World Politics

The causes of the Cold War

Europe in 1945:

The  Soviet/American alliance had been seen as the key to victory over Germany, and the only way to set up a solid peace.   There was optimism this alliance would continue.  Alas, it was not to be:

   1.  The Alliance had always been troubled.

       a.  The Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939 led to war, many felt Hitler would not have started war without that agreement.

       b.  The Soviets were angered by the lack of a US/Brit offensive until 1944.  20 million Soviets dead; the West got involved heavy duty only when the Soviets had basically won the war already (note: Hitler would have lost anyway, but it would have been messy and long).

Truman and Churchill both have been quoted as saying that it was all right with them if the Germans and Russians killed each other off.  Not many Americans died in WWII, but 20 million Russians did.  They literally did the bleeding that won the war, the U.S. supplied the high-tech and the money and industry.  By the time the U.S. did attack France in June 1944, the Soviets had started moving forward towards Berlin.

       c.  Stalin's paranoia, fear of isolation.  He remembered attacks by Poland in 1921, and the fighting of West in Russian civil war.  Stalin believed the USSR needed a buffer.

       d.  Different ideologies.  Less important at first, Stalin not really ideological, more realpolitik.

       e.  Atomic bomb secrets, U.S. use of the bomb.  Stalin's spies had informed him long before its use that it was being developed, and that the British were involved.  Yet nothing was said to him, and at that time, the Russians and Americans were allies.  When Truman finally told him, Stalin gave no visible response, and Churchill thought that showed how dumb Stalin was, not even reacting to the gravity of it.  Well for Stalin, it was old news.

    2.  EUROPE in shambles, and then suffered a hard winter.

Realism emerged from the dust of WWII as a reaction to how idealism and legalism seemed to fail in the thirties.  When appeasement failed and WWII came anyway, people argued that giving Hitler Czechoslovakia helped pave the way for the ease in which Germany took France and Poland.  Chamberlain resigned replaced by Churchill who, while from the same party as Chamberlain, had been warning about the Germans for some time.

This had an impact on American policy makers in two ways:

1.  They saw how idealism -- doing the right thing -- and legalism -- recognizing self-determination -- led to a disaster.  This led them to argue that states can't be led down a certain path simply because the legal rights say it's the proper path.  Rather, the political ramifications involving what that does to the power of the states involved is more important.  This leads to the advent of REALISM -- which we discussed at the end of Unit One.

2.  They learned that appeasement doesn't work.  They overlearned this.  Appeasement was a good policy for almost anyone but Hitler.  By learning it never works, they ignored that it might work with others in other situations.  Hitler was, to put it mildly, rather unique.  Chamberlain tried appeasement because intransigence had helped lead to WWI.  He learned that flexible concern for interests of other states is necessary.  His failure caused others to learn the opposite lesson.  Both were overlearned.

US Strategy: Containment.  Contain the Soviet Union so that communism could not spread.   That would be the official strategy for the entire Cold War; actually defeating the Soviet Union would be too costly.  But how to contain the Soviets and communism in general was an unclear task.  At first, it seemed it was an impossible task.

1949: China "falls".  Throughout 1948 and 49 it had become obvious that Mao's forces were winning, and that the corrupt regime of Chaing Kai Shek was totering.  Truman administration:  Did nothing.  Decided China was too big and unpredictable to use forces, and that Chaing was too incompetent to be able to turn things around even with massive US aid.  But the Soviets were glad to have their southern neighbor become Communist (though within 12 years relations would sour), and many in the US feared ever expanding communism.

Still, this was recognized less as Soviet expansion, more as an unstoppable revolution.  But now containment had to be maintained.  Again, it wasn’t sure how.  Some (like George Kennan) argued for an emphasis on diplomacy and gradual change in Soviet behavior.  Others argued that Communism was an evil that wanted to control the world, and compromises and diplomacy would not work, it  was a radical “state.”  Those wanted a much stronger military approach, fighting communism wherever it might spread.  Kennan wanted military defense of only major points of interest, with diplomacy best elsewhere.

KOREA!

WAR: started as the North attacked, with success.  The war was seen in the west as perhaps a prelude to a Soviet attack of Europe -- many were convinced that was Stalin’s plan.  Actually, it appears Kim Il Sung had convinced Stalin to let him attack just because he thought he could easily achieve Korean unification.  It was a misjudgement.

But some facts are pretty clear: Dean Acheson makes the mistake at his Jan. 12, 1950 news conference and makes it appear the US would not protect Korea.  Then on June 25, 1950 at 4:00 AM the North attacked and devastated the South Korean army.  It was an easy victory, and if the US had done nothing, the North would have unified Korea under a Communist state friendly to the Soviet Union and China.

The US: goes to the United Nations.  That is an important first step.  The US decided at the start that this was the time to use the UN.  This will tie into the next unit, but we see a shift in how war is understood, even a shift towards idealism: the US did not want an “illegal” or “nationalist” war against Communism, but wanted a UN action of collective security.  The US got a resolution to be approved by the Security Council of the United Nations.

Security Council: Remember, the five permanent members of the Security Council have veto power.  That means they could stop any resolution for any reason at all.  Those countries are/were: France, Britain, the US, China and the USSR.   So with China and the USSR on the Security Council, you would think that they would have veto’d the US resolution.  But that wasn’t the case:

1.  Even though China was now controlled by the Communists, the US refused to accept them as the legitimate Chinese government and instead accepted the small island of Taiwan, where the old government had taken refuge, as the true Chinese government.  It wouldn’t be until 1972 when Nixon would reverse that decision that China really got their seat on the Security Council.  So the anti-Communist Taiwanese government was actually pro-American and anti-China.

2.  The Soviet Union was ANGRY about the refusal to seat the new Chinese government on the Security council, so they boycotted its meetings.  This led to a huge blunder, no one is sure why.  Even though Trygve Lie (UN Secretary General) openly pressured the Soviet Ambassador Malik to attend the Security Council meeting where the resolution to allow force was to be voted upon, he refused.  The result: the UN passed the US resolution, making the Korean war “legal,” or as President Truman claimed, a “police action,” approved by the UN.  The Soviets realized after that not to boycott the Security Council any more!

The General in the far East was MacArthur, who had already become a legend defeating Japan in WWII, and then drafting (with his aides and Japanese assitance) Japan’s post-war constitution.  Now he had one of his finest moments, even though it would be followed by a blunder.  The success was his landing at Inchon, splitting the North Korean military and allowing a big victory for the US (officially UN) forces.  Within a couple months they had driven the North Koreans back to the border.  Then came the question: do they stop, or do they try to do to the North Koreans what the North wanted to do to the South: win the war and unify Korea?  The name for that was:

Rollback.  The U.S. didn't stop at the border, it continued on into North Korea to try to roll back Communism.   The North Koreans couldn’t compete, the UN armies pushed on north towards the Yalu river and the border with China.  China threatened to retaliate, wanting the US to go back to the pre-war status quo and a divided Korea.  But the US didn’t believe China, mostly out of a warped view on what China was after the revolution.  Also: evidence came out later that the army had intelligence that showed that China did indeed plan a counter attack.  They couldn’t believe it possible so they didn’t pass the information to the highest levels.

Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory: Just as it looked like the US would win a major war, the Chinese counter attacked, and drove the US into a full scale retreat, one of the most humiliating in US history.  By the time the army had settled back and set up a defense, they were back in the South.   They pushed their way up, but with the Chinese now aiding the North, a stalemate ensued until 1953.  The war dragged on, and ultimately ended with no clear victor.

The result of the Korean war?

Caused the militarization of containment globally.  NATO, originally as much political as military, was suddenly turned into a mostly military organization, with German armament sped up, and defense budgets increasing.

If it was possible that the arms race and the militarization of the cold war could have been avoided, Korea made that virtually impossible.  In that sense, the Korean war really initiated the most dramatic period of the cold war.  Now, we had an arms race.

At the same time came the end of colonialism

What did the end of colonialism mean?  We’ll talk about the economic issues in that unit, but in terms of the cold war it turned the third world into a chess board of sorts for the superpowers to compete upon, treating states like pawns in the superpower game.   This led to support of military dicatorships by each side, and a cynical game.  Some examples:

1) Iran: A similar story -- a new independent Iran in 1953 gets a democratic government under Mohammed Mossadegh.  He tried to nationalize oil so that the profits of oil go more to Iran rather than the former colonies.  That scared the US since some communists were on his cabinet, and they were afraid the Soviets could gain power and cut off oil.  Again, a CIA coup overthrows a democratically elected government (though there were signs Mossadegh was becoming authoritarian) and installs a dictatorship under the Shah.  Logical by cold war standards, but in reality it was denying the very ideals upon which the US was based.

2) Guatamala: Jacobo Arbenz comes to power in 1953, a leftist, with some communists in the government.  It was a democracy, however, and supported by the people.  The government wants to introduce land reform, giving property to the peasants who had been left without land by system that had unfairly given all the land to wealthy individuals and later corporations.  Arbenz nationalizes a lot of land, including a massive amount from the United Fruit company.  They complained that they weren’t compensated enough (but that was because they had been under reporting the value of their land on their tax forms!), and argued for the US to intervene. Given that many in the US feared communist influence so close to the US, it was not a hard argument to make.  The CIA sponsored a coup that replaced the democratic government with a brutal dictatorship.  (They weren’t wanting a dictatorship, they hoped for a stable rule from someone who would act in the US interests.  They got an ally, but a repressive, undemocratic one).

3)  FRENCH INDO-CHINA falls.  After WWII, bouoyed by talks of self-determination, Ho Chi Minh, a Vietnamese nationalist, attempted to gain American support for the decolonialization of French Indochina, or Vietnam.  US probably should have supported Ho, and stood up to the French, but Ho had contacts with the Soviets, and it was felt necessary to assure French.

The French were unable to hold positions, and the cost of francs and military power became impossible to hold on to.   After losing some major battles in 1954 the French pull out, agreeing to split Indochina into South and North Vietnam, with Ho governing the north, and the French supporting a southern government.  Elections were scheduled for 1956 to determine who would rule.  These elections were never held, mostly because the US decided to support the South in opposition to the election:  As Ike noted, the election would be a route.

Prudent policy might have been to support Ho early, but fear of communism threatened US preceptions.  Later this mistake would haunt the US, and show the dangers of a parameter defense.

4)  1959:  Castro takes over in Cuba.  Many saw him as a hero (he had tried out for the Washington Senators baseball time, but failed due to lack of a curve ball).  But the US government didn’t like his ideology, even though he had overthrown Battista, who for all practical purposes was bought and paid for by the mafia.  Cuba was in extreme poverty, except for the wealthy mafia class, it was easy to see why people wanted a revolt.  But American decision makers reasoned that if a state like Cuba could fall, then what does that say for US defense?  Plans were drawn up overthrow Castro.

With the cold war shifting to the third world, another thing was happening -- the Soviets were expanding their defenses.  In 1957 they launched Sputnik, the first satelite.  This created fear in the US, as now Soviet missiles could potentially reach the US (what does this say about massive retaliation?)  Many thought the Eisenhower regime was soft on communism.  Democratic Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy argued that indeed the Republicans were soft on communism, not increasing defense spending enough to meet the threat.  Missile gap a sign of this, fears that the Soviets had more missiles and could hit the US harder than we could hit them.

Missile gap was a myth.  Eisenhower knew it, but didn't tell anyone definitively, since it would show the Soviets how good our intelligence was.

Kennedy vs. Nixon

In 1960 in a tough election John F. Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon, primarily arguing that Eisenhower had been too soft on communism (the so called ‘missile gap’ was an issue).  Kennedy appealed to American patriotism and universalism, claimed that "we will bear any burden, pay any price" to support democracy.  Ready to re-launch Truman's foreign policy, rejecting Ike's attempts to keep costs down as creating instability.

The Cuban Missle Crisis

The Cold War’s most dangerous moment was probably the Cuban Missile crisis in 1962.  Fidel Castro came to power in a revolution in 1959, and instituted a Communist government.  His regime was probably better than the Battista one before, but the US wanted him out.  They tried to overthrow him with a Bay of Pigs invasion (planned like the Guatamala overthrow, with Cuban exiles doing the fighting), but it failed.  Castro feared a massive US invasion and the Soviets decided to try to protect Cuba with nuclear missiles that could hit the US.  When the Americans noticed them, they demanded the USSR remove them. 

We came very close to a hot war: In early discussions of what to do, “hawks” in the Kennedy Administration advocated using the missiles as an excuse to remove Castro (sort of like Austria used the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand as an excuse to attack Serbia).  For awhile, that was the favored reaction.  But over time the “doves” became concerned this could get out of control.  Only after the Cold War ended did we learn that the Russian general on the island says would have fired the weapons that were operable, which would have been enough to likely launch WWIII.   If that had happened, we may not be sitting here.  (Note: after that the Soviets took away the power of commanders in the field to launch nuclear missiles -- they were scared of what could have happened too!)

Instead, the US instituted a blockade.   Finally, an agreement was made for the US to promise not to invade Cuba ever, and the Soviets would remove their missiles.  Interestingly, both sides were very scared by this point that war could start, and each were ready to give in more than the other!  Kennedy sent an offer to Khrushchev saying he’d remove American missiles from Turkey in exchange for Khrushchev removing missiles from Cuba.  (They even started a rumor that the missiles had been ordered removed earlier in order to quell protests from the “hawks.”) 

Both sides, especially the leaders Khrushchev and Kennedy, were very frightened by what almost happened.  They installed the hot line (really a teletype machine originally), and after that worked towards making sure a crisis wouldn’t lead to destruction.  Many say the Cold War was less dangerous after this crisis, as each side suddenly realized how easy it could be for catastrophe to hit.

Vietnam: the downfall of the Grand Design

The tragedy of Vietnam is that it was so easy to slip into, followed American foreign policy logic to that point, and especially after the Cuban Missile crisis the US seemed ascendent and believed it could dictate world events.  As the book points out, the US also believed that China ended its war with India because of fear of US involvement (probably not the case).

Domino theory: The theory argued that Communism was a threat to Southeast Asia because the Chinese and Russians realized that in order to get Thailand or even Japan, they had to start small, and develop momentum.  They would start with Vietnam, move to Laos, Cambodia, and soon as Communism gained power would spread to Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia and ultimately Japan.  Thus stopping communism in Vietnam was important.  Containment would be easier here than to wait until communism spread throughout the region.

If there had been a chance to support or tolerate Ho in a manner that would have allowed the US some influence, that had been lost by 1956, and probably was lost earlier after the US rejected Ho’s advances in the forties.  By the 60's it was clear that the US was supporting the regime of the South, while Ho and the north developed the Vietminh forces to undertake guerilla warfare in the south.  Kennedy gradually increased America’s commitment of advisors and military backup, while making sure that the US did not introduce true combat forces.

Main problem: Diem.  To JFK and his regime, the biggest problem in Vietnam was the Diem regime, which as the book describes with ruthless and increasingly unpopular, especially as it took on the majority Buddhists (Diem was a Catholic, reflecting the French colonial influence – something that further hurt his popularity, as it helped dramatize Diem’s connection to the former colonizers.).  Finally in early November 1963 Diem was overthrown by his own military, and the US hoped that the new regime could stabilize South Vietnam’s domestic problems and have the capacity to handle attempts from the north to disrupt the south.  That wouldn’t happen.

Misunderstanding domestic forces.  One danger of getting involved in the third world for US policy has traditionally been the inability to adequately understand domestic variables.  Often this is because the US contacts are often high level governmental, and they underplay internal dissent or views from the lower classes.  This could currently be a real problem in US policy in the mideast in the current ‘war on terror.’  Domestic publics in the mideast are often opposed to their governments, especially in Saudi Arabia and other ‘pro-American’ states.  In this case the US knew that the public in the South was anti-Diem, but didn’t realize that this greatly weakened South Vietnam’s viability as a state, no matter who was in power.

Kennedy killed November 1963, Johnson becomes President.  At that time, 17,000 American soldiers were in Vietnam, only 70 had died.  The US public considered that an acceptable price to combat communism.

Johnson vows to continue Kennedy’s policy, which was to do what was necessary to keep South Vietnam from becoming communist.  Debate: Would Kennedy have made the same mistakes Johnson did?

No one can know, but clearly LBJ followed Kennedy’s path after his death.  Kennedy would not have made a change in policy before the 1964 elections, and whether or not he would have done things differently, his policy was one that led to the kind of choices LBJ made.

Policy towards Vietnam: typical of US SOP’s (standard operating procedures) in dealing with the third world.  Publically proclaim limited involvement, privately start covert operations to destabilize the region.  This including things like sabotage, commando raids, bombing the coastlines, and other tactics designed to weaken the regime in the North.  The plan was to keep the North weak, build up the south (especially after Diem leaves) and then be able to let the South handle its own defense.  That ignored the internal corruption of the South and the lack of trust the people in the south had for their own government.

August 2, 1964: North Vietnam torpedos an American ship, the destroyer Maddox and the Turner Joy in the Gulf of Tonkin.  The US claimed that it was an unprovoked attack, though the ships were likely involved in covert operations against the North.  This was also election time, as Johnson was campaigning against a hawk from the right wing of the Republican Party, Barry Goldwater.  Johnson did not want to be seen as weak, and perhaps as much out of political expediency as anything else demanded a hard line against the attacks.

He went to Congress and demanded the authority to do whatever was necessary to protect American interests in the region.  Note: there is a real lesson here, one we have to take into account even now as the President asks for power from Congress.

LBJ’s demand became solidified as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which said that the President had the authority to do whatever necessary to prevent aggression and defend freedom.  Vague and abstract, this represented a blank check and allowed the President to essentially carry on a war without Congress having declared a war (and without a UN resolution as in Korea).  The resolution passed in the House 416-0, and in the Senate 88-2 (opposed were Wayne Morse, D-OR, and Ernest Gruening, D-AL).  This was an election year after all, no one wanted to look soft on communism.

February 8, 1965: the US brings the war to a new level with increased bombing raids, operation “Rolling Thunder.”    The North, with their capital in Hanoi, was expected to fold or wilt under the pressure.  But the opposite occurred.  Ho’s fighters highly motivated, believing they were fighting for their national independence against yet another in the series of foreign invaders that have come to Vietnam over the centuries, and were willing to die and pay any price for the cause.  Bombing rarely disillusions a population, at least not at first.  Instead it inspires hate of the enemy, and a renewed desire to continue the conflict.  That was known by the United States!  Walter Rostow had commissioned a study of the probable effects of bombing, and the study noted that bombing would not work, and could put the US in a quagmire.  Rostow wanted, however, to believe the opinion of the Join Chiefs of Staff that bombing them ‘into the stone age’ would work and bring Hanoi to its knees.  Rostow never told Johnson about the study, and instead promoted more and intense bombing.  The bombing failed.  The only way the US could make sure the South survived and the US not humilitated was with a ground war.

Johnson: personalized the war, he wanted to win it.  His quotes were things like, “the world’s greatest power isn’t going to lose to some raggedy ass fourth rate dictator,” or “we’ll grab Ho by the balls and squeeze until he cries uncle.”  Johnson saw it as a test of his manhood, he could not be the first American President to actually lose a war.

March 1965: General Westmoreland tells LBJ that 50,000 men are needed to win the war – combat troops, on the ground, stabilizing the situation.  Westmoreland revised that figure consistently throughout the year.  In May it was 80,000 that were needed.  The next month he demanded 200,000.  By November 1965, he was convinced over half a million troops would be necessary.  LBJ had no choice, he believed, but to acquiesce to the demands of the military.  He didn’t want to lose the war.  But the US had slowly been sinking deeper into a hole it couldn’t pull itself out of.  Covert action fails.  Then bombing.  Then a small number of combat troops, then more...each step it seemed retreat would be failure, so it the war was escalated.  Yet each escalation failed to bring about victory.

Meanwhile, in South Vietnam, the government was not stabilizing.  Nguyen Cao Ky came to power, despite quotes where he had praised Hitler.  The US clearly wasn’t supporting a democratic government, but it was anti-communist.  The South made sure the Americans heard what they wanted to hear, and the US continued to underestimate the corruption and unpopularity of the government, all of which strengthened the Vietcong.

Ho himself was a popular leader, incorruptible, who refused the trappings of office, stayed close to the people, and was exceedingly popular in both the North and South.  The US never got it.  The US mocked his ‘black pajamas’ (peasants uniform), considered him a Stalinist (Ho never used purges and ruled with remarkable openness given the North was at war – in many ways more open than the South), and underestimated his determination and belief in the cause of an independent Vietnam.

The US domino theory also should have been questioned, but wasn’t.  China was suffering set backs and internal problems in the mid to late sixties, and were not in a position to create the kind of “red asia” that LBJ feared.  The US remained focused on the need to stop communist expansion, to the point where ideology rather than the actual conditions started to drive their read of the situation.  They saw China as the next imperial state, Lin Piao as the next Hitler.

By 1966, US troop levels in Vietnam reached 400,000.  At that time American support for the war started to buckle, at least a bit.  This was especially true among those who were expected to go there and kill and die for South Vietnam: the youth.  Nonetheless, older Americans, who knew the horrors of war and still had a streak of isolationism, were the most opposed.  This didn’t seem to be the kind of thing they thought good for America.  The protests started on campuses but were not wide spread until 1968.  But it was becoming clear that American anti-communism had its limits, people agreed to government spending and even military interventions, but a major war with numerous deaths would not be tolerated unless there was real trust that the government was doing the right thing.

In 1967 Johnson could make a plausible case it was.  China was a threat to the region, the 400,000 (it would rise to 550,000 by 1968 – the high) troops were a massive force, but that was in order to win the war.  Johnson defended such a buildup saying that the only way to fight a war was to use massive force and fight it to win.  And in 1967 the news reported success after success (though in retrospect many of those claims are seen as exaggerated at best), and he even speculated in late 1967 that the troops could be home by Christmas.  The country was on edge – not just by the war, but also civil rights – but Johnson still had the majority on his side (indeed, the majority never actually opposed the war).

January 1968, the North launches the Tet Offensive (New Year’s offensive).  The offensive was militarily a fiasco, as the North was beaten back at high cost.  But they had driven deep to the South and even threatened the US embassy in Saigon.  To the US public, this was shocking.  It made LBJ’s claims of victory very near, with only mop up operations left, appear to have been lies.  It made the end of the war seem far away indeed, and that somehow the American superpower was unable to win through either bombing or ground forces a war against a tiny third world state.  Now it wasn’t just the protesters who were anti-war (and protests became intense and plentiful throughout 1968 and into 1969), but even the middle class (including Walter Cronkite) questioned the war effort.  When Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, an anti-war Democrat, almost defeated LBJ in the New Hampshire primary, LBJ realized that in the protest ridden environment of 1968 he would not be able to win re-election.  He withdrew, so that his Vice President Hubert Humphrey, also of Minnesota, could run instead.

Humphrey faced two more ‘leftist’ Democrats, McCarthy and Robert Kennedy, but RFK was assassinated in June, allowing Humphrey to become the nominee.  He was opposed by Richard Nixon, who claimed to have a ‘plan to end the war’ and argued for ‘peace with honor.’  The country didn’t want to just pull out of the war, but they didn’t want to stay in.  LBJ couldn’t figure out a way out, he was trapped by the decisions made from the fifties onward.

Nixon, as we’ll talk about soon, developed a wholly new approach to foreign policy, rejecting Kennedy’s “grand design” and moving to “detente.”  However, in so doing, he still had to figure out how to extricate the US from the Vietnam debacle without appearing to simply turn tail and run.

First, he increased bombing and decreased troop levels.  He clearly gave up on the idea of winning the war on the ground, and focused instead on making conditions in the north so difficult that they would feel compelled to sue for peace.  This included, however, expanding the war into Cambodia to try to cut off supply lines from the north and stop communism from spreading into Cambodia.  That spurred more protests in the US, as it appeared Nixon was spreading the war out.  Nixon’s plan, Vietnamization, wasn’t working, and though the US decreased troop levels (back to 400,000 in 1970, 200,000 in 1971, and near 50,000 by 1973), the war in Cambodia and stepped up bombing caused the US to lose the moral high ground in world affairs, which was especially stunning given Soviet crackdowns on dissent in Czechoslovakia in 1968.   Nixon himself was isolated and focused on political survival.  He couldn’t understand the protesters.

The protest movement: Though the protest movement was primarily anti-war, it was also a rejection of the kind of ideals of the past.  Suddenly people were concerned about civil rights, especially for minorities, and were experimenting with new music, drugs, freedoms, and openness in a manner never before.  This had profound cultural ramifications.  “Leave It To Beaver” was out, “All in the Family” was in.  Society was opening up dramatically, and many thought this the rise of decadence and the loss of moral fiber.   Still, by 1972 protests were starting to fizzle as the lowering level of troops in Vietnam and disillusion about the impact of the protests on society started to take hold.

Also in 1972, as Nixon opened relations with China and tried to advance detente with the Soviets, Vietnam was a real hindrance to achieving other foreign policy goals.  Typically, Nixon planned a peace around the election, and sure enough – in October Henry Kissinger gave a famous “peace is at hand” speech to announce progress in negotiations in Paris to end the war.  To push the North to accept continued division of the state, the US engaged in massive bombing, including mining the harbors, to pressure the North.  It worked.  The South, now led by Thieu, balked at the agreement, but the US promised it would protect the South should the north not abide by the treaty.  In late January 1973 the peace accord was announced, and signed the next month.  The war was not over though – in 1975 the North would break the treaty, and the US would do nothing to stop them.  The end was a defeat for the US and South Vietnam.

Lessons of this conflict?

Detente.

Remember  realism:  Status quo and revolutionary states.  In 1969, recognizing that the Soviets now had parity with the United States in nuclear weapons, and that the US was weakened by the Vietnam war, the new Secretary of State Henry  Kissinger argued:  OK, we'll compete, but the Soviet Union is almost already a status quo power rather than a revolutionary power, and with the proper mixture of a carrot and stick approach, they can become a full status quo power.  Must treat them with the respect they deserve as a great power, not with the ideological rhetoric present in the previous administrations.  In a way this was going back towards the Kennan strategy of not wanting to meet the Soviets everywhere, Kissinger was a realist who had studied Metternich.

Soviet Union: Leonid Brezhnev.  Tough, not at all an ideologue.  At first, the successes were great, by 1972 two major treaties were on the books.  SALT I: basically was an arms control treaty that simply limited arms buildup.  Neither side was deterred from really doing what it wanted, but psychologically this showed the two sides could get along.   ABM Treaty:   Anti-ballistic missile treaty.   This was designed to make nuclear war less likely by limiting the ability of the two sides to defend themselves from nuclear weapons.  They could have just two anti-ballistic missile sites, one in the capital, and one at least 1300 kilometers away.   Why limit the ability to defend yourself?

MAD: Mutually Assured Destruction: The theory behind nuclear weapons was one of mutually assured destruction.  If both sides knew nuclear war was going to lead to certain destruction for each, no one would start it.  The problem was that if one side could defned itself from such an attack, either they would have an incentive to launch an attack once they got that capacity, or the other side would attack before that capacity was complete to prevent that kind of advantage.  Either way, it was scary  -- the ABM Treaty was meant to assure MAD remained the main doctrine.  So let’s talk abit about nuclear weapons and the Cold War.

Result of detente was nothing that dramatic.  Why?

Not the purpose.  Both Nixon and Kissinger thought that conflict was inevitable, but hoped to manage it in a way that would not threaten world war.  Like the old concert of Europe, Kissinger and Nixon hoped that the Soviets, as a status quo power, would work through disputes diplomatically.  They saw small proxy wars and a willingness to use military force as necessary to make detente work.  This policy, logical on its own terms, received criticism that doomed it from both the right and the left.

Left:  High expectations for detente: friendship, cooperation, end of cold war.  More than Kissinger ever intended.  When battles took place in Angola and elsewhere, this was seen as a failure of detente, and soon Kissinger's policies were seen as lacking efficacy in patching up US/Soviet relations.

Right: Ford followed the Nixon-Kissinger detente line, and nearly lost the 1976 GOP nomination to an ex-actor ex-California governor named Ronald Reagan.  Reagan, in the past dismissed as a right wing extremist, used communication skills and a condemnation of Nixon-Ford foreign policy to mount a serious challenge.  He argued that too much was given to the Soviets in detente, that they the US shouldn't give them legitimacy by negotiating and dealing with them, but instead should be battling communism.

Only Nixon can go to China: an aside, at some time you’ll hear that comment, “Only Nixon can go to China” and wonder what it means.  Nixon was known as a fierce anti-Communist, even making his name during the McCarthy era.  The US was still recognizing Taiwan as the government of China on the UN Security Council (remember last week’s discussion).  In 1972 Nixon made a trip to China, and normalized relations, kicking Taiwan off the SC, and putting Communist China there.  If a Democrat had tried this, the Republicans would have been accusing them of being Communist sympathizers.  But Nixon, with anti-Communist credentials, could pull it off.

In 1977 Jimmy Carter became President, and in 1979 the US was shocked when an Islamic fundamentalist revolution brought down the American ally, the Shah of Iran, and put the country into anti-American hands.  This was unbelievably bad, as far as the Americans were concerned.  They had built the Iranian military and it was protecting the Persian Gulf oil from both the Soviet Union and from other internal threats.  Now the Gulf superpower was hostile to America.  On top of that Iraq attacked Iran, and people worried that the oil might stop flowing.  Oil shot up to $35 a barrell, and the US went into a deep recession.  That is why people are worried now about oil prices, it ripples through the economy and can stop a boom and create problems.  The Soviets at this time attacked Afghanistan, and many feared they would move into Iran and control the oil flow, thus allowing them to choke the western economy. 

CARTER DOCTRINE: The US will not accept Persian Gulf oil in hostile hands (aimed at Soviets).  The US could go to war to protect Persian Gulf oil.

Ended when prices went down in the early eighties, but showed again how vulnerable the western economies were to oil pressures.  (Note: people blamed Carter for the stagflation, and Reagan for the recovery, but actually the situation was out of both their hands, due to oil prices!)

Cold War II

Detente ended with the oil crisis and the Afghanistan invasion.  Carter started a massive increase in defense spending, continued by Reagan, who became President in 1981.

1984: extreme pessimism at the time.  It looked like the US and the Soviets were headed for a hot war, Ronald Reagan called the Soviets the evil empire, talk was in the air of a winnable nuclear war.  On tv: shows like “The Day After,” pop music: anti-war songs.  It was conventional wisdom to expect that nuclear war might be just around the corner.  So what happened?

Answer: The Soviet Union finally started to crack.  In the late seventies the KGB told the leadership what was becoming obvious - the Soviet Union was on the verge of economic collapse.  The Soviet leader from 1964 to 1981, Leonid Brezhnev didn’t care; he was concerned about foreign policy and just told his bureaucrats to fix it.  They didn’t, they just wanted to hold on to their privleges.

Then: stagnation.  Brezhnev dies, followed by Andropov (sick, died quickly) and Chernenko (sick, died quickly).  Then, in 1985: Mikhail Gorbachev comes to power.  He was younger, had a vision for the future, and realized that the Soviet system was sick.

Gorbachev: glasnost and perestroika: Openness and restructuring.  His idea: the Soviets had to remake their system if it was going to have a chance to survive.  The plan was for a slow, gradual reform.  He realized that if the Soviets did nothing, the system would collapse.  But if they did too much, the Soviet Union itself might be torn apart.  He tried to steer a middle course; it didn’t work in the long run, but perhaps it was the best way it could have been approached.  History has few empires that crumble without a fight, it’s AMAZING that the Soviets left the Cold War without trying to hold on.

To reform Gorbachev had to cut military spending.  Right away he met with Reagan, and in 1985 Reagan had a change of heart - he also started to slow military spending, and said he could work with Gorbachev.   They had a meeting in Iceland in 1986 which was almost a major breakthrough.  They shocked the world.  Could the cold war be close to over?  They didn’t actually reach agreement at the time, but it was close.

1987: BREAKTHROUGH!  Gorbachev and Reagan: INF Treaty, removing intermediate range missiles from Europe in 1987.  It was an amazing breakthrough, the first time arms would actually be removed from Europe!  This was a real sign that a new detente was here.  Reagan had opposed the old detente, but now he was helping drive the new detente.

Cynics: Reagan doesn’t want to end the cold war, he’s a cowboy.  Gorbachev doesn’t want peace, he’s just a crafty commie.  The cynics were wrong.  Reagan recognized the change in the Soviet Union and changed his views, often angering conservatives in his own party; Gorbachev pushed for more agreements.

But Reagan-Gorbachev didn’t really end the cold war.  The people of Eastern Europe really caused the thing to collapse, and Gorbachev could have either clamped down and used force, probably breaking down the new detente, or let it happen.  He let it happen.

Gorbachev had friends who had been involved in the “Prague Spring” of 1968, when the Czechoslovaks had tried to reform communism.  At that time the Soviets crushed the reforms with tanks.  But many of Gorbachev’s ideas came from there.

 By 1989: optimism.  Things were changing, peaceful cooperation developing.  Nineties would hopefully be a stable decade of newed detente.  Then it happened.

1989: A year that will be remembered as one of those historical break points, a major change in the entire world.   It started with Hungary.  They signed a UN Human rights agreement, and reached deals with Austria to tear down part of iron curtain.  The Soviets approved of this, and in May barbed wire on the border came down and Hungarians and Austrians could visit each other freely.   Most of the world ignored these two events. 

IMPORTANT: if anything shows the limits of how social scientists can predict the future the experiences of 1989 do.   People ignored those two events, but they had profound importance.  The UN Agreement Hungary signed contained a pledge not to send back political prisoners if they might face persecution.  The breaking down of the “iron curtain” was known to East Germans who started planning their late summer vacations for Hungary, hoping to leave to the West.  Things were starting to move towards a major change, but nobody seemed to notice.  Looking back, I was lucky to experience some of it myself.

I was in Germany that summer, doing research on East-West German relations and watching with intense curiousity how the summer’s events unfurled.  I’d buy the German papers daily, talk with Germans about the events, and realized a bit that something really dramatic was happening.

Poland: the big news that summer was the Communists agreed to share power with the opposition in Poland. 

Early August: I had my one trip to East Berlin.  It was a three hour border crossing at Friedrichstraße, as I went through long lines in a hot stuffy hall, coming out in a world that seemed completely different than the hustle and bustle of West Berlin.  I walked through the town, watched the cute little Trabi cars, stopped for ice cream, had lunch, went shopping in a store that had little, but was the best East Germany had to offer (now it is a Kaufhaus am Alexanderplatz).  Then had to walk down Unter den Linden to the Brandenburg gate.  I could see on the other side of the wall people in the west on platforms looking over, exactly where I had been the day before.  It all seemed so utterly stupid!  A city divided, two worlds, all because of politics.  Little did I know at that time, as I made my way back, enduring long lines again, that this seemingly eternal split was about to end.  I was right in the middle of a period where everything was about to fall apart, but no one realized it yet.  Even people I interviewed for my research said that Germany would likely unify only after twenty or thirty years, if ever.  No one knew what was coming.

In a surreal scene, as all unraveled, East German leader Erich Honecker invited Gorbachev to Germany to celebrate 40 years of statehood in early October.  Cries of “Gorbi Hilfe” met him.    Gorbi Help!  The Germans wanted Gorbachev style reforms!

To make a long story short: Germans started to leave from Hungary to Austria.  After some delays, Hungary simply let them cross, with the Soviets not intervening.  Soon as many East Germans as possible tried to leave, and the government clamped down on travel.  Protests spread across East Germany, and many there wanted to use a chinese solution as it was called -- a crackdown on protests like the Chinese had used at Tiannamen Square on June 4th earlier that year.  On October 9, 1989 the East German secret police backed down.   Honecker was ousted and Egon Krenz became the new East German leader.  He wanted to institute Perestroika reforms,  but by then it was too little too late.

The Berlin wall had been a symbol of the Cold War.  It had been built in August 1961 as hundreds of thousands of East Germans were using Berlin to escape to the West, as it was “legal exit.”  East Germans just crossed into West Berlin and took a flight out.  That was an embarrassment, and when the wall was built, it divided families, friends, and was a sign that the East had to “lock in” their citizens.  John F. Kennedy visited and expressed solidarity with the Germans in a very popular speech (JFK still immensely popular there): Ich bin ein Berliner.   The symbolism was powerful, and in the mid-eighties Reagan went there and said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”  If ever the wall would go, so would the most potent symbol of the cold war. 

Early November: the new East German government decided they had to win the support of their people, and thought allowing more travel between East and West would work.

November 9, 1989:   Official East German spokesman Gunter Schabowski gives his daily press confernece from 6-7:00 PM.  At 6:55 an Italian journalist asks about travel between East and West Germany.  Schabowski had been given a draft plan to go into effect the next day allowing visas to be granted to East Germans wanting to visit the West.  He said, “there is a new plan, you must have a copy of it...visas will be granted to anyone wanting to travel between East and West,” he said.  The plan was to be controlled and limited, but Schabowski didn’t describe it that way.  The journalists were stunned.  A few who realized how big the news might be rushed to the phones, others asked simply “when?”  He looked at his papers and said, “I believe immediately.”   East Germans radio carried the press report (as did West Berlin radio), so East Germans heard the news and went to the borders to see if they could cross.

The border guards had heard nothing and turned them away.  But more people came and demanded to cross. The guards didn’t know what to do.  They called headquarters for advice, but they didn’t know what was going on either.  Finally, the guards decided to open the borders and let people cross.  The result: Germans dancing on the Berlin wall, the symbol of the Cold War, chipping away at it.  At that point, everything started to unravel.  Within a year, Germany would be unified.  East European states would throw off Communist governments and the Soviet army would retreat.  All of this was peaceful, the Soviets hardly even protests.

Finally, in August 1991, Soviet bureaucrats realized that party power was slipping away.  They plotted a coup to get rid of Gorbachev and his glasnost and perestroika.  They failed.   Boris Yeltsin emerged the hero, standing up to the coup plotters, faxing world capitals, and getting the Russian people behind him.

Result: coup fell apart, but Yeltsin empowered.  This created a dynamic which led to an unbeleivable change.  A major world power ceased to exist.

December 25, 1991: Gorbachev resigned and announced the end of the Soviet Union.   On January 1, 1992 this happened officially, creating fifteen new countries, a peaceful move from being a major power to being a poor country trying to transform.   Wow!  No student of international relations expected that!   A major superpower simply ceases to exist, voluntarily and peacefully.  The world changes from fear of nuclear holocaust to...well, no one knew what was next!

End of the Cold War.  The system we have now is often called the post-cold war system (how horribly uncreative a label!).  We’re not sure what kind of system it is.  One goal of this course is to think about that question.