Works Cited

Keegan, John. The Second World War. Penguin. p. 578. ISBN 978-0-14-303573-2.

Leffler, Melvyn P., "For the South of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union and the Cold     War, First Edition, (New York, 2007) pg 31

http://www.ndl.go.jp/constitution/e/etc/c06.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War

Gaddis, John Lewis (2005). The Cold War: A New History. Penguin Press. ISBN 1-59420-062-9.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yalta_Conference

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potsdam_Conference

http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2008_03/Nunn

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/iran/nuclear_program/index.html

About the Project

I'm a huge history buff. So when this project was explained, and we had the chance to discuss the "what if"s of an apocalypse via historical events, I knew right away the Cold War was what I wanted to cover. The Cold War if full of "what if"s. What if the Vietnam war never existed? What if the Bay of Pigs was successful? Follow up to that: if it was, would there have even been the Cuban missile crisis? That and many other questions are something we can only discuss in theory, and also which is something what I wanted to touch on, because there was no way I could cover something that took up over half a century in U.S. and international history. I think that this blog at the least shines a light on all the variables that went into the cold war and how the tug of war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union played itself out.

The Nuclear Age and What Could Lie Ahead

Nuclear warhead stockpiles, 1945-2005

In today’s day and age, ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, the threat of nuclear war has gotten farther and farther away from the daily headlines in our newspapers and in our news programs. However, there was a semi-new development recently in Iran from around the fall of last year. Iran’s nuclear program, where everybody else is slowly cleaning out their stockpiles, is currently working on trying to grow theirs, spending a lot of money on their uranium enrichment programs and other nuclear facilities. This has lead many countries angry with Iran, most of which have so placed economic sanctions against Iran, such as not allowing oil imports from Iran, as a means of penalizing them for doing something that is very dangerous to the international community. While there are still talks from both Iran and western officials, some would say this is one of the biggest potential nuclear scares since the cold war. Fortunately, Iran hasn’t made a bomb yet, but reports sat Iran very close to making weapons-grade uranium. And in the most volatile area in the world, the middle east, One would have to worry if nuclear weaponry found their way into the Iranian’s hands.
    Talks are said to resume later on May 23 between Iran, the U.S. and other world powers, but what is to be discussed might be a moot point. Iran doesn’t look like it’s going stop what their doing. Nobody, especially the U.S., wants to back to the middle east for war again, this time in Iran. However, it could very well be a possible scenario. I see this and I can’t help but seeing parallels with the combination of the Korean and Vietnam Wars with the combination of the War in Iraq and Afghanistan and the possible occupation of Iran. It very well could be another reason why the phrase “History tends to repeat itself” is very fitting in a lot historical and political lessons over time. Let’s just hope it does repeat itself, because at least that would mean there wouldn’t be a nuclear end-of-the-world.

The Vietnam War: The Cold War’s War (1955-1975)

The Vietnam war, which started two years after the Korean war ended in 1955, with the abandonment of the French in 1954, making Vietnam another country ripe for the taking by either NATO or the Warsaw Pact. And it was essentially the Korean war all over again. It was the northern, communist backed Vietnamese versus the southern Vietnamese, support the the U.S. Each side still used conventional weaponry. New weaponry was also introduced, like inclusion of the helicopter for tactical maneuvers, and napalm, an explosive known for its intense heat and used to burn down large sections of jungle where the enemy was hiding. With both sides knowing the amount of missiles stockpiled by their respective enemy was enormous, nuclear war was out of the question.
    The Vietnamese war lasted 20 years until 1975, when unpopularity of the war from the U.S. citizens grew, and tensions from the cold war lessened. The Vietnamese war was, and I know I’m putting this in an offensive way (I’m not trying to!) a side show to the back and forth that was the Cold War between the Soviets and the U.S. It was like the Vietnam war was a way for each side to release their own aggression. Maybe the Vietnam war was a good thing and that if we didn’t have it, something completely different could have happened elsewhere that would've lead to nuclear doom.

The Cuban Missile Crisis (1962)

When Fidel Castro took over as leader of Cuba in 1959, having a possible communist country only 90 miles from U.S. was not comfortable for soon to be President John F. Kennedy. In April of 1961 Kennedy launched an attack that is known to this day as the bay of pigs. Unfortunately for the U.S. this attack was a flat out failure, leaving Castro to respond by being backed by Soviet forces.
    This then lead to the Cuban Missile Crisis a little over a year later. The Soviets found out about another attempt from the U.S. to oust Castro, and so they decided to take precautions of their own and built missiles in Cuba. America responded by putting their own missiles in Turkey, right outside Soviet lines. It was the closest up until this point in time that the U.S. and the Soviets were on the brink of nuclear war. It was also the closest it ever got to actually becoming a nuclear war ever. This concept of Mutually assured destruction (“where if you blow me up, I’ll blow you up”) ultimately kept the missiles on the ground and really started to get people to think, “Hey, maybe the Atom bomb is not the best idea” and start advocating for nuclear disarmament. Again, another moment in history where if something else happened, it could have ended all the other history we’ve made up until now.

Cold War Pawns

What happened in Korea was only the beginning. Every country that hadn’t pledged allegiance or neutrality to one side or the other was in play. All that seemed to matter was how many countries you get on your side, whether that be capitalism or communism. And with Stalin’s death in 1953, the Soviet Union created the Warsaw Pact, an official document made with all of the Soviet’s “allies”, if you will, it was also the NATO versus the Warsaw Pact.
    There was no sense that world war was going to break out any time soon, but the feeling of tension of major conflict was always there. So when young, up and coming countries were created, The Soviet Union and the U.S. would use their respectable agencies to either infiltrate and/or support certain political groups, all just to gain control of a country. It’s all just to see who can get more players on their team, so when the time comes, each force has missiles coming from as many places as possible and from every direction.
    Decolonization in some places, with the addition of nationalist movements across the globe, gave opportunities for each side to do just that. From 1954 all the way into the late 70’s, The U.S. and the Soviet Union were in a constant behind the scene struggle in countries that went through political Revolution such as Israel, Egypt, Angola, The Dominican Republic, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Uruguay, and Paraguay, Panama, and most importantly of all, Cuba.

The Korean War, 1950 - 1953

The Korean War was the first armed conflict since the end of the second World war. The way it played out is interesting because it is the first of many conflicts that stem from the Cold War’s main pillar: Capitalism vs. Communism. Korea was split into to sides (go figure), North and South Korea from the collapse of the Japan Empire. The Northern half was backed by Communist China and Soviets, the South backed by NATO, which actually had to form a military structure for the first time because of it. Another interesting thing was that right away both sides of this conflict knew from the get go that nuclear weapons were not an option. Instead they resorted to the exact same thing as they did in the last war: Machine guns, grenades, mortars, etc. However, there was debate on both sides if it was a good idea to use the A-bomb or not. The war itself in terms of where enemy lines were drawn, and fighting went back and forth over the three years, both sides constantly losing or gaining ground, never able to hold onto it (right). In the end it was seen as a draw. But more importantly it was seen as a good sign that the weapons that were being used were conventional weapons.
    Given that Korea is such a small territory, I think it would be tough to say if either side used the atomic bomb in the Korean War, that it would bring the end of the world. But what I would argue is that it would just be ground zero for the rest of the world to start using nuclear weapons, which would be a bad precedent to set, which would’ve made a nuclear apocalypse more likely or imminent.

The Eastern Bloc, NATO, and its Building Tensions

If there was any original front-line for the Cold War, it was the new German border. Named the “Iron Curtain”, the East-West Germany, in addition to the East-West Berlin border, was the definitive line between the Soviet forces and Western allies. Countries that consisted of the Eastern Bloc were mentioned in the last post, with the addition of the People’s Republic of China under their leader Mao Zedong. The Western Allies included America, Great Britain, Canada, and multiple others, who created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, in 1949. Also, by this time the Soviets had acquired their own atomic bomb, putting both sides on an even playing field. There were now two groups at play in the world. The Soviet Republics, and the Democratic States. This caused each side to make their own doctrines and plans, stating officially what their position is and how they’ll act on it. In 1947, Harry Truman unveiled his doctrine, The Truman Doctrine, which focused on the idea of containment, where in this case meant subduing and stopping the spread of communism The Capitalist economy versus that of a Communist one. And there were a lot of countries that were still out there, just waiting to get recruited. Which is also what lead to the first major war since World War Two.

Setting the Stage: End of WWII, The Start of the Cold War, and the Dawn of the Nuclear Age.

The Cold War, In essence, was The democratic/capitalist United States versus the communist/dictatorial Soviet Union. So how did it come to this? Where did it all go wrong? Some would Say that the Cold War started after World War One, for various reasons, however the majority of Historians the start of the cold war would be after the end of World War II.
    To be more specific, it was literally drawn out when the Leaders of the Allied forces, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, met at the Yalta conference in February of 1945. The mains points were to go about dealing mainly with agreeing that victory wouldn’t be achieved until the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany,including the demilitarization of Germany, establishing democratic governments, and reestablishing borders in previously Nazi-Occupied land and other parts of war-torn Europe. Each leader proposed their own plans as to how the territories should be divvied up amongst the leading powers, and eventually came up with this:

Germany Post WWII

Berlin, Post WWII

Four territories, with the three of the largest belonging to the central powers, and the fourth to the France. With Berlin also being a city with diplomatic importance, it too was divided into four territories. They also helped reestablish the border of Poland. The conference also concluded that Stalin would help the U.S. in fighting Japan 90 days after the defeat of Germany.
    By July of 1945, Germany had been defeated, and the 3 Allied powers met once more in Potsdam, Germany, which was aptly named The Potsdam Conference. They all agreed as to how Germany should be handled Post -war, but by this time however, relationships changed between the Allied forces since February, mainly due to the fact that a) Harry Truman was now the president, as was Clement Attlee new as British Prime Minister, b) Stalin’s Red Army had begun occupying eastern Europe: the Baltic States, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, and most importantly (The reason I even mention the Potsdam Conference) is c) The U.S. had successfully built and tested an atomic bomb. To keep relations honest with the Soviets, Truman had told Stalin that he had “a new weapon of unusually destructive force” (Keegan). This then lead to Truman to the Potsdam Declaration, where he delivered an ultimatum to Japan to surrender, or else. Japan ignored the threat, and later that year in August, The U.S. dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 3 days apart from each other, forever changing how the World would (or wouldn’t) fight its wars.