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The Cold War was a contest between the USA and the Soviet Union. It led to the existence of thousands of nuclear weapons, two universal ideologies in conflict, and two different self-images, the United States championing a world made safe for democracy. Its opponent, the Soviet Union advocated world Communism.
The United States prides itself on its heritage of freedom, a refuge for persecuted religious groups, a land of liberty that successfully rebelled against the imperial power of Britain in 1776. Its guiding principles were the protection of the individuals life, liberty and pursuit of happiness and the establishment of a constitution that embodied the best political idea of modern times, a system of checks and balances so that the president, Congress or parliament and judiciary or Supreme Court shared power, checking each others work to guard against dictatorship.
While the United States did not always live up to its ideals, nonetheless, on paper at least, it looked good compared to its Cold War rival, the Soviet Union. Led by a murderous dictator, Joseph Stalin (18 to 15), the Soviet government was brutal, outlawing all opposition, banned political parties opposed to the Communist Party, murdered millions and set up a vast prison camp system known as the Gulag. In the years 17-8 alone, Stalin ordered the execution of one million citizens of the Soviet Union. In the fifty years of the Cold War, the United States only executed two of its own citizens, the husband and wife Rosenberg spy team. Even though the Rosenbergs should not have been executed because their crimes were tiny in the context of the Civil War, the difference between the United States and the Soviet Union in terms of political mass murder of its own citizens is obvious.
Despite this fact, one third of the world went the Communist way and other countries were tempted by the promises of Communism. How could this be?
In theory, Communism promised a more equal world and at its greatest extent in the 170s, Communist governments ruled one third of the world's people. These were mostly poor countries looking for a quick way to industrialise. These countries looked upon the United States as a champion of the rich and powerful, an exploitative superpower that exported its economic system of capitalism only because it suited its interests to do so.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 11, the United States strides the world as the sole superpower. The United States maintains its grip on this unipolar world without having to make too much effort. The United States spends only about 5-6% of its economy (its gross national product) on defense. The Soviet Union spent somewhere between 0% and % of its economy to try to keep up with the United States during the Cold War. It couldn't keep up the pace. The position of the United States has declined only slightly in the twentieth century. In 18, its economy was four times the size of its nearest rival (France) and in 150 its economy was three times the size of its nearest rival (the Soviet Union).
It is not just a question of economic or military power. American films and popular music dominated the mass culture of the world from World War One to the present day. In 14, the biggest-selling film in Austria, France, Germany, Argentina and Mexico was the The Lion King, an American cartoon. The Flinstones was the best-selling film in Poland and Turkey. Forrest Gump won Finland and Norway. It is important to remember that power is projected and wars can be won not just by military and economic means but also by winning what is now an international culture war.
A reluctant empire? The United States expanded its frontier in North America throughout the eighteenth century and after victory over Spain in 188 became a maritime power whose empire stretched as far west as the Philippines. Ever since the Monroe Doctrine of 18, the United States has pledged itself to prevent the European powers from intervening in the western hemisphere, specifically Latin America. Following its victory over Spain in 188, the Untied States arrived as a world power.
For many Native Americans and African-American slaves, some of the rhetoric of freedom did not ring true. But Americas promise of freedom and opportunity attracted migrants from all over the world. They arrived in New York at the rate of a million a year in the early 100s. As a result of Europes self-destruction in World War One (114-18), the United States became the dominant economic and political power in the world. It would later describe itself as a reluctant empire, a democratic state whose aim was to spread its ideals over the world but not to control in the way that European empires had done in the past. But what would it do with this power?
Britain and France, weakened by the loss of Russia through revolution, were able to overcome Germany only with Americas help. Wilson believed that the values of the United States were in fact universal values of peace and democracy. In 118 Woodrow Wilson, the American president published his Fourteen Points which called for a democratic peace based on the rights of self determination of all nations and the setting up of an international body, the League of Nations, to solve conflicts.
But the world was changing. In Russia in 117 Lenin and his Communist Party had come to power. Even worse for Wilson, his ideas were rejected in his own country, the United States. Wilson was pleased that the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War One established a League of Nations, but then found that the United States would not join. The League of Nations was rejected by the Senate, the upper house of the US Congress. Instead the Untied States tried to secure its future through the Washington Conference of 11- which agreed that the US Navy should be of equal strength to the largest navy in the world, the British. In the 10s and 0s, American foreign policy was dominated by isolationism, a refusal to intervene in Europe even when fasicsts, nazis and communists were on the march against American-style democracy in Europe. Those who support American power in the world today still worry that if the rest of the world criticises the United States too much it will retreat into its shell again and leave Europe and Australia at the mercy of a new (presumably Asian) religious fascim.
Despite or because of its spectacular economic growth, American capitalism hit a major snag in the Great Depression that began in 1 and economic problems increased the mood of isolationism in the US public, that is a mood of cutting the United States off from the worlds troubles. The president to take the US out of the Depression was Franklin D. Roosevelt, who introduced his New Deal. It was Roosevelt who would take the USA into the Second World War but only after Japan attacked Pearl Harbour in 141, putting an end to the argument for isolation. The USA suffered more than three hundred thousand deaths in World War Two, mostly soldiers. But as in World War One this was a relatively small price to pay for what was a huge victory. The Soviet Union now under Joseph Stalin lost 7-0 million people, the majority of which were civilians.
At the end of world War Two, the United States had a new and powerful weapon, the atomic bomb that it had to used to force japan to surrender in 145. Under president Truman from 145-5, the United States staked out a new role as the worlds policeman whose task it was to protect the democratic and free West from the tyranny of Stalins Communism in the Soviet Union.
The United States would win the Cold War, in large part because of its continuing economic success. On the eve of its collapse in 10, the GNP of the Soviet Union was approximately one third of that of the USA, even though the United States and the Soviet Union had almost identical population sizes.
The secret to Americas success? Unlike the Soviet Union, which experimented with a new and untried economic model of a state-rune economy, the Untied States had a proven economic model of capitalism. It had its faults such as inequality and crises of unemployment but encouraged innovation and efficiency in a way that the Soviet system did not.
For many in western Europe and Japan, the united States looked like the good power in the Cold War compared to the evil of Soviet Communism. The Untied States was never a police state although it did support police states elsewhere in the world so long as those police states were opposed to Communism. The National Security Act of 147 established the basic national security organizations of the United States--the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Council, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the U.S. Air Force, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense the institutions that dominated the United States throughout the Cold War. President Truman had to struggle between paying the bills of the military to fight the Cold War but not to overburden the economy through excessive government expenditure. The Americans found the right balance in a way that the Soviet Union never succeeded in doing. In July 14, Truman hoped to limit the militarys 151 budget to $1 billion.
There were bad moments for the United States in the Cold War. 14 was probably the worst year. After the Soviet atomic test in August 14 and Mao Zedongs victory in China, communism became an even greater threat. The Truman administration orchestrated NSC 68s famous call to arms. To move the public to spend more on the Cold War strategy, NSC 68 portrayed the Soviet challenge as a contest pitting good against evil. American strategy remained torn between simply containing Communism or rolling it back by actively supporting the Soviet Unions opponents.
For historians of the Cold War, the great debate has been between traditionalists who tend to see the United States as the defensive power in the Cold War (and the Soviet Union as the aggressor) and revisionist historians who tend to see the United States and the Soviet Union as equally aggressive and equally at fault. Revisionists (those critical of American foreign policy) are usually accused of forgetting the 'lessons of Munich'. It is argued that World War Two arose partly because too many historians thought Germany was unjustly treated after World War One by the Treaty of Versailles.
Appeasment was carried out mainly by the British government of Chamberlain at Munich in 18. The British cynically allowed Hitler to dismantle Czechoslovakia in the hope that Adolf Hitler, the German dictator would then be satisfied and/or that extra time could be bought for Britain to rearm. Instead giving up Czechoslovakia encouraged Hitler to start World War Two.
Revisionist critics point out uncomfortable facts like
characters like Osama Bin Laden were once financed and trained by the American government (through the CIA) as freedom fighters in Afghanistan against the Russians the U.S.-dominated International Monetary Fund addressed Indonesias 17 financial crisis with the promise of huge loans and the result has been a huge increase in poverty, serious ethnic violence, and severe political instability.
After the Gulf War, the US imposed a blockade on Iraq which has been a factor in the death of perhaps one million civilians (mainly children) but the government of Saddam Hussein was once its ally. But the United States has 7,000 deployed. warheads and the nearby Seventh Fleet stationed near North Korea and 7,000 troops in south Korea. North Korea has tested only four missiles in its history.
By 18, the Special Forces Command had established missions in 110 nations. In 18, the command carried out operations in each of nineteen countries in Latin America and nine Caribbean nations.
This criticism has been heard since the late 150s and was given a great boost by popular opposition to the Vietnam War after 16.
Traditionalist historians saw American policy as enlightened self interest. Even though the Marshall Plan tied western Europe to the United States, the west European countries escaped Communist government and benefited economically. The cost was high 1 billion dollars at the time (nearly 100 billion dollars today or six times what the US spends of foreign aid). For revisionists, the Marshall Plan was an attempt to ensure that the economy of western Europe was locked into a subordinated relationship to the American economy. Three quarters of all Marshall Plan money was spent buying American goods.
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