IB - Topics in 20th Century History
The New Cold War 1953-60
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final
sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed those who are cold and are not clothed.
….
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.
It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.
It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.
We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000
people.
- President Dwight David Eisenhower
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? Big Ideas Regarding the
The New Cold War:
Domestic economic issues dramatically effect how both the Soviet
Union and the United States wage the Cold War.
The Transition in leadership both in The United States and the
Soviet Union in 1953 changed the nature of the Cold War in both
countries.
Germany is an example of how temporary solutions could become
permanent because of Cold War tensions.
The emergence of thermonuclear weapons and the means to
deliver them change the nature of the Cold War.
Third World leaders discovered that they could use could war
tensions to advance their own situation.
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IB Topics in 20th Century History
The New Cold War 1953-1960
By the time Truman left office and Stalin died, early in 1953, the basic patterns of the Cold War were firmly
established. Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union would accept the other's vision of a postwar world, even
as neither would risk war - at least not intentionally - to achieve their own. Both sought allies but did not always
control them; both built nuclear weapons but found it difficult to know what to do with them. Neither proved
capable of separating foreign policy from domestic influences, but those influences differed enormously, producing
correspondingly dissimilar behavior. Certain that history was on their side, the first generation of Cold War
statesman proceeded from strikingly divergent views of history itself and where it was taking them.
One common destination, they would have been surprised to learn, was to be three and a half additional
decades of confrontation. The issue over which Soviet-American conflict had arisen at the end of World War II
were still unresolved, for the most part, in the mid-1980s: indeed their very irresolution had become, by then, so
familiar a feature of international life as to seem to some observers reassuringly normal. Cold War history is, at
least in part, the story of how what was thought to be unendurable became endurable; how order and stability, if
rarely justice, evolved from bitter sustained rivalry. 1
1) The Cost of the Cold War
a)
The Economic cost to the United States
Pres. Eisenhower & Sec. of State Dulles
Another problem was the unproductive nature of military expenditures in
peacetime. The roots of communism, Dulles liked to argue, were not
material in nature: “there are passions that cannot be … suppressed by
foreign guns.” Moreover, such spending diverted valuable resources
from domestic priorities, as Eisenhower pointed out with unusual
eloquence in April 1953:
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired
signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are
not fed those who are cold and are not clothed.
….
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school
in more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000
population.
It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.
It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.
We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
…
But the most important reason for perceiving means as limited was the belief that unrestrained spending could alter the very
nature of American society, either through the debilitating effects of inflation or through regimentation in the form of economic
controls. … It was based on the assumption that economic stability and military strength were inseparable, that if “these two are
allowed to proceed in disregard for the other, you then create a situation either of doubtful military strength, or of such precarious
economic strength that your military position is in constant jeopardy.”… Dulles put it more bluntly “If economic stability goes
down the drain, every thing goes down the drain.” 2
b) The Economic cost to the Soviet Union
The “theoretical” basis of Khrushchev’s departure from Stalin’s legacy in 1955-1956 was his rejection of the “inevitability of
global war” and of the violent revolutionary transition of the world from capitalist to Socialist order. He adopted a broad
interpretation of Lenin’s doctrine of “peaceful coexistence” between the opposite social systems capitalism and socialism. These
innovations, as always with Khrushchev, were linked to his personal experience with the awesome power of thermonuclear
weapons and to his realization of the impossibility of war between the nuclear superpowers. The innovations marked a
fundamental shift from the thinking of Stalin and Molotov, who saw the Cold War as a prelude to another world war among great
1
John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Oxford University Press, 1997. Page 113
John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy. Oxford University Press, 1982.
Page133-134
2
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powers, to a view of the Cold War as a transitory period between the era of imperialist wars and an era of peaceful economic
competition between the two social systems. The future, in Khrushchev’s opinion, would be cold peace perhaps, but hardly Cold
War.3
c)
Domestic Implications of the Cold War
i) The Societal Implication of preparing for Nuclear War
As terrible as atomic warfare would undoubtedly be, a prolonged period of preparation for it might be almost as bad in
the March 1947 issue of the journal Air Affairs, author Lewis Mumford sketched out a series of scenarios intended to
illuminate the “social effects of atomic war.” In the first three war breaks out after increasing periods of time have elapsed
and the number o atomic weapons (and the number of countries possessing them) has grown. The results are predictably
grim, culminating in the third case in fatalities and genetic and environmental damage sufficient to annihilate the human race.
In Mumford’s forth scenario, “atomic war does not break out at all,” but it remains “for at least a century … a growing
threat.” Various trends are now “carried to their logical conclusions.” Populations are forceably scattered or driven
underground. “Taxes continue to rise to a point that nullifies financial success.” Eventually, “all the earlier advocates of free
enterprise become eager for state ownership and flock into government, where power and privilege are now concentrated.”
Vast sectors of the economy are nationalized and “the Constitution of every country is altered, where necessary, so as to give
complete control to the military caste.” All forms of expression are brought under “centralized control.” Research,
development, and education at all levels are geared to meeting the needs of “atomic warfare and its accessory arts.”
Perpetual fear of annihilation leads to “purposeless sexual promiscuity … narcotic indulgence,” and outbreaks of paranoia,
claustrophobia, and sadistic violence. While “not a single life has been lost in atomic warfare,” by the scenario’s end,
civilization has, nevertheless, been “fatally destroyed.”4
ii) The “Garrison State”
… Over time, Lasswell feared, feared, there would be a general, evolutionary movement “towards a world of ‘garrison
states’”
In these strange and terrible new political organisms, authority would be “dictatorial, governmentalized, centralized,
integrated.” With the state under constant threat, all power would flow to the “specialists on violence,” the soldiers, the
security policeman, and their civilian
assistants. The principal preoccupations
of the ruling elite would be maintaining
morale over domestic order (through the
use of terror, propaganda, and mindaltering drugs) and managing the
economy so as to generate the maximum
military capabilities.5
iii) America’s answer for to the fear of
the Garrison State
The power-creating mechanism put
in place during the first fifteen years of
Aaron L. Friedberg, In the Shadow of the Garrison State: America’s Anti-Statism and its Cold
War Grand Strategy. Page 70
the Cold War can best be understood as
the product of a collision between these
two sets of conflicting forces. It is impossible to explain the mechanism of power creation, the military strategy that they
were intended to support, or, more generally, the impact of the Cold War on American society and the American economy
without reference to the persistent presence of domestic forces tending to oppose expansions in state power.
Domestic constraints appear also to have contributed to the Cold War’s eventual outcome. By preventing some of the
worst, most stifling excesses of statism, these countervailing tendencies made it easier for the United States to preserve its
economic vitality and technological dynamism, to maintain domestic political support for a protracted strategic competition
and to stay the course in that competition better than its supremely statist rival. 6
Vladislav Zubok & Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev. Harvard University Press, 1996. Page 184185
4 Aaron L. Friedberg, In the Shadow of the Garrison State: America’s Anti-Statism and its Cold War Grand Strategy. Princeton University Press.
Pages 55-56
5 Aaron L. Friedberg, In the Shadow of the Garrison State: America’s Anti-Statism and its Cold War Grand Strategy. Page 57
6 Aaron L. Friedberg, In the Shadow of the Garrison State: America’s Anti-Statism and its Cold War Grand Strategy. Page 4
3
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2) The New Cold War – Eisenhower
a)
The Election of Eisenhower and the “New Look”
i) The Election of 1952
(1) Political Considerations
The general’s reasons for allowing his name to be placed before the 1952 Republican national convention had more to do
with his determination to keep the nomination out of the hands of Robert A. Taft, whom Eisenhower regarded as an
isolationist; his concern over Truman’s domestic programs, which he thought were leading to socialism; and his belief
that survival of the two-party system required an end to twenty years of Democratic rule. 7
(2) Economic Consideration
ii) The Emergence of the "New Look"
(1) The Solarium Task Force (16 July 1953)
(a) Deterrence
(b) Containment
(c) Liberation
(2) Dulles and "Massive Retaliation" (January 12, 1954)
(a) The Economics of War
(b) New Weapons
(c) Propaganda
(3) NSC 162/2 (12 January 1954)
(a) How to Use Nuclear Weapons
(b) The Strategy of the New Look
(i) Massive Retaliation
(ii) Alliances
(iii) Psychological Warfare
(iv) Covert Action
Robert A. Taft
… Then, too, the new administration’s emphasis
on making containment work more efficiently at less cost tended to place a premium on covert action activities
which were, after all, relatively inexpensive. Finally, Eisenhower chose as his new CIA director Allen W.
Dulles, the Secretary of State’s brother, thereby virtually guaranteeing a closer coordination of intelligence
operations with national strategy than had occurred heretofore. …
… Some indication of where and how these activities were carried on have also surfaced: it is known, for
example, that during this period the CIA organized the overthrow of two foreign governments (Iran in 1953,
Guatemala in 1954), attempted unsuccessfully to overthrow two others (Indonesia in 1958, Cuba in 1960-61),
infiltrated refugees into Eastern Europe to try to provoke disorders there, conducted guerilla and paramilitary
operation against Communist China and North Vietnam from Burma and Laos, organized aerial reconnaissance
missions over the Soviet Union and Communist China, and at least considered assassination plots against
several foreign leaders (Chou En-lai, Patrice Lumumba, Fidel Castro, and Rafael Trujillo). The agency also
engaged in certain covert domestic activities, including mail and telecommunications surveillance, the
infiltration of student, academic, journalistic, and cultural organizations, and finical subsidies to publishers and
foundations.8
(v) Implications
… What is clear, though, is that the administration gave the CIA an extraordinarily broad mandate, that it was
willing to lie if necessary to maintain cover, and that it did not consider such departures from conventional
standards of official conduct inappropriate, given the circumstances. “I have come to the conclusion that some
of our traditional ideas of international sportsmanship are scarcely applicable in the morass in which the world
now flounders,” the President wrote privately in 1955. “Truth, honor, justice, consideration for others, liberty
for all – the problem is how to preserve them, nurture them and keep the peace – if this last is possible – when
we are opposed by people who scorn … these values. I believe we can do it, but we must not confuse these
values with mere procedures, even though these last may have at one time held almost the status of moral
concepts.”9
7
Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy. Page127
Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy. Page 158
9 Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy. Page159
8
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(4) Eisenhower and the "New Look" (12 January 1954) – Asymmetry vs. Symmetry
It is reasonable to ask, then, just what the administration’s
John Foster Dulles
strategy was on the use of nuclear weapons, and how it differed
from the recommendations put forward in NSC-68. The
answer revolves largely around the question of symmetrical
versus asymmetrical response. The Truman
administration, of course, had emphasized symmetry:
deterrence would work by creating certainty in the mind of the
adversary both as to the inevitability and the limits of an
American response – the United States would counter, but not
exceed, the initial provocation. The Eisenhower
administration, embraced asymmetry, sought to combine the
certainty of a response with the uncertainty as to its nature.
The idea was to open up a range of possible responses so wide
that the adversary would not be able to counter or retain the
initiative; lacking that, it was thought, he would come to see
the risks of aggression as outweighing the benefits. All of this
had to be done at tolerable cost, though; hence the attraction of
threats to use nuclear weapons. As a top-secret statement of
“Basic National Security Policy” put it early in 1955: “So long
as the Soviets are uncertain of their ability to neutralize the U.S. nuclear-air retaliatory power, there is little reason to
expect them to initiate general war or actions which they believe would … endanger the regime and the security of the
USSR.”10
(5) Dulles "Policy for Security and Peace" Foreign Affairs (April 1954)
(a) Massive Retaliation
(b) Brinkmanship
(6) The Criticisms of the “New Look”
… The prevailing judgment in intellectual and political circles by 1960 was that the “New Look” had failed, because it
had: (1) relied excessively on nuclear weapons as the primary instrument of deterrence, thereby narrowing the range of
feasible response to aggression; (2) failed to deter revolutions in the Third World; (3) allowed a “missile gap” to
develop, thus undermining the strategic balance with the Soviet Union; and (4) neglected opportunities for negotiations
with its adversaries. These became the central elements in the Democratic party’s critique of Eisenhower in 1960; they
also provide a convenient framework within which to reconsider both the imperfections and accomplishments of the
“New Look.” 11
3) The New Cold War – The Transition
of Authority in the Soviet Union and
the Partition of Germany
Inside the Tomb of Lenin & Stalin
a) The Death of Stalin (5 March 1953)
b) The Struggle for Power, The Four Wise Men:
Georgi Malenko, Lavrenty Beria, Nikolai
Bulganin & Nikita Khrushchev
i) The State – USSR Council of Ministers
ii) The Party – Party Presidium
c)
Beria & Malenkov
… It seems that Beria grossly underestimated the
importance of the Party Secretariat and expected that
with the mechanism of terror in his hands and a weak Malenkov in the position of head of state, he would have an ideal platform
for a future power struggle. In the biggest mistake of his life, he misjudged the abilities of Nikita Khrushchev, then just a dark
horse in new leadership.12
10
Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy. Page 151
Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy. Page 165
12 Vladislav Zubok & Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev. Page 155
11
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Germany Divided
d) Germany
i) Stalin’s Policies toward Germany
Beria never bothered to ask any Soviet authorities for permission before issuing these orders or to coordinate his policies with
them. Nor did he ever care about the “Socialist” future of Germany; and he cared even less for the East German puppets of
Moscow. As a result of operations supervised by Malenkov and Beria, East
Germany lost 3,500 plants and factories, 1,115,00 pieces of equipment, and
Walter Ulbricht
2,000,000 industrial jobs. All this, in addition to the millions of forced refugees,
arrested opposition members, and brutal persecution of intellectuals in Eastern
Europe, amounted to a hidden but quite powerful dimension of Soviet foreign
policy. It was traditional policy of empire, but a more barbaric one. This
occupational policy deeply affected millions of people and did irreparable damage
to the image of Stalin’s Soviet Union in Central Europe. 13
ii) Walter Ulbricht – Socialist Unity Party (SED)
iii) The Options for a resolution of the German question:
(1) One Side Wins
(2) A Politically Neutral Germany
(3) The Partition of Germany
iv) The German Crisis, 16-17 June 1953
v) The Fall of Beria
Beria’s downfall meanwhile ensured Ulbricht’s survival: he was now able to move
against his own potential opponent with impunity. The East German leader may
have planned it all this way. But he certainly wrecked what little was left of
Beria’s German initiative; and the resulting disorder gave Beria’s rivals in the Kremlin the excuse they needed to move
against him. Having done so, it would have been difficult for any of them - at least as long as the succession struggle was
under way – to oppose Ulbricht, since that would have suggested association with rebellion and treason. The culture of
distrust Stalin had left behind now linked his heirs to an East German leader Stalin himself had never trusted. 14
13
14
Vladislav Zubok & Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev. Page 147
Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Page 131
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e)
f)
vi) The German Democratic Republic (GDR)
The Emergence of Khrushchev
i) The failure of the “Elites”
ii) Khrushchev and the Consolidation of Power
The Division of Europe
i) The Schuman Plan
Nikita Khrushchev
Acheson’s ideas where shunted aside when Schuman
momentously proposed that the coal and steel industries of
France and Germany be placed under supranational authority.
Schuman would limit France’s sovereignty as well as Germany’s
in order to achieve a common market, joint modernization and
export programs, standardization of freight rates, and equalization
of working and living conditions. Other European nations could
join if they desired. Schuman was vague on particulars, but he
shrewdly assessed domestic, European, and international
economic and political realities. He sought to break the European integration impasse, co-op German power, and place
France in the forefront of European diplomacy before lifting restraints on Germany’s sovereignty narrowed France’s
options.15
ii) Federal German Republic (FGR) joins NATO, May 1955
iii) The Warsaw Treaty Organization, May 1955
g) German Asymmetry
One important asymmetry had to do with material capabilities; as Eisenhower’s National Security Council pointed out in
1953, West Germany had “nearly three times the population, about five times the industrial output, and almost twice the size” of
East Germany. …
Another asymmetry was political in character. The West Germans had chosen and, on the whole, were satisfied with their
government; neither was true in East Germany. …
Finally there was a military asymmetry. Despite the fact that West German rearmament was now proceeding within NATO
alliance, the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies retained an overwhelming conventional force advantage, with all the risks of
psychological intimidation – to say nothing of actual invasion – this entailed.16
4) Negotiations
a)
Arms Reduction
i) The Soviet Proposal (10 May 1955)
ii) The US Position
(1) The Arms Race
U-2
…Most American officials evidently preferred the risk of an
unconstrained arms race to any conceivable agreement that
could be reached with the USSR. They were particularly
skeptical that a disarmament accord could be adequately
verified, and they believed, in any case, that U.S. security
would be better served by an arms buildup.17
(2) Public Relations
… According to a paper prepared for the National Security
Council, U.S. disarmament policy through the mid-1950s
was formulated primarily for its effect on “public relations” without taking into account the possibility that the USSR
might actually accept the West’s proposal.18
15
Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War. Stanford University Press. 1992.
Page 348.
16 Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Page 137
17 Matthew Evangelista, “Cooperation Theory and Disarmament Negotiations in the 1950s.” World Politics. 42 (June 1990). Page 516
18 Matthew Evangelista, “Cooperation Theory and Disarmament Negotiations in the 1950s. Page 517
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b) The Geneva Summit (July 1955)
i) Open Skies
ii) The U-2
iii) The Soviet Military Cuts
5) De-Stalinization – The Secret Party Speech to the 20th Party Congress (February 1956)
6) Hungary (October – November 1956)
a) The Hungarian Uprising – Imre Nagy (28 October 1956)
b) The Implication for Empire – Contrasting the Empire by Invitation to the Empire of Force
That, though, was the painful point: Khrushchev had to be ruthless to hold his alliance together. He had hoped to make
Marxism-Leninism attractive enough that Stalinist methods would not be needed t o unsure its unity; but even the briefest
experiment with de-Stalinization had set of centrifugal tendencies in Eastern Europe that ended in a bloodbath. “He was a kind
man in normal human relationships,” Fedor Burlatsky, one of his advisers, later recalled,
But in politics he did not recognize kindness,
especially when it seems to him that “class
interests” had been infringed. Still smoldering in
his heart were the ashes of the Stalin he himself
had cast down. He executed Nagy as a lesson to
all other leaders in socialist countries, thinking as
he did so of Gomulka and Kadar, and perhaps
also of Tito and Mao. In his eyes political
expediency was superior to morality. Humanity
came second to security.
“You need to give your people the right orientation,”
Khrushchev lectured demoralized Hungarian
communists after it was all over. “You need to tell
them that this [Nagy’s movement] was a
counterrevolution. If it was not, then how could we
have used weapons?” It is indeed Khrushchev’s voice
but Stalin’s logic: “if they had not been enemies of the
people, how could we have shot them?”
The Warsaw Pact survived, as did Khrushchev,
although narrowly. But after 1956 no one could
maintain the illusion that it was as Eastern European
NATO: an alliance based on voluntary participation
and democratic methods of operation. Despite Khrushchev’s reforms, the
asymmetry of imposition versus invitation remained. As a consequence; the
Soviet Union could never count upon the loyalty of its European “allies:” it
would have to watch them just as carefully as it did those of the United
States. Little had really changed, then, since Stalin’s day: the great ghost
was not so easily exorcised after all.19
c)
Cold War Europe
Imre Nagy
The Emergence of the ICBM
i) The Soviet ICBM – Sergei Korolyov (3 August 1957)
ii) Sputnik (4 October 1957)
(1) The Perception of the Soviet Union
… The authors of a profile of the Soviet leader prepared for
John Kennedy were correct when they wrote that Khrushchev hoped his missiles would force the West to treat the USSR
with respect, promote Soviet national security and the world revolution, “and even perhaps [help] assure universal peace
(Soviet style) through disarmament.” The nuclear missiles, even before they were deployed, gave Khrushchev a pretext
to start implementing his program of moving to the “highest” stage in the construction of communism in the USSR – a
pipe dream of the scion of the Russian Revolution. …
19
Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Page 211
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Thus the thermonuclear revolution did shape Khrushchev’s thinking and lead him to transform Soviet Cold War
policies in several important ways. The Soviet leader began to look at the Cold War as first and foremost a nuclear
stalemate between the two superpowers. And though he cam to the conclusion that a war between them could not be
fought and won, he quickly tried to turn the sword of nuclear deterrence – and even blackmail – on the country that (he
believed) had practiced it first, the United States. That became the weapon with which Khrushchev sought to obtain
Washington’s recognition of the USSR as an equal global power. 20
Sputnik
(2) The Effect on the United States
All hell did break loose. Sputnik was a sharp slap to American pride, but
worse, it suggested Soviet technical and military parity with the West, which
in turn undermined the assumptions on which free world defense was based.
To those in the know, the limited importance of the Soviet satellite and the
true proportions of military might were clear. But to Eisenhower’s
opponents, ranging from hawkish senators to civil rights activists, critics of
Republican economics to pushers federal aid to education, Sputnik was an
opportunity to sell their programs as cures to the presumed ailments of
American life that contributed to the ‘loss’ of the space race. From October
1957 to the end of his term, Eisenhower was under siege, and with him the
public values he championed. Thus Sputnik was the greatest defeat
Eisenhower could have suffered, and it wiped out much of the five years’
efforts to meet the Cold War challenge without America, in his view,
ceasing to be America.21
(3) The Missile Gap
(a) The Bluff
For it was all a bluff. At the very time Khrushchev boasted of the obsolescence of American “massive retaliation,”
the U.S. deterrent was at the height of its effectiveness and the USSR had yet to deploy a single ICBM. 22
(b) The end of the gap
The first satellite sparked the missile gap; the first reconnaissance satellites snuffed it out. Joseph Alsop,
previously a noisy patron of the “gap,” broke the news on September 25, 1961: new intelligence revealed that
something less than fifty Soviet missiles existed. In October Deputy Secretary Gilpatric admitted that the United
States would have more missiles even after absorbing a surprise attack than the USSR had available for a first strike.
In November the New York Times made it official. The United States had already some 233 missiles capable of
reaching Soviet territory to some fifty or less Soviet ones able to reach the United States: “The ‘missile gap,’ like the
‘bomber gap’ before, is now being consigned to the limbo of synthetic issues, where it has always belonged.” 23
Vladislav Zubok & Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev Page 193
Walter A. McDougall, …The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985. Page 132
22 Walter A. McDougall, …The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age. Page 250.
23 Walter A. McDougall, …The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age. Page 229.
20
21
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The Mao Interlude
Three Big Ideas Regarding Mao
and the CCP in China
Mao never had total control over the Chinese Communist Party
(CCP). Mao focused on ideological issues to compensate for this
relative weakness.
When Mao felt the CCP was straying from his ideological path he
went outside the party to regain control (He did this three times).
The implications of these actions where not always clearly
foreseeable.
Sino-Soviet relations are greatly effected by this internal
ideological power struggle. Mao links the Soviet Union,
Khrushchev, and his CCP opponents to Leninist policies, which he
believes, would fail in China and elsewhere.
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The Road to Mao’s China
China in the 1950s
1) Understanding Mao Zedong ( Mao Thought vs. Maoism)
a) Mao the Marxist (Mao Thought)
b) Maoism (A Distinct Theory) – Not Marxism
c) The Significance of the Mao Thought vs. Maoism Debate
The debate will continue. But does it matter? Does the peasant dying from starvation at the end of the Great Leap Forward
accept his fate more readily because it was a Marxist Policy which led to his fate? The answer to the second question is no, but
the answer to the first question is a resounding yes for three main reasons.
First, Mao was convinced he was right and convinced that his was the correct Marxist approach. While it is true that Mao
wanted power, he did not want power for its own sake. He was also motivated by ensuring that his correct Marxist ideas were
followed, and if people got in the way and relied on inappropriate Russian models, then those obstacles had to be removed.
Second, and following from above, we return to the importance of Sino-Soviet relations, and Mao’s attitude towards Soviet
Marxism. In the international communist debate, it was important for Mao to ascertain that his ideas were not only part of the
Marxist canon, but also the best model for others to follow in promoting revolution in the third world.
Third, and more important for this study, Mao had to argue that his ideas were correct Marxist ideas in competition with
those Chinese leaders who instinctively and ideologically looked to Masco for their inspiration. Unable to dominate the specifics
of policy-making on a day-to-day level within the party-state bureaucracy, Mao’s major was of reasserting himself in the political
arena was to maintain the importance ideology on the political agenda. By continually keeping the ideological debate alive, and
by continually emphasizing the correct Marxist approach of seeking truth from facts and asserting the primacy of the Chinese
experience, Mao could reassert his views over and above those of his colleagues, and use the Marxist debate as a tool to attack his
opponents. Defending his ideas as the only correct interpretation of Marxism in the Chinese case was a crucial component of
Mao’s political strategy.24
2) The Structure of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) and the Chinese Communist Party
(CCP)
The Organic Law of the Central People’s Government – September 12, 1949 (Based on Mao’s New Democracy 1940)
i) Economic Structure
(1) State Economy
Flag of the PRC
(2) Agricultural Economy
(3) Private Economy
ii) Democratic Socialism – The Flag
(1) Large Star – CCP Leadership
(2) Four Small Stars
(a) Workers
(b) Peasants
(c) Petty Bourgeois
(d) National Bourgeois
iii) Rectification – Winning back deviants through reform and
realizing mistakes
iv) The Structure of Government
(1) Central People’s Government Council – The Chairman
Mao Zedong
(2) The State Administrative Council – Premier Zhou Enlai
b) The Party
i) The Central Committee
ii) Politburo
iii) Chairman Mao
a)
3) The Collectivization Debate and the “Hundred Flowers” Campaign
a) In the Early 1950’s Mao = A traditional Leninist approach to development.
b) The First Five-Year Plan 1953-58
c) Land Reform and the Division of the Party – The Debate over Collectivization.
24
Shaun Breslin, Mao. Page 68
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i) Leninists – Liu Shaoqi, Chen Yun, & Li Fuchun
ii) Maoist – Mao
iii) March 1955 – Cautious Approach to Collectivization – Mao Loses
iv) Mao goes outside the party and takes it to the people July 1955 – One of the three times Mao goes outside the party
d) The 8th Party Congress of the CCP 1956 (Khrushchev’s party speech is Feb. 1956) – A rejection of Maoism
e) May 26, 1956 – Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom, A Hundred Schools of Thought Contend.
f) February 1957 – The Correct Handling of Contradictions Amongst the People.
g) June 1957 – The Revised Edition – Re-Education through Labor
h) Historiography
i) Machiavellian Mao – Mao did it to attack the party leadership
ii) Reactive Mao – Mao expected people to love him, when they did not he clamped down
iii) Mao in the Middle – Mao did it to get back at the party but was surprised by the results
4) The Great Leap Forward and the Purge of Peng Dehuai
a) The Great Leap 1958-59
b) Peasant Power at work
c) Mao out of touch
[w]hat we were seeing from our windows … was staged, a huge multi-act nationwide Chinese opera preformed especially for
Mao. The party secretaries had ordered furnaces constructed everywhere along the rail route, stretching out for ten li on either
side. … In Hubei, [the] party secretary … had ordered peasants to remove rice plants from far away fields and transplant them
along Mao’s route, to give the impression of a wildly abundant crop. … All of China was a stage, all the people performers in an
extravaganza for Mao.25
d) The Cost of the Great Leap
Mao’s experiment in economics did surpass the record of everyone else in the world, although not in the manner he had
intended: the Great Leap Forward, it is now clear, produced the most devastating famine in modern history. We will never know
how many died, but estimates of the toll range from 16 to 27 million, with the higher figure probably the more accurate one. 26
e)
The Purge of Peng Dehuai – The Conference at Lushan
Whatever the case, Peng was dismissed. This move proved important for two major reasons. First, for Lieberthal, Mao
broke apart the accepted norms of inner party behavior:
Mao seems at Lushan to have broken the unwritten rules that had governed debate among the top leadership to that point. Before
Lushon, it was accepted that any leader could freely voice his opinion at a party gathering, and debate could be heated. Nobody would be
taken to task subsequently for what he had said, as long as he formally accepted and acted in accord with the final decision
reached.
The new message was clear: criticizing Mao could be damaging to your health.
Second, Peng’s purge was followed by the elimination of many of his followers within the military. Crucially Mao’s loyal
supporter, Lin Biao, replaced Peng as Minister of Defense. … 27
5) The Sino-Soviet Split – The Disintegration of the Bi-Polar World
a)
The Cold War and Mao
After Stalin’s death, however, the power of Moscow and its iron fist began to weaken. A totalitarian party state can function
at its best – that is, exercising full control over its people and its outer sphere of influence – only with full-scale terror and a leader
who completely adheres to the principles of absolute power and control. At the same time, totalitarianism cannot exist forever
without changes in attitude and without relaxation of the terror mechanism that usually occurs with the death of the leader.
The new “dominant minority,” to use Arnold Toynbee’s broad term, emerges after the revolution and seeks to establish
control. The new elite in post-revolutionary society demand the natural privilege of their high status: personal safety. Also, they
want more security in the international arena. They do not want all-out wars, for defeat can undermine their power. The new
elite seek some kind of rapprochement with the powerful members of the world community. They can handle crises that are
Dr. Li Zhisui (Mao’s personal doctor) The Private Life of Chairman Mao, Random House, 1994. Page 278
John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Page 216
27 Shuan Breslin, Mao. Page 98-99
25
26
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under their full control and do not contradict their goals. This natural tendency became even stronger as the Soviet elite had to
live with nuclear weapons and abide by the new rules of nuclear bipolarity.
As a result, by the end of the 1950s Moscow was more inclined to manage international relations in its own interests than to
stick to the principles of revloutionarism.
Here was the source of ideological differences between Moscow and Beijing. Mao was in his prime. His revolutionary
absolutism was quite young and could function at its full capacity. 28
b) China and DeStalinization
i) Mao and Stalin
As a symbol, though, Stalin was still extremely useful to Mao. The reason had to do with his belief that the Chinese
revolution had to replicate the stages the Russian revolution had gone through. There was no other example of a successful
socialist uprising, so it was natural for the Chinese to want to follow the Soviet Union’s path: hence their frequent references
to that country as the “elder brother,” from whom the “younger brother” must learn. Mao, though, was surprisingly literal
about this. We have seen how he expected an American invasion of China in 1949 because the United States and its allies
had sent troops to Siberia and North Russia in 1918: the Korean and Indochinese conflicts, as he perceived it, were the
functional equivalent of such foreign intervention. He had allowed a brief period of experimentation with state-sponsored
capitalism, analogous to Lenin’s New Economic Policy. He had collectivized agriculture and launched a Five-year Plan for
rapid industrialization, both based carefully on the Soviet model. He was willing to wait “eighteen or even more years” for
diplomatic recognition from the United States, because it had taken seventeen to recognize the Soviet Union. And he was
certainly developing, as Khrushchev noted, a “cult of personality”: “I believe Mao suffered from the same megalomania
Stalin had all his life.” Dr. Li would confirm that Mao was “China’s Stalin, and everyone knew it.” 29
ii) The Purge
Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization campaign had initially weakened Mao’s authority by encouraging warnings from within
his own party about autocratic leadership: these surfaced at the 8 th Party Congress, held in Beijing in September 1956. Mao
himself appeared to confirm them the following February, when he made his famous call to let “one hundred flowers bloom
and one hundred schools of thought contend.” There followed a remarkable outpouring of criticism from all sides, much of it
directed against the party generally, some against Mao personally. Then, in June, he abruptly changed course, encouraging a
counterattack on “rightists” who, he claimed, were attempting to wreck the revolution. “we can coax the snakes out of their
holes,” Mao explained. “Then we will strike. My strategy is to let the poisonous weeds grow first and then destroy them one
by one. Let them become fertilizer.”30
c)
The Great Leap Forward and the Revolution
Mao then chose to follow Stalin in yet another sense – except this time he wound up killing many more people than the
Kremlin autocrat had ever dreamed of doing. The Great Leap Forward had complex roots and multiple objectives; but it was
fundamentally a rejection of planning in favor of enforced mass energy and enthusiasm. Although earlier efforts to emulate
Soviet collectivization and industrialization had not worked out, Mao was not totally repudiating Stalin’s example: the great
“genius’ too, at times, had become impatient with planning and had glorified the sheer force of will. … What Mao did in 1958,
though, was to abandon planning altogether and substitute will on a national scale: all of China would be organized into people’s
communes, which would in turn – through the use of backyard furnaces – double the nation’s steel production in a year. 31
d) The Crisis
i) The United States, PRC, Soviet Union, and Taiwan
Meanwhile, to highlight American support for Taiwan, the United States stationed military advisers on several offshore
islands held by Chaing Kai-shek’s forces, and, as we have seen, the campaign to conclude a U.S.-Taiwan defense treaty was
stepped up during the highly publicized visit of the Secretary of Defense and General Van Fleet in May and June. It was at
this point that China’s press, in two editorials, issued the call “We Must Liberate Taiwan” and made the “Glorious Task of
the People’s Liberation Army” to do so.
At his press conference on August 3 [1954], Dulles declared that the United States would apply force to prevent the
Communist conquest of Taiwan and would pursue the negotiation of a military treaty with Taiwan. …
Vladislav Zubok & Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev. Harvard University Press, 1996. Page 214
John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Page 212-213
30 John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Page 214
31 John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Page 215
28
29
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… Each side was escalating its provocation against the other as the United States and Taiwan completed negotiations on
the security pact tat was to be signed on December 2, 1954.32
ii) Quemoy and Mazudao Round 1 – 1954-55
It was during the 1954-55 confrontation between Beijing and Washington over the offshore islands of Quemoy (Jinmen)
and Matsu (Matzu) in the Taiwan Strait that Mao made his initial decisions to develop at least a modest nuclear capability.
Recognizing the difficulty of neutralizing U.S. nuclear strength, Mao nevertheless believed a few weapons would raise the
international prestige of the PRC and its leadership. In January 1955, in the midst of the crisis, he authorized a full-scale
effort to make China a nuclear power. 33
iii) Nuclear Weapons - On providing the assistance of the USSR to the PRC in the matter of development of studies on the
physics of the atomic nucleus and the utilization of atomic energy for the needs of the people’s economy (April 27,
1955).
On April 27, 1955, the two governments signed an agreement under the unwieldy name “On providing the assistance of
the USSR to the PRC in the matter of development of studies on the physics of the atomic nucleus and the utilization of
atomic energy for the needs of the people’s economy.” According to Khrushchev, “When China asked us for an atomic
bomb, we ordered our scientists to receive [Chinese] representatives and to teach them how to produce one.” The Soviets
provided nuclear know-how for free. “We gave everything
Mao & Khrushchev
to China,” recalled Khrushchev. “We kept no secrets from
34
the Chinese.”
iv) The Swimming Pool
From July 31 until August 4, 1958, Khrushchev was in
Beijing for a second time, to test the waters. Already
appalled by Mao’s domestic revolutionary ardor, he now had
to confront the Chairman on international issues. …
In trying to share his vision of the new nuclear
geopolitics, Khrushchev failed miserably. He recalled, “Mao
replied by trying to assure me that the atomic bomb itself
was a paper tiger!35
v) The Split – The Fear of Soviet Imperialism & Mao’s
Domestic Agenda
Goumidang Soldier on Guard
Mao’s harsh reaction to these two issues [The Radio Station
& Joint Naval Bases] reflected his increasing sensitivity
regarding China’s sovereignty and equal status in relation to the
Soviet Union. Underlying this sensitivity, though, was a strong
and unique “victim mentality” that characterized Chinese
revolutionary nationalism during modern times. This mentality
had been informed by the conviction that the political, economic,
and military aggression of foreign imperialist countries had
undermined China’s historical glory and humiliated the Chinese
nation. Consequently, it was natural for the Chinese
Communists, in their efforts to end China’s humiliating modern
experiences, to suspect the behavior of any foreign country as
being driven by ulterior, or even evil, intentions. Although the
Soviet Union was a Communist country, when Mao claimed the
Khrushchev and his Kremlin Colleagues intended to control
China, he apparently equated them to the leaders of Western Imperialism.
32
John Wilson Lewis & Xue Litai, China Builds the Bomb. Stanford University Press. 1988. Page 26 -27.
William Burr and Jeffrey Richelson, “Whether to ‘Strangle the Baby in the Cradle:’ The United States and the Chinese Nuclear Program, 196064.” International Security. (25:3) Winter 2000/01. Page 57-58
34 Zubok & Pleshakov, Page 217
35 Zubok & Pleshakov, Page 219
33
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That Mao’s suspicion and distrust of Soviet “chauvinist intentions” toward China came to a head in the summer of 1958,
rather than earlier of later, should be understood in the context of the chairman’s criticism of “opposing rash advance” within
the CCP leadership. … Mao believed that he had absolute command of the truth; and, in these monologues, the chairman
became accustomed to teaching others in critical, often passionate, terms. Indeed, since Mao was turning his own
revolutionary emotion into the dynamics for the Great Lead Forward, it is not surprising that he adopted the same challengeoriented stance in dealing with his Soviet comrades. 36
vi) Quemoy and Mazudao Round 2 – August 23, 1958
Mao smiled, recalled his interpreter, paused and then began speaking slowly in a low voice: “I have listened to you for a
long time. You have accused us of quite a lot. You say we … did not unite with Nehru, that we shouldn’t have shelled
Jinmen, that the Great Leap was wrong, that we brag about ourselves as orthodox Marxists. Therefore I have an accusation
for you, too that you are guilty of ‘right opportunism.’” 37
vii) The Breakdown and Split
(1) Nuclear Weapons
On August 20, 1959, the Kremlin leaders sent a letter to Beijing, informing the PRC leadership that they would not
provide them with a prototype of the Bomb. The demise of the Sino-Soviet nuclear program was a tangible blow to
China’s prospects of developing a nuclear bomb, and it accelerated the unraveling of the Sino-Soviet alliance.38
(2) The Advisors
By the beginning of June 1960, the Soviets made their final assessments. “Having used the aggravation of the
international situation after the failure of the Paris summit, the Chinese leaders for the first time directly and openly
opposed the foreign policy of the CPSU. In July 1960, Khrushchev decided to withdraw all Soviet specialists from
China.39
6) “Cult of Personality”
“The cult of personality of Mao Zedong,” Yuri Andropov underlined in the Embassy’s report, “is continuing to develop in the
PRC.” Khrushchev later commented that this observation opened his eyes. Everything that happened in China later, especially during
the “Proletarian Cultural Revolution,” was understood by him as an inevitable consequence of one-man tyranny.40
7) The End of Bi-Polarity
The Sino-Soviet estrangement during the Taiwan crisis and the growing split afterward underlined the direction the Cold War was
turning. In 1950 Stalin had, albeit reluctantly, supported the North Korean and then the Chinese “war of liberation” against the United
States. In 1958-1959 Khrushchev demonstrated his desire to come to terms with the West, notwithstanding Chinese militant attitudes.
Bipolarity was becoming obsolete by 1960, when military cooperation between China and the Soviet Union ended, and the Eastern
bloc ceased being a monolith.41
Chen Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War. The University of North Carolina Press. 2001. Pages 75-77
William Taubam, “Khrushchev vs. Mao: A Preliminary Sketch of the Role of Personality in the Sino-Soviet Split.” Cold War International History
Project Bulletin. Winter 1996/97. Page 245
38 Zubok & Pleshakov, Page 228
39 Zubok & Pleshakov, Page 233
40 Zubok & Pleshakov, Page 232
41 Zubok & Pleshakov, Page 234-235
36
37
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---- The Cold War in the 1950s Continues ----
7) The Cold War in the Third World
a)
An Overview
i) Economics (The Developed World, The Developing World, & The Undeveloped World)
ii) Imperialism and the Asymmetrical Nature of the Third World
iii) The Appeal of Communism
America found this prospect all the more painful because democratic values seemed likely here to undermine rather than
reinforce Western interests. In Europe, Wilsonian principles of self-determination and market capitalism had complemented
the balancing of power: idealism and realism worked well together because the alternative Soviet model had little beyond
oppression to offer. But in much of the rest of the world the West itself had been the oppressor, whether through formal or
informal means of exploitation. Paths to liberation and livelihood could quite plausibly appear to lie through Moscow and,
after 1949, Beijing. The Kremlin was planning to use China, the newly formed Central Intelligence Agency warned, “as an
advanced base to facilitate Soviet penetration of Southeast Asia, including Indonesia and the Philippines; the outflanking of
India-Pakistan and the strategically important areas of the Middle and Near East; and eventually control of the entire Asiatic
continent and the Western Pacific.” The threat Americans thought they had warded of in Europe and Japan – Moscow’s
capability to transform misery into power – seemed only to have shifted to a wider arena. And this time Washington’s allies,
as former and remaining colonists, were facilitating that process. 42
iv) The Third World and the “New Look”
A second major criticism of the Eisenhower administration was that it had failed to deal successfully with the revolutionary
movements that were becoming an increasingly prominent feature of life in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America.
These movements had arisen as European colonialism had declined (and in Latin America, as resentment over the alleged
neo-colonialism of the United States had grown); despite their predictability, even inevitability, Washington officials more
often than not seemed woefully unprepared for them. “[I]t is we, the American people, who should be marching at the head
of this world-wide revolution, counseling it, helping it come to a healthy fruition,” Senator John F. Kennedy charged, in what
became a conspicuous theme of his 1960 campaign. “Yet we have allowed the Communists to evict us from our rightful
estate … We have been made to appear as the defenders of the status quo, while the Communists have portrayed themselves
as the vanguard force, pointing the way to a better, brighter, and braver order of life.” United Nations Ambassador Henry
Cabot Lodge made the same point quietly within the councils of the administration: “the U.S. can win wars,” he told the
cabinet in November 1959, “but the question is can we win revolutions?” 43
v) The Ego of the Superpowers and the power of the "third worlders"
Antagonists in that conflict tended to calculate victories in term of failures, retreats, and humiliations inflicted upon their
opposites. Symbolic triumphs often exceeded the value of the territories in which they occurred; in another pattern familiar
from the history of empires, the game itself was what counted, rather than whatever it was the game was supposed to
accomplish. Reputation emerged as a vital interest, with credibility the standard against which to measure it. This situation
gave power to those who were supposed to have been on the receiving end of power: the "third worlders" themselves, who
learned to manipulate the Americans and the Russians by laying on the flattery, pledging solidarity, feigning indifference,
threatening defection, or even raising the specter of their own collapse and the disastrous results that might flow from it.44
42
Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Page 152-153
Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy. Page176
44 Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Page 154
43
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b) Middle East
The Middle East
i)
Iran
(1) Prime Minister Muhammad
Mossadegh
(2) Operation Ajax (20 August 1953) Shah Muhammad Reza Puhlavi
ii) Egypt
(1) Nasser – Ant-Imperialism,
Nationalism, and the Cold War
Muhammad Mossadegh
Shah of Iran
America’s handling of the cold war,
Nasser concluded, helped the USSR
penetrate countries that only accepted its
aid to win independence; western
flexibility could avoid this problem. He
cautioned against confusing Arab and
African Nationalist movements with
communism. He complained that
America saw freedom from foreign
domination as “the inalienable right of
every man, yet balk at supporting these nations foe fear of annoying some colonial Power that has refused to move with
the times,” a view similar to that of liberal State Department analysts. 45
(2) The Founding of Israel (May 1948)
Further complicating the American position was the peculiar mix of humanitarian compassion, domestic political
expediency and personal stubbornness that led President Truman – against strong advice from his diplomatic and
military advisers – to support a Jewish homeland in Palestine. This course of action the State Department Policy
Planning Staff insisted, “would be construed by the Arabs as a virtual declaration of war against the Arab world.” When
Truman went ahead and recognized the new state of Israel anyway in May 1948, many Washington officials feared that
the decision would hand the Russians an enormous advantage. Not only threaten “some of our most vital interests in the
Middle East and the Mediterranean,” Kennan argued; it could also disrupt the unity of the western world and …
45
Barry Rubin, “America and the Egyptian Revolution, 1950-1957.” Political Science Quarterly. 97/1 (Spring 1982). Page 81
- 18 -
undermine our entire policy toward the Soviet Union.” The
United States now carried the burden of the association with
Zionism as well as colonialism.46
Nasser
(3) The Cold War and the Middle East
… A youthful but assertive Nasser explained to John Foster
Dulles in May 1953, that the Soviets “had never occupied our
territory … but the British have been here for seventy years.
How can I go to my people and tell them I am disregarding a
killer with a pistol sixty miles from me at the Suez Canal to
worry about somebody who is holding a knife a thousand miles
away?”47
(4) The Suez Crisis
(a) The Conflict with Israel and Arms
(b) Egyptian / Soviet Arms Deal (September 1955)
(c) The Aswan Dam and the American Cutoff (16 July
1956)
(d) The Nationalization of the Suez Canal (26 July 1956)
(5) British, French and Israeli Intervention (29 July 1956)
(a) The Western Alliance
(b) Soviet Response
Intercepted cables from foreign embassies in Moscow and
other information soon convinced the Kremlin that the Americans had not been informed of the aggression in
advance. In the United Nations, John F. Dulles strongly condemned the United States’ closest allies. Khrushchev
immediately came up with a bold scheme: he
South-East Asia
persuaded the Presidium to send official letters to the
aggressors, threatening them with Soviet military
retaliation. Under the circumstances, retaliation could
only mean a nuclear strike. Simultaneously, against
the doubts of the baffled Molotov, Khrushchev made
the Presidium approve a decision to suggest to the
United States that they send a joint peace-keeping
mission to the Middle East. The Eisenhower
administration hastily rejected the offer, but this
episode aggravated even further the bad feelings
between Washington and its allies. 48
(6) The Eisenhower Doctrine (5 January 1957)
(7) Dulles and US Middle East Policy
But because the Secretary of State believed in filling all
power vacuums – even those left, in the Middle East, by
the despised British and French – he allowed the United
States to inherit the enmities imperial powers normally
attract when they seek too heavy-handedly to project their
influence. Determined to force a Cold War frame of
reference on a region more concerned with resisting
imperialism than containing communism, Dulles deadened
his own sensitivities to nationalism, thereby opening
opportunities for the Soviet Union, which would retain a
significant presence in Egypt for the next decade and a half
and elsewhere in the Middle East for another decade and a
half after that. Because of his tendency to fret, hover, and
46
Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Page 164
Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Page 168
48 Vladislav Zubok & Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev Page 190-191
47
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meddle – his inability to see when things were going well and need not be re-engineered – Dulles transformed his own
country into the new imperial power of the Middle East in what he knew to be a post-imperial age.49
c)
Vietnam
i) The Partition of Vietnam and United States Interests in Southeast Asia
In the wake of the temporary partition of Vietnam at the Geneva Conference of
1954, the Eisenhower administration was determined to do what it could to
ensure that southern Vietnam remained out of Communist hands. The National
Security Council (NSC) provided the initial guide on 20 August 1954, when it
approved a policy statement for Southeast Asia (NSC 5429/2). According to
the NSC, past U.S. support for France in Indochina meant that the recent
French reverses there had damaged American prestige and raised “doubts in
Asia concerning U.S. leadership and the ability of the U.S. to check further
expansion of Communism in Asia.” It was imperative, the council declared,
that the United States “protect its position and restore its prestige in the Far
East by a new initiative in Southeast Asia, where the situation must be
stabilized as soon as possible to prevent further losses to Communism through
(1) creeping expansion and subversion, or (2) overt aggression.” One critical component
of this initiative would be the creation in September of the Southeast Asia Treaty
Organization, which allowed the president to fashion a military response to communist
attacks in the region. Specifically within South Vietnam, NSC 5429/2 indicated that the
United States would seek to strengthen South Vietnam’s military forces, improve its
economic condition, and promote democratic reforms, and would do so by cooperating
with the French “only insofar as necessary.”50
Ngo Dinh Diem
HoChi Minh
ii) The Failure of United States Policy in Vietnam
The U. S. strategy of containment failed in Vietnam partly because there was no selfsustaining state in the South for the United States to support. From its inception in 1954,
South Vietnam was largely a political vacuum into which the United States became deeply
drawn in a futile attempt to fill the void. American involvement helped sustain the Diem regime, but it handicapped the
Saigon government in its competition with the Communists for National legitimacy. Eisenhower’s foreign policy may have
been astute on some areas, as the revisionist argue, but in Vietnam, as one of the most recent and judicious revisionist studies
acknowledges, the administration oversimplified and overcommitted. The United States fostered dependence, not
independence, in South Vietnam. In the early 1960s, the Diem façade became increasingly untenable as internal Vietnamese
opposition to him and his family mounted. His assassination in 1963 led to a series of short-lived successor regimes that
further exposed the frailty of South Vietnam’s autonomy. There was no viable government in Saigon, and by the mid-1960s
on U.S. military force could maintain the fiction that there was. 51
49
Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Page 176
L. Anderson, “J. Lawton Collins, John Foster Dulles, and the Eisenhower Administration’s ‘Point of No Return’ in Vietnam,” Diplomatic History.
12 (Spring 1988). Page 129
51 L. Anderson, “J. Lawton Collins, John Foster Dulles, and the Eisenhower Administration’s ‘Point of No Return’ in Vietnam,” Page 146-147
50
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d) Latin America
Latin America
i)
Guatemala
(1) US Policy in policy in Guatemala
… Secretary of State John Foster Dulles said that “military force should not be used aggressively to achieve national
goals.” Yet during his tenure at Foggy Bottom, American planes and American advisers helped secure the overthrow of
a popularly elected president, Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán. Arbenz, for his part, claimed to view American policy as the
cat’s paw of corporate greed and attributed a large share of his nations problems to the United Fruit Company (UFC),
maintaining that communism posed no threat to his people and that American aid to rebel leader Carlos Castillo Armas
constituted unwarranted interference in the domestic affairs of another country. … 52
(2) The Implication of US action
Eisenhower’s overthrow of Arbenz marks a turning point in U.S. foreign policy for at least four reasons. First,
Americans misunderstood the Guatemalan situation. Arbenz had been constitutionally elected and headed a reform – not
communist – movement. A handful of communists sat in the national legislature and influenced the labor movement, but
no one ever argued that they in any way shaped the country’s most important institutions: the presidency, the army, and
the Roman Catholic Church. Americans too easily confused nationalism with communism. Second, despite the
confusion, the administration pulled off such a successful and covert operation that Dulles could deny that his brother
Allen (director of the CIA) was involved with Arbenz’s removal. … Americans too quickly and mistakenly concluded
that such an operation could easily be repeated elsewhere. Third, Arbenz finally fell when his military deserted. Future
Latin American revolutionaries drew the appropriate lesson. Fidel Castro of Cuba and, in the 1980s, the Sandinista
government of Nicaragua would make the army and the government part of a single unit. Overthrowing such regimes
would require a war, not simply a covert CIA operation. Finally, the United States won the battle but lost the longer
war. In Guatemala (and latter elsewhere) Americans failed to replace the deposed regime with an effective liberal
reformer. Castillo Armas carried out large-scale executions that killed more Guatemalans after the invasion than had
died during the conflict. Reactionary and ineffective, he was assassinated by members of his own regime three years
later. The United States poured more aid into Guatemala between 1954 and 1965 than into any other Latin American
nation, but the only results by the mid-1960s were a brutal military government and the growth of a revolutionary
guerrilla movement more radical than any group in the country before 1954. 53
Fredrick W. Marks III, “The CIA and Castillo Armas in Guatemala, 1954: New Clues to an Old Puzzle,” Diplomatic History. 14/1 (Winter 1990).
Page 67
53 Walter LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-1996. 8th Ed. McGraw Hill, 1997. Page 159
52
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ii) Cuba
(1) Fidel Castro v. President Fulgencio
Batista (1 January 1959)
iii) Ernesto “Che” Guevara
e)
Fulgencio Batista
Fidel Castro
The Failure of the “New Look” in the Third
World
Much of the administration’s difficulty in dealing with
communism in the Third World stemmed from the
chronic failure to distinguish deterrable from nondeterrable phenomena. The theory of deterrence
implies that the behavior to be deterred (1) represents
something less than a total commitment on the part of
the adversary, and (2) is under reliable central
direction. Neither of these conditions could be
assumed in the Third World. It is all very well to
Ernesto “Che” Guevara
threaten nuclear retaliation against the Chinese, whose
determination to prolong the fighting in Korea was not
strong but whose control over the forces involved
there was; to apply the same tactic in Indochina,
where the insurgents were totally committed but not
susceptible to outside control, was something else
again. A North Atlantic Treaty Organization could
well have deterred a Soviet attack in Europe if one
had ever been planned; There was no assurance that
the alliances patterned on that precedent would
discourage autonomous but potentially hostile
revolutions in the arc of non-communist states running
from Turkey to South Korea. A Formosa Resolution
might carry weight with Peking on the issue of
Quemoy and Matsu; to attempt, through an
Eisenhower Doctrine, to deter something as vague as
“communism” in an area as amorphous as “the Middle East” was a wholly different proposition. Covert action might work with
deceptive smoothness to stage palace coups in Iran and Guatemala; its use as a means of sparking broad popular uprisings against
entrenched nationalist regimes such as those of Sukarno in Indonesia or Castro in Cuba was another matter entirely. The
administration, in short, can be said to have been a victim of its own successes, and of its inability to see beyond them: it was not
sufficiently sensitive to the possibility that what worked in one context might not in a wholly different one. 54
8) The Post-Revisionist view of the “New Look”
Contrary to current revisionist claims, then, Eisenhower was something less than a “genius.” He achieved his goal of greater
deterrence at less cost, but only through too casual a willingness to use nuclear weapons in limited war situations, an unnecessary
confusion over what, in the Third World, he was trying to deter, a failure to follow through on his own commitment to negotiations,
and, it must be added, a fair amount of plain good luck. Still, his strategy was coherent, bearing the signs of his influence at almost
every level, careful, for the most part, in its relations of ends to means, and, on the whole, more consistent with than detrimental to the
national interest. It is a modest claim, but nonetheless a more favorable one than one can reasonably make about either the strategy
that proceeded, or the one that followed, the “New Look.” 55
54
55
Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy. Page180-181
Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy. Page 197
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The Foreign Policies Dwight David Eisenhower
Dwight David Eisenhower
Republican
Elected in 1952 and Re-elected in 1956
Vice President Richard Millhouse Nixon
First Republican President since 1932
Economics
Conservative Republic
Balanced Budget & Limited Government Spending
Cold War Polices
The New Look
Massive Retaliation / Brinkmanship
Sec. of State & Key Officials
John Foster Dulles – Sectary of State
Allen Dulles – CIA Director
Cold War Crises
East Germany / Hungary / Suez
China
Other Key Issues
Garrison State
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IB Topics in 20th Century History
Log Requirements & Reading assignments
The New Cold War 1953-1960
Required Reading:
Cold War in the 1950s
Walter LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-1996.
1. Chapter 7 – A Different Cold War (1953-55) – 1 Log
2. Chapter 8 – East and West of Suez (1954-1957) – 1 Log
John Lewis Gaddis, “Chapter 5: The German Question,” We Now Know. – 1 Log
Aaron Friedberg, In the Shadow of the Garrison State: America’s Anti-Statism and Its Cold War Grand Strategy.
1. Introduction – 1 Log
2. Chapter 1 – Statism, Anti- Statism, and American Political Development – 1 Log
3. Chapter 2 – The Cold War Founding – 1 Log
4. Chapter 3 – The American Strategic Synthesis – 1 Log
Mao Interlude
Shaun Breslin – Mao
1. Chapter 4 – Toward the Cultural Revolution – 1 Log
2. Chapter 5 – Launching the Cultural Revolution – 1 Log
3. Chapter 6 – Mao and the World – 1 Log
William Taubman “Khrushchev vs. Mao: A Preliminary Sketch of the Role of Personality in the Sino-Soviet Split” Bulletin: Cold
War International History Project. Issues 8-9, Winter 1996/1997. – 1 Log
Chen Jian, “Chapter 3: Mao’s Continuous Revolution and the Rise and Demise of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1949-1963.” Mao’s
China and the Cold War. – 1 Log
Possible Paper #1 Questions:
1. Prescribe Subject 3 – The Cold War 1945 - 1964
Possible Paper #2 Questions:
Topic 3: The rise and rule of single-party states
1. In 1944 Mao Zedong [Mao Tes-tung] wrote, “If we have shortcomings we are not afraid to have them pointed out and
criticized.” How far did his subsequent policies support this statement?
2. In what ways and for what reasons did China develop its own brand of Marxism/Communism under Mao Zedong?
Topic 5: The Cold War
1. In what ways and for what reasons did the Cold War affect the Middle East?
2. “A different kind of Cold War.” To what extent is this a valid statement about the Cold War after 1953?
3. To what extent was Germany the cause of East/West disagreement between 1943-1960?
4. Explain the significance of the Sino-Soviet split with respect to relations between East and West.
5. Explain how relations between the United States and the Soviet Union were effected by relations of each with China.
Possible Paper #3 Questions:
1. In what ways, and to what extent, did Eisenhower’s foreign
policy demonstrate the limits of American power in the
1950s?
2. Assess the foreign policy of one United States President
between 1945 and 1985.
Log Requirements:
For each log entry you must complete all of the following that are
applicable
1. Complete citation (author, title, publication information, & date
of publication)
2. Type of writing / Audience for the writing
3. Major Thesis
4. Supporting information
5. Specific quotes that illuminate the author’s argument
6. Strengths and limitations of the source
7. Your response to the reading (how has the reading effected your understanding of the subject)
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Rubric:
A = All logs deal with all applicable issues in a thoughtful manner, No missing entries.
B+ = Most logs deal with all applicable issues in a thoughtful manner, few logs do not deal with all issues, No missing entries.
B = Some logs deal with all applicable issues in a thoughtful manner, many logs do not deal with all issues, No missing entries.
C+ = Missing entries, All logs deal with all applicable issues in a thoughtful manner.
C = Missing entries, Most logs deal with all applicable issues in a thoughtful manner, few logs do not deal with all issues.
D+ = Missing entries, Some logs deal with all applicable issues in a thoughtful manner, many logs do not deal with all issues.
D = Majority of entries are missing.
F = No Log.
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Section C
Texts in this examination paper have been edited: significant wording additions are shown in square brackets,
and substantive deletions of text are indicated by ellipses (three points […]); minor changes are not indicated.
Prescribed Subject 3 The Cold War 1945-1964 (Topic 5)
These documents refer to the Suez Crisis of 1956
Document A
America and the Egyptian Revolution, 1957-1959 by Barry Rubin published in Political Science Quarterly,
Spring 1982.
America’s handling of the cold war, Nasser concluded, helped the USSR penetrate countries that only accepted its aid to win
independence; western flexibility could avoid this problem. He cautioned against confusing Arab and African Nationalist movements
with communism. He complained that America saw freedom from foreign domination as “the inalienable right of every man, yet balk
at supporting these nations for fear of annoying some colonial Power that has refused to move with the times,” a view similar to that
of liberal State Department analysts
Document B
November 5, 1956. Letter from Premier Bulganin of the Soviet Union to President Eisenhower.
In this troubled and responsible moment for the cause of universal peace, I approach you on behalf of the Soviet Government. A
whole week has passed since the armed forces of Britain, France, and Israel, obedient to the will of external powers, attacked Egypt
without any reason, bringing in their wake death and destruction. …
The Soviet Union and the U.S.A. are permanent members of the Security Council and the two great powers which possess all modern
types of arms, including the atomic and hydrogen weapons. We bear particular responsibility for stopping the war and reestablishing
peace and calm in the area of the Near and Middle East. …
Mr. President, at this menacing hour, when the loftiest moral principals and foundation and aims of the United Nations are being put
to the test, the Soviet government approaches the government of the U.S. with a proposal of close cooperation in order to put an end to
aggression and to stop further bloodshed.
Document C
A cartoon published in The Washington Post, 1956.
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Document D
January 5, 1957. Statement by the President of the United States (Dwight D. Eisenhower) to the Congress.
“It would, in the third place, authorize such assistance and cooperation to include the employment of the armed forces of the United
States to secure and protect the territorial integrity and political independence of such nations, requesting such aid, against overt armed
aggression from any nation controlled by International Communism…”
Document E
An extract from We now know: Rethinking Cold War History by John Lewis Gaddis, published in 1997. Gaddis is
Professor of History at Yale University.
But because the Secretary of State believed in filling all power vacuums – even those left, in the Middle East, by the despised British
and French – he allowed the United States to inherit the enmities imperial powers normally attract when they seek too heavy-handedly
to project their influence. Determined to force a Cold War frame of reference on a region more concerned with resisting imperialism
than containing communism, Dulles deadened his own sensitivities to nationalism, thereby opening opportunities for the Soviet
Union, which would retain a significant presence in Egypt for the next decade and a half and elsewhere in the Middle East for another
decade and a half after that. Because of his tendency to fret, hover, and meddle – his inability to see when things were going well and
need not be re-engineered – Dulles transformed his own country into the new imperial power of the Middle East in what he knew to be
a post-imperial age
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9.
Explain briefly the following references
a)
‘…Nasser’ [Document A].
[2 mark]
b) ‘…hydrogen weapons’ [Document B]
[2 marks]
10.
In what ways do the views of Communism expressed in Documents C and D, differ from those stated
by the author in Document E?
[5 marks]
11.
Analyze the reliability of Documents B and E.
12.
Using these documents and your own knowledge, discuss the effect of the Cold War on the origins of
the Suez Crisis.
[6 marks]
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[5 marks]