element of any United States policy toward
the Soviet Union must be a long-term, patient but firm
and vigilant containment of Russian expansive
tendencies... Soviet pressure against the free
institutions of the Western world is something that can
be contained by the adroit and vigilant application of
counterforce at a series of constantly shifting
geographical and political points, corresponding to the
shifts and maneuvers of Soviet policy, but which
cannot be charmed or talked out of existence.”: (Keenan)
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
NATO (1949), Rio Pact (1947), ANZUS (1951),
SEATO (1955)
Alliance Systems
• The United States had more than 1,000,000
soldiers in 30 countries, was a member of
four regional defence alliances and an active
participant in a fifth, had mutual defence
treaties with 42 nations, was a member of 53
international organizations, and was
furnishing military or economic aid to nearly
100 nations across the face of the globe.
“[the] formation of a new
military grouping in the
shape of the "Western
European Union"
together with a remilitarised
Western Germany, and for
the integration of Western
Germany in the North
Atlantic bloc, …
increases the threat of
another war and creates a
menace to the national
security of the peaceloving
states.”
Defense Expenditure, 1948-1970
Mutually Assured destruction
How stable was the bipolar system?
• “…a relatively stabilized international
system … symbolized by the installation of
the telephone hot line which now came to link
the White House with the Kremlin.”
• “balance of terror system that seemed to
guarantee stability and peace.”
• Proxy wars