Chapter 38 The Bipolar World THE CHAPTER IN PERSPECTIVE No sooner had World War II reached its bloody finish than the world was thrust into an even more frightening conflagration. The United States and its allies and the Soviet Union and its allies faced off in a fundamental struggle to shape the postwar world. It was a contest based on power politics, competing social and economic systems, and differing political ideologies that lasted over fifty years and touched every corner of the globe. A spiraling arms race eventually brought the world to the brink of nuclear apocalypse. While the war remained technically cold, the fear of a nuclear disaster made it feel very different to the peoples of the world. OVERVIEW The Formation of a Bipolar World Despite the lingering general animosity and mistrust that the Soviets and Americans shared, at the heart of the cold war was a fundamental disagreement between political, economic, and social systems. Capitalism and communism, at least in the minds of the superpowers, remained mutually exclusive. The United States attacked communism and backed, at least in theory, liberalism. Consequently, the United States criticized the Soviet record on human rights and the suppression of civil and religious institutions. In turn the Soviets, led by Nikita Khrushchev, were critics of the failings of laissez faire capitalism and the wide gulf between rich and poor in western European and especially the United States. Further, the Soviets recognized the shortcomings of the collectivization and the brutal use of terror during the Stalinist years. In reality, both the Russians and Americans increasingly were practitioners of reformed versions of communism and capitalism. The heart of the American policy, as expressed clearly in the Truman Doctrine, was to limit the spread of communism through a policy of containment. This policy resulted in a plan to give military and financial aid to any nation facing a threat of a communist takeover or even of the rise of a legitimate leftist party. In response the Soviets supported wars of national liberation or colonial revolution and tried to achieve military parity with the United States. In Europe these competing goals resulted in an east west split along, to use Churchill s words, the iron curtain. The most important element in this split was the division of Germany and Berlin. By 1949 the division of Germany was final with the formation of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany). In 1961 the Soviets constructed the Berlin Wall in an attempt to stop the migration of over three million Germans from east to west. The cold war would have its greatest symbol. The division became more militarized with the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Treaty Organization. While the Soviets and Americans managed to avoid direct confrontation, they almost always found themselves on opposite ends of every international struggle. By 1948 Korea had split into communist North Korea under Kim Il Sung and anticommunist South Korea under
Syngman Rhee. An attempt by North Korea to ignore treaty agreements, cross the 38th parallel, and occupy the entire Korean peninsula brought U.S. troops into the fight. While the Americans pushed the North Koreans back, they also quickly attempted to occupy the entire Korean peninsula. Quickly, three hundred thousand Chinese troops poured across the border, and the war turned into a stalemate along the 38th parallel. Korea suffered the devastating loss of three million people, mainly Korean civilians, and lingering hostilities that left future unification almost impossible. In relation to the cold war, the Korean War signified an increasing globalization of the conflict. For all its destruction and loss of life, in the end the Korean War would almost pale in comparison to the nuclear brinkmanship of the Cuban missile crisis. Soviet aid to Castro and the remarkably clumsy failed Bay of Pigs invasion left the Cuban situation volatile at best. The October 1962 U.S. discovery of Soviet assembled launch sites for mediumrange nuclear missiles in Cuba ratcheted up the pressure, and the resulting stare down left the world holdings its breath. In the end the Soviets backed down, but the enormity of the nuclear gamble on both sides left the world terrified. The rise of a bipolar world made for a confused political system as nations struggled to adapt to the new arrangement. In stark black and white the Soviets and Americans viewed every nation in the world as a potential ally or enemy. Some alliances, such as China s relationship with the Soviets, were not what they appeared to the outside world. Other leaders, most notably Jawaharlal Nehru from India and Achmad Sukarno from Indonesia, organized the Bandung Conference in an attempt to create the nonalignment movement as a third option beyond Soviet or American dominance. The nonalignment option was a difficult one simply because the Americans and Soviets were always ready to intervene to back a revolution or prop up a regime. The Soviets and especially the Americans were also facing internal challenges. Senator Joseph McCarthy and his allies pursued communists inside America with such a dangerous fervor that conformity became the only option for many. Others would not be bowed so easily. Simone de Beauvoir, in The Second Sex, and Betty Friedan, in The Feminine Mystique, expressed the growing dissatisfaction of women in Europe and America. The ideas of black nationalism would reverberate through Africa and the United States. Martin Luther King Jr. fought for civil rights and Brown v. the Board of Education ruled segregation illegal. In the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev s call for de Stalinization often inspired more criticism than the Soviets were prepared to accept. The crushing of Hungary s rebellion in 1956 showed clearly that there were definite limits to change in the Soviet Union. Challenges to Superpower Hegemony Both the Soviet Union and United States faced challenges to their position atop the bipolar political structure. The first challenge would come from Charles de Gaulle, who felt that France, and all of Europe for that matter, would never regain great power status if they depended on the United States for military protection. Consequently, de Gaulle pursued independent actions such as rejecting a partial nuclear test ban treaty that the Soviets and Americans had signed. His vision of a unified, independent Europe would survive after his death in the form of the European Community, which stood for the elimination of barriers to free trade. The signing of the Maastricht Treaty and creation of the European Union in 1993 carried the dream of European integration and power to a new level. Eastern Europe would provide the Soviet Union with similar but more serious challenges. In Yugoslavia Marshall Tito was expelled from the Soviet bloc for following an independent foreign policy. Nikita Khrushchev began an active
program of de Stalinization that led to the release of millions of political prisoners. The air of openness also led to more criticism of the traditional Soviet system than the Russians were prepared to accept. Soviet tanks rolled into Hungary in 1956, to topple Imre Nagy and install János Kádár, and Czechoslovakia in 1968, to bring an end to Alexander Dubcek s Prague Spring. Leonid Brezhnev s Doctrine of Limited Sovereignty, also known as the Brezhnev Doctrine, clearly displayed the limits of reform. Relations with China weren t going any better for the Soviets and grew much more troubled after Meo Zedong was forced to sign the one sided treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance. By the mid 1960s the Chinese were accusing the Soviets of being revisionists for not more actively challenging the Americans. Instead, the Soviets were practicing detenté with the Americans and agreed to the Strategic Arts Limitations Talks. American Soviet relations took a turn for the worse in 1979 when the Unites States established full diplomatic relations with China. The beginning of the end of the bipolar world was obvious after the American defeat in Vietnam and the Soviet debacle in Afghanistan. The End of the Cold War Communism, because it had been imposed from the outside by the Soviet Union, never truly came to grips with nationalism in eastern Europe. Any good will that the Soviets had accrued from their valiant fight against the Nazis was wasted on totalitarian regimes and blatant acts of militaristic oppression in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. By the time of Mikhail Gorbachev s arrival and the corresponding death of the Brezhnev Doctrine, eastern Europe was a time bomb waiting to explode. Beginning with Poland and the efforts of the Solidarity leader Lech Wallesa, the eastern European states destroyed decades of communist rule and cut ties with the Soviet Union. Bulgaria (including the longest lasting communist dictator, Todor Zhivkov) and Hungary followed suit. A velvet revolution swept the communists out of power in Czechoslovakia (followed by the velvet divorce that resulted in the split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia). Nicolae Ceauşescu s brutal regime in Romania came to an end in 1989 with his overthrow and death. East Germany s Erich Honecker, personifying a system that had lost touch with the people and with reality, denounced Gorbachev s reforms and was astonished when he was swept out of power. On 9 November 1989 the Berlin Wall, the greatest symbol of the cold war, was breached for good. It is impossible to comprehend the events in Eastern Europe without understanding the career and philosophy of Mikhail Gorbachev. Like most revolutionary figures, Gorbachev did not initially intend to abolish the existing political and economic system of the Soviet Union. His calls for uskorenie ( acceleration ) went nowhere, and he realized that the Soviet system was so firmly entrenched that any subtle changes would move at glacial speed without a radical kick start. Gorbachev s policies of perestroika ( restructuring ) and glasnost ( openness ) shook the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc to its core. Unfortunately, as is also so often the case, reformers can lose control of the revolution and it can spin out of control and inspire drastic actions to protect the status quo by military officers or conservative officials. The problem that Gorbachev faced was that because the Soviet Union was only half Russian, there was the very real potential for ethnic and political meltdown. When the Baltic States and then the rest of the Soviet republics declared independence, a conservative coup imprisoned Gorbachev. Boris Yeltsin, the popular leader of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, defeated the coup and saved Gorbachev but also essentially ended his tenure in office. It would be left for Yeltsin to dismantle the Russian communist party and move toward market reforms. The bipolar cold war world
collapsed overnight, and millions around the globe enjoyed a breathtaking (and terrifying) taste of freedom. Two superpowers emerged from the ashes of the Second World War, the United States and the Soviet Union. Former allies, the two were now actively hostile, but they repeatedly stopped short of a full out war. The prospect of a nuclear confrontation was too awful to contemplate. The cold war was characterized by the following: The arms race. The logic of the cold war drove both superpowers to stockpile nuclear weapons in order to match one anotherʹs destructive capabilities. The two powers were evenly matched in the 1960s, but by the 1980s the effort had severely strained the Soviet economy. Bipolar alliances. The cold war saw new defensive alliances, NATO in the west and the Warsaw Pact of the Soviet satellites. The world was divided into two camps, and the ʺthird worldʺ nations were courted and pressured to join one or the other. Some states, such as France and Yugoslavia, demonstrated that it was possible to avoid such entanglements. The Peopleʹs Republic of China turned briefly to the Soviet Union for support, but broke free after 1964. Aggressive saber rattling. Although the superpowers avoided direct and full scale war, a number of minor conflicts sapped their energies and resources: Berlin, Korea, Hungary, Cuba, and Czechoslovakia. The United States fought a long and ultimately futile war in Vietnam. The Soviet Union was likewise drawn into a civil war in Afghanistan. Both these campaigns failed. The failure of communism. As an economic system, Soviet communism provided a shabby equality for all, with few consumer goods and limited opportunities. In contrast, the postwar decades saw unprecedented prosperity in the United States, Europe, and Japan. Overall the standard of living in the capitalist societies improved dramatically, although there were greater extremes of wealth and poverty. The collapse of the Soviet Union. The breakdown of the Soviet Union, while a long time coming, was swift and unexpected when it came. Between 1989 and 1991, the Soviet Empire completely unraveled, and the cold war ended. Please answer these for the day of the test: five points each 1. Nikita Khrushchev predicted that eventually people will give their preference to the truly free world of communism and turn their back on the so called `free world of capitalism. What was his definition of free? Could it be argued that in the cold war the Americans and Soviets ensured that no one was truly free? 2. Discuss the origins of the cold war. What were the fundamental differences between the Soviet Union and the United States? Examine the contrasting ideologies of the superpowers. 3. Examine the political and social philosophy of Mikhail Gorbachev. How did he try to bring about changes in the Soviet Union? Did he go too far and too fast? Why do you think he doesn t get the credit he deserves?
4. Examine the situations in Korea and Cuba in relation to the cold war competition between the Soviet Union and the United States. Who, if anyone, was victorious in these confrontations? 5. Compare and contrast the American experiences in Vietnam to that of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. What was the lesson each superpower learned? 6. Examine the role played by Eastern Europe in the cold war and the collapse of the Soviet Union. 7. How did the division and occupation of Germany represent the conflicting goals of the Soviet Union and United States in the cold war? What was the significance of the Berlin Wall? 8. Examine the nonalignment movement of Jawaharlal Nehru and Achmad Sukarno. What were their goals? Were other leaders trying to chart a new path in the bipolar world of the cold war? 9. What role did the fear of nuclear annihilation play in the cold war? Did the threat of the atomic bomb, strangely enough, keep the cold war cold?