THE COLD WAR
from the post WWII era in the late 1940s until the 1990s, the “Cold War” between
the US and the USSR dominated politics, not just in those two countries, but
in virtually every country across the world
the USSR started setting up satellite countries in Eastern Europe, to act as their
allies and to physically offer a “buffer zone” that would protect the USSR
from attack from Western Europe (remember, the Russians had just gotten
the stuffing knocked out of them in not one, but TWO, World Wars, thanks
to Western Europeans!):
Albania
Bulgaria
Czechoslovakia
East Germany
Hungary
Poland
Rumania
the IRON CURTAIN countries
Yugoslavia (some independence under Marshal Tito)
Winston Churchill and Harry Truman decided that Communism had to be
“contained”, like it was a disease that was bound to spread -- this
containment policy (to fight ANY spread of Communism) soon evolved
into the Truman Doctrine, which didn’t just “contain” Communism but
offered direct aid to countries who wanted to combat “oppression”
(Communism) like happened in Greece and Turkey
if you stop to think about it, what’s wrong with this picture??
well, if the attraction of Communism spreads, can’t you make the argument that it
spreads because “the people” actually find Communism to be an attractive
alternative to what they have? and, if the people want Communism, isn’t it
against the “American ideal” of liberty and democracy to fight against what
“the people” want???
and, as a lot of professional State Department diplomats pointed out, how can the
US argue that it’s so “wrong” for the USSR to line up Allies the way that
they are, if the US is doing pretty much the same thing in reverse?
so how did the US “camouflage” what it was doing?
we called it the Marshall Plan, offering “aid” to European countries!
we pretty much made it clear to European countries that the easiest way to get
money from the US under the Marshall Plan was to let us know how much
against Communism they were, so that was a definite benefit to the US
also, by offering aid packages to European countries, we were trying to avoid
making the same mistake that was made after WWI, when we left Germany
in such bad economic shape that they almost couldn’t help but go to war
against us again in WWII
and, once those European countries started to recover, who were they most likely
to buy goods from? America… so it was a “win-win” situation for the US to
almost literally give away $$$
the European countries that “played nice” with the US thrived, and the Communist
satellites struggled to regain their economic feet
Josef Stalin didn’t take this lying down, and he decided to stage a showdown in
the city of Berlin
by treaty, at the end of WWII, Germany was
subdivided four ways, between Britain, France, the US, and the USSR -Britain, France, and the US pooled their territory into West Germany, while
the USSR decided to go it alone in creating East Germany -- but that didn’t
satisfy us, entirely; why? because the traditional capital of Germany, Berlin,
was way inside the borders of East Germany, and us Western democracies
couldn’t allow the Soviets to have an edge over us, so the city of Berlin was
also subdivided into West Berlin (under the joint control of Britain, France,
and the US) and East Berlin (under Soviet control)
anyway, Stalin made his move by blockading the entire city of Berlin (West and
East) which wasn’t all that tough to do, since the city was well inside of East
Germany -- basically, it turned into a matter of who was going to blink first,
to be the first that would risk open warfare to get what they wanted - - the
West didn’t want to go to war, but they didn’t want to abandon West Berlin
either, so they started the Berlin airlift, flying in planes full of supplies to
the city of West Berlin, right over top of the Soviet blockade -- now, the ball
was back in the Soviets’ court: do they shoot down the American planes
flying into West Berlin, or do they back down? the USSR backed down
the US was feeling pretty good now, and they decided to “pile on” a little, since
they had seized the advantage -- to counter the Soviet satellites, the US
organized NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), whose countries
pledged to defend one another if any were attacked (presumably, by
Communists)
the USSR and its satellites formally organized the Warsaw Pact to counter NATO
so what happens when the US and the USSR continued this “stare down” contest?
Mao Zedong (a Communist) threatens to overthrow the democratic
government of Chiang Kai-shek in CHINA -- Truman and the US find
themselves in a difficult position: we’ve been taking this position that we’re
against “Communism” (not Russia, really, although yes, Russia, really) and
now we have to decide what to do in China: do we step in, in defense of
Chiang Kai-shek and democracy, against Mao? but, to do so, we’d have to
divert our attention and resources from the USSR, and the USSR might very
well take advantage of that and come after the US., full barrel, while our
attention was diverted in China -- Truman decides to not get involved in
China, and Mao overthrows Chiang Kai-shek, who runs off to the tiny
island of Formosa (Taiwan) and sets up the “Republic of China” while Mao
establishes the “People’s Republic of China” on the mainland
now, thanks to the Communist Revolution in China, about one-fourth of the
world’s population is living under Communism -- the world’s largest
country in population (China) AND the world’s largest country in land mass
(the USSR) are now Communist!
and, what adds icing to the Communist cake? on August 29, 1949, the USSR
explodes its first atomic bomb in a test blast! Now, we have “the Bomb”
AND they have “the Bomb”
but the first real outbreak of the Cold War happened in IRAN in 1953, although
most Americans had no idea what was going on -- why? because it was a
covert (secret) operation of the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency
during WWII, Iran was one of the main sources of petroleum for the Allies and,
of course, “the Allies” in WWII included both the US and the USSR –
when WWII ended, there was an agreement that both the US and the USSR
would “vacate” Iran, but it was too tempting for the Soviets to leave Iran,
since it was right at their “back door” -- when the USSR did not vacate, the
US encouraged Iran to complain to the United Nations -- when the UN
started to investigate, the USSR walked out of the UN, which limited the
UN’s effectiveness -- eventually, the USSR agreed to physically pull their
troops out of Iran in exchange for the right to drill for Iranian oil, but then
the US encouraged Iran, after a year, to go back on its agreement with the
Soviets, which set the pattern for decades of distrust between the Cold War
superpowers
Shah Reza Khan
Shah Reza Pahlavi
Mohammed Mossadegh
1923-1941
1941-1951
1951-1953
Mohammed Mossadegh was the first popularly elected Prime Minister of Iran, and
when he won a fair-and-square election, we thought democracy had
triumphed -- however, Mossadegh wanted to keep Iran independent of
control by either the Soviets OR the U.S… and we didn’t like that at all
so the CIA inserted Kermit “Kim” Roosevelt (the grandson of Teddy Roosevelt)
who ran a covert (secret) action called Operation Ajax to help the Iranian
military depose Mossadegh and bring back the Shah (Reza Pahlavi)
Shah Reza Pahlavi
the Ayatollah Khomeini
1953-1979
1979 revolution
all of these foreign policy initiatives were run by two brother working for President
Dwight Eisenhower:
John Foster Dulles = Secretary of State = overt operations
Allen Dulles = Director of CIA = covert operations
in Guatemala, they have an honest-to-God popular election, and Jacobo Arbenz
is elected President; the first time ever in Guatemala’s history -- but when
Arbenz doesn’t do enough (in the opinion of the Dulles Brothers) to say that
they weren’t going to lean Communist, Allen Dulles decided to help a
military leader, Colonel Carlos Armas, stage a coup to overthrow Arbenz
in the Congo, there is a popularly elected Prime Minister by the name of Patrice
Lumumba -- he turned out to be far more radical than we had hoped, so the
CIA actually planned to assassinate Lumumba and replace him with Joseph
Mobutu -- the only reason the CIA didn’t assassinate Lumumba is that
somebody else (don’t know who) beat us to the punch and murdered him