A Global History of the Cold War, 1945-1991

252 Pages·2021·2.97 MB·English

by  Philip Jenkins

GLOBAL
A
HISTORY
of the
COLD WAR,
1945–1991
Philip Jenkins
A Global History of the Cold War, 1945–1991
Philip Jenkins
A Global History of the
Cold War, 1945–1991
Philip Jenkins
Institute for Studies of Religion
Baylor University
Waco, TX, USA
ISBN 978-3-030-81365-9 ISBN 978-3-030-81366-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81366-6
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C
ontents
1 Introduction 1
Part I Between Wars? 1945–1967 17
2 Origins: The World in 1946 19
3 The Struggle for Europe 37
4 Nuclear Perils 57
5 Asian Theaters 73
6 Decolonization and Third World Struggles 91
7 Khrushchev and Kennedy 107
Part II Living in the Cold War 121
8 National Security and Repression 123
9 Spies, Saboteurs, and Defectors 137
10 Cold War Cultures 151
v
vi CoNTENTS
Part III The Struggle Redefined: 1968–1991 171
11 Crisis of Ideologies: The World in 1968 173
12 A Cold Peace, or War by Other Means? 187
13 Four Minutes to Midnight: The World in 1980 203
14 The New Struggle 213
15 Endgame 229
16 Conclusion: Winners, Losers, and Inheritors 245
Index 255
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Near Omaha, Nebraska, stands Offutt air base, which from 1948 through
1992 was the home base for the US Strategic Air Command (SAC). Founded
in 1946, the SAC was tasked with organizing vast nuclear-armed bomber fleets
which ideally would deter any foe tempted to attack the country. Within a few
years, these were increasingly augmented by missiles. Offutt was chosen as
headquarters because Nebraska stood at the heart of the continental United
States and was furthest removed from potential enemy bomber attacks. From
1959, Offutt was defended by powerful surface-to-air missiles. The SAC
remained active and on perpetual watch until it stood down in 1992, following
the end of the global confrontation that we call the Cold War.
Offutt became home to a museum displaying key aircraft in US military his-
tory, which later moved to another Nebraska location to become the Strategic
Air Command and Aerospace Museum. This is an extraordinary place, with
many tangible remains of that frightening era. The stars of the large collection
include such astonishing items as a gigantic Convair B-36 bomber, with its
230-foot wingspan. With a combination of jet engines and multiple piston-
driven propellers, some versions of the B-36 had an intercontinental range of
10,000 miles. From the time it entered into service in 1948 until its replace-
ment by the B-52 in 1955, the B-36 was a mainstay of the US strategic arsenal,
and over 360 such aircraft were built. These aircraft, and other later weapon
systems, were intended to bear the nuclear arms that would annihilate the
Soviet Union, causing many millions of deaths. At the same time, Soviet equiv-
alents would be extinguishing great cities in the US and Europe.
What makes this museum so distinctive is that it commemorates a war that
was never fought or, at least, in anything like the way that was contemplated.
In consequence, no B-36 ever engaged in combat of any kind. The B-36 never
achieved the legendary fame of other aircraft like the Flying Fortress or the
Spitfire, and never featured in popular culture depictions of heroic deeds or
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1
Switzerland AG 2021
P. Jenkins, A Global History of the Cold War, 1945–1991,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81366-6_1
2 P. JENKINS
futile missions. We can view that achievement—that non-war—in different
ways. We might be extremely thankful that wise policies and effective deter-
rents prevented such a catastrophe, or else we might be outraged and angry
that anyone ever contemplated such horrific slaughter. But the importance of
the story cannot be exaggerated. Both in the threat that was posed to human
civilization and the fact that the ultimate confrontation was averted, we are
looking at one of the most significant facts in human history.
What Kind of War?
If the importance of the Cold War is beyond doubt, its unusual quality raises
some intriguing issues for a historian. When we describe other wars, such as the
Napoleonic conflicts or the Second World War, we know exactly who the par-
ticipants were, when the conflicts began and ended, and where combat
occurred. We can cite the dates on which wars were declared and when peace
agreements ended them. Not only are none of these basic data available to
anyone studying the Cold War, but historians argue at length about basic terms
and details, about the what, why, when, and where. All these questions con-
tinue to divide historians.
By a conventional definition, the Cold War was a confrontation between the
Soviet Union and the US, and the power blocs that each led, which are con-
ventionally termed the East and the West. This situation lasted from just after
the end of the Second World War to the collapse of the Soviet state, roughly
from 1945 to 1991. In the English-speaking world, the “Cold War” concept
was framed by George Orwell, in 1945, and again by the US presidential
adviser Bernard Baruch in 1947. It was popularized by the 1947 book The
Cold War, by the journalist Walter Lippmann. The conflict was so called in
contrast to the hot and extremely destructive world war that had just con-
cluded and was instead characterized by rivalry that fell short of military action
between US and Soviet forces.
The question then arises whether this could legitimately be termed a war. In
legal terms, the two powers were never even enemies, as war was never declared.
Fighting certainly did occur between states aligned to one or other of the two
blocs, most famously in Korea and Vietnam, while internal revolutions and
repressions claimed many lives. If we combine these various conflicts, then the
“non-war” between East and West resulted in tens of millions of deaths. Even
if the two superpowers avoided total and direct war with each other—if they
avoided the constantly dreaded Third World War, “WWIII”—this was nothing
like true peace.
Who fought the Cold War? the West
Nor was it obvious who the competing sides were in this singular war, and that
lack of definition would have enormous policy consequences with which we
still live today. In the late 1950s, say, global confrontations were
1 INTRODUCTION 3
overwhelmingly likely to be depicted in terms of East and West, between
Moscow and Washington, and that was the model commonly assumed among
policymakers on both sides. The B-36s existed to attack Soviet targets and
Soviet forces. Even if a particular situation or problem did not immediately
have such an obvious dimension, then it would be reported and analyzed as
part of the larger Cold War context. If a war had developed in 1962, there was
little doubt about the nations that would be aligned on each side. Yet as we will
see repeatedly, such a simplistic East-West approach would often be misleading.
“The West” is a problematic concept. As commonly presented at the height
of the Cold War, two worlds confronted each other, with the West representing
democracy and freedom, and, by some accounts, the heritage of European
culture and civilization. In the US, college courses on the “Western Heritage”
were semi-seriously described as ranging “From Plato to NATO.” Yet the
US-led alliance of the 1950s included such long-powerful countries as Britain
and France, which had their own distinctive interests and needs, and which
struggled to resist the demands of their overwhelmingly powerful US ally. Nor
was such a transatlantic alignment historically inevitable. Until 1945, different
combinations of allies viewed Germany as their principal enemy. The US saw
no natural or eternal alliance with France or Britain, and throughout the 1920s,
US war plans had imagined a likely conflict against the British Empire (includ-
ing Canada), which would be allied with Japan.
After the Second World War, the US was closely allied with the British
world, and the critically important intelligence-sharing system known as Five
Eyes includes the US, Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. But that
“special relationship” had its definite limits, and the US tried to exclude the
British from nuclear secrets. Britain and Canada meanwhile were much more
open than the US to maintaining diplomatic relations with Communist pow-
ers, including Mao’s China and Fidel Castro’s Cuba, Moreover, that close
Anglophone network did not necessarily extend to other North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) states. In 1966, France withdrew from NATO’s formal
military structures, and transatlantic tensions became acute during the Vietnam
War years. British and European allies were often disdainful of American cul-
tural expressions. Western populations also varied enormously in their attitudes
toward Communism. Throughout the Cold War years, Communist parties in
France and Italy were very powerful organizations commanding mass support,
which was certainly not the case in Britain or Canada, leave alone the
US. Throughout the Cold War, Soviet propaganda and diplomatic efforts
encouraged the detachment of Europe from the US concept of a com-
mon “West.”
Defining “the West” would often be controversial. If indeed the term
referred to a US-led alliance of democratic states opposed to Communism, it
was difficult to include Spain, which was strictly nondemocratic until after
1975, yet which was de facto integrated into US defense arrangements. At dif-
ferent times, dictatorial regimes in Portugal and Greece clearly defined them-
selves as anti-Communist and therefore Western. The US alliance also included
4 P. JENKINS
such key Asian and clearly non-Western nations—Japan, as well as South Korea
and Taiwan (the Republic of China). In the 1970s, Israel sought to expand the
concept of the West and its struggles beyond that central anti-Communist
theme. Israeli leaders presented the country as a part of the “West” engaged in
common cause against terrorism and against hostile Arab and Islamic states.
Who fought the Cold War? the east
The concept of “the East”—the Communist world—also demands unpacking.
Although US administrations sometimes presented all Communist powers as
integral parts of a solid Eastern Bloc, that view became ever less tenable as the
decades went on. From the 1950s, although Yugoslavia remained Communist,
it became ever more detached from the Soviet alliance in Europe. Other East
European states followed. The Soviets had to struggle constantly to maintain
the loyalty of members of its alliance, the Warsaw Pact, and to ensure that
domestic reforms in these satellite countries did not lead to defiance of its
hegemony. Even a faithful Soviet ally like Cuba’s Fidel Castro was capable of
independent and provocative actions that angered Moscow. During the 1960s,
China became so hostile to the Soviet Union that the two countries came close
to open war. By that point, definitions of Communism itself were in flux. In the
West, the New Left that emerged in the late 1950s presented itself as equally
disdainful of both American and Soviet regimes, and that perspective became
very popular in many societies.
In the early years of the Cold War, the US and the USSR were so inconceiv-
ably stronger than any possible rivals or competitors that it made some sense to
think of their contest in bipolar terms. As the decades progressed, that assump-
tion became ever less plausible.
Beyond east and West
The issue of diversity within the Communist world—the East—had real politi-
cal consequences. Some states and movements were avowedly and wholeheart-
edly pledged to Communism, but others were not, although their policies
borrowed heavily from the left-wing language and assumptions. So how did
each side assess its potential friends and enemies? What decided whether a hos-
tile or critical government was actually part of the enemy camp?
In the 1950s, many nations defined themselves as part of a Third World,
affiliated neither to the Eastern and Western sides in the Cold War, but pro-
claimed values of nationalism, anti-imperialism, neutralism, and non- alignment.
From an American or Western point of view, a government that spoke the
language of socialism and anti-imperialism might well be a veiled or unadmit-
ted ally of the Soviets, especially if it acted against US economic interests, and
it thus needed to be treated as an enemy. Such a vision neglected purely local
circumstances, grievances, and loyalties. Some crises, which were at the time
seen as East-West battles, can in retrospect be seen as expressions of