After World War II, many nations began to ally themselves with the democratic United States or the communist Soviet Union. New political alignments and the waning power of European colonial powers encouraged independence movements in many European colonies. Decolonization across Africa and Asia led to the emergence of new independent states. These new nations provided a battlefield between capitalist and communist political ideologies. Due to their military strength and fear of mutual nuclear annihilation, the United States and the Soviet Union (USSR) engaged in a series of indirect "proxy" conflicts in several developing nations worldwide.
In this unit, we examine how the United States and the Soviet Union engaged developing nations economically, technologically, and militarily as each superpower tried to gain political and military advantages over the other. Finally, we study how nations in Europe and Asia responded to the Cold War by creating new economic and political alliances, such as the European Union.
Completing this unit should take you approximately 4 hours.
The United States and the Soviet Union – the two "superpowers" that economically, militarily, and politically survived the devastation of World War II – divided Europe into two spheres of influence: the West and the East. The United States occupied Japan, while the United States and the Soviet Union divided Korea into South Korea and communist North Korea. The Korean War (1950–1953) cemented these boundaries.
Read this text on the origins of the Cold War, the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, U.S. foreign policy, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the Warsaw Pact.
Read this article for a general overview of the Cold War, with close attention to the "historiography" section. Historians frequently disagree about why something occurred, and the Cold War has many competing explanations.
Few historical documents unveil historical motivations as clearly as George Kennan's Long Telegram. In it, Kennan explained why some form of conflict was inevitable with the Soviet Union. He offered his recommendations on countering Soviet aggression. Future administrations would take nuanced approaches, but the basic idea remained in U.S. foreign policy until the end of the Cold War.
The "Space Race" was a unique product of the Cold War. On the one hand, it was a chance for the United States and the Soviet Union to compete to show who was more scientifically advanced. Many believed it proved who had the better system. However, it was always tied to the arms race: whoever could reliably put satellites in orbit could also launch effective missiles.
Mao Zedong (1893–1976) rose to defeat the nationalist forces to form a communist government in China in 1949. The People's Republic of China imposed radical large-scale land reform and dramatic industrial development, which contributed to China's extraordinary economic growth but caused widespread suffering and the death of millions of Chinese citizens.
Read this text on the Chinese Revolution, the Korean War, the Great Leap Forward, and the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
The extraordinary number of deaths during the Chinese Revolution is difficult to fathom. The Soviet Union had a similar experience when Stalin forced the population to modernize Russia's agricultural and industrialization practices. Historians estimate that Mao's Great Leap Forward (1958–1962), mandatory collectivization, forced labor, and the famine that ensued caused the deaths of 18–30 million people in China.
The Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) was Mao's attempt to purge China of anything deemed corruptive to the communist cause. The government and local citizens suppressed anything considered Western, American, or European and anything that promoted capitalism or democracy. Homes were invaded, dissidents were imprisoned in reeducation camps, and prisoners were executed for crimes against the state.
Read this text on the Cultural Revolution and its Aftermath. Make a timeline of these events. How does the Cultural Revolution compare with the Great Leap Forward?
Watch this video. How could Mao ascend to power and triumph over the Republic of China? How do you think these events shaped China into the nation it is today?
The conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union encouraged many countries to fall in line with one or the other. However, some countries did not want to pick a side: Ghana's first president, Kwame Nkrumah, quoted a proverb about his country's stance on the Cold War: "When the elephants fight, the grass gets trampled". The collection of socialist and free-market countries that refused to align with either side became known as the Non-Aligned Movement.
During his speech at the 1955 Asian-African Conference of newly independent nations, India's Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) argued that developing nations would not benefit from military alliances with the United States or the Soviet Union. Instead, developing nations should work together to pursue independent developmental paths free of burdensome pro-Communist or anti-Communist alliances.
World War II marked the beginning of the end of European imperialism in Africa and Asia. The Japanese army's defeat of British, Dutch, and French colonies showed that Europeans were not invincible or even all that powerful. In the wake of the war, those countries were in a weakened position economically. Of course, this did not stop them from trying to hang on to their colonies, partly to try and restore their old power and influence. This set the stage for a new conflict, one that was separate from the Cold War but often intersected with it: decolonization. Newly independent countries often tried to pick a side to receive aid and support but, in the process, injected themselves into the conflict.
Read this text on Soviet Union interventions in Warsaw Pact Nations during the 1950s and 1960s, tensions in Latin America and Asia, the Vietnam War, the Sino-Soviet split, and African decolonization.
Read this article on the history of the Vietnam War. What began as a conflict over decolonization became a Cold War battlefield by the late 1960s, with U.S. troops fighting communist North Vietnamese troops, who were given weapons and support from China and the Soviet Union.
Britain went from having the largest empire in the world in 1945 to being reduced to a handful of small islands by the 1970s. Read more about the dissolution of the British Empire here.
Portugal controlled Angola until 1974 and fought for 13 years to stop Angola from breaking free" However, the country was plunged into a new war after it gained independence due to its position in the Cold War" Read this text to learn more"
This Cold War and the struggle for decolonization were intertwined. As independence movements formed new communities or nation-states, the Soviet Union and the United States fought to create networks to expand their ideologies and influence.
A peaceful end to the Cold War was not inevitable. The instability of the 1950s and 1960s gave space for reformers to come to power in China and the Soviet Union. Neither wanted to abandon communism altogether. Rather, they wanted to reform it so their economies could function with more stability and humanity. These reforms achieved wildly different results.
Read this text on the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc and the changes Deng Xiaoping promoted in China in the 1970s and 1980s,
Read this to learn more about the events in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Read this section to learn more about the policies of Glasnost and Perestroika and how they contributed to the peaceful end of the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Take this assessment to see how well you understood this unit.