The Origins of the Cold War.

The Origins of the Cold War are widely regarded to lie most directly within the immediate post- relations between the of the and the in the years 1945 - 1947, leading to the developed Cold War that endured until the collapse of the Soviet Union in . Both the superpowers contrasted in their views, and their political regimes were totally different.

Some historians look back to Lenin's seizure of power in Russia (the of late 1917) as forming the more extended origins of the Cold War; others, such as , go back to the 1890s, when the U.S. and Tsarist Russia became political and economic rivals in . From 1933 to 1940 the United States and the Soviet Union had a sort of detente, but relations were not friendly. After the USSR and Germany became belligerents in 1941, Roosevelt made a personal commitment to help the Soviets (Congress never voted any sort of alliance). The wartime cooperation was never friendly, and it became increasingly strained by February 1945 at the Yalta Conference, as it became increasingly clear that Stalin intended to spread communism to Russia's neighbouring countries (of which he succeded and of which lead to the birth of ) and then, to spread communism throughout Western Europe.

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Escalation and Crisis

Two opposing geopolitical blocs had developed by as a result of the Cold War. Consult the legend on the map for more details.

Main article: .

The period between the change in leadership for both superpowers in to the in .

Events included the , the erection of the in and the in .

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Cold War: Cuban Missile Crisis

In May 1962 Khrushchev conceived the idea of placing intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Cuba as a means of countering an emerging lead of the United States in developing and deploying strategic missiles. He also presented the scheme as a means of protecting Cuba from another United States-sponsored invasion, such as the failed attempt at the Bay of Pigs in 1961. On October 16, President John Kennedy saw reconnaissance photographs of Soviet missile installations under construction in Cuba. After seven days of guarded and intense debate, during which Soviet diplomats denied that installations for offensive missiles were being built in Cuba, President Kennedy, in a televised address on October 22, announced the discovery of the installations and proclaimed that any nuclear missile attack from Cuba would be regarded as an attack by the Soviet Union and would be responded to accordingly. He imposed a naval quarantine on Cuba to prevent further Soviet shipments of offensive military weapons from arriving there.

On October 26, Khrushchev sent Kennedy a long rambling letter seemingly proposing that the missile installations would be dismantled and personnel removed in exchange for United States assurances that it or its proxies would not invade Cuba. On October 21, another letter from Khrushchev suggested that missile installations in Cuba would be dismantled if the United States dismantled its missile installations in Turkey. Kennedy decided to ignore this second letter and to accept the offer outlined in the letter of October 26. Khrushchev then announced on October 28 that he would dismantle the installations and return them to the Soviet Union, expressing his trust that the United States would not invade Cuba.

Second Cold War

The diversified state of the Cold War relations in . Consult the legend on the map for more details.

The period between the in and the rise of as leader in was characterized by a marked "freeze" in relations between the superpowers after the "thaw" of the Détente period of the 1970s. As a result of this re-intensification, the period is sometimes referred to as the "".

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 in support of an embryonic communist regime in that country led to international outcries and the widespread boycotting of the by many Western countries in protest at Soviet actions.

Worried by Soviet deployment of nuclear missiles (commenced in ), NATO allies agreed in 1979 ...

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Worried by Soviet deployment of nuclear missiles (commenced in ), NATO allies agreed in 1979 to continued to constrain the number of nuclear missiles for battlefield targets, while threatening to deploy some 500 and in and the if negotiations were unsuccessful. The negotiations, taken up in , , , were bound to fail. The planned deployment of Pershing II met intense and widespread opposition from public opinion across Europe, which became the site of the largest demonstrations ever seen in several countries. Pershing II missiles were deployed in Europe from January 1984. They were, however, soon withdrawn beginning in October 1988.

In spite of detente's real successes, the "new conservatives" or "" rebelled against both the Nixon-era policies and the similar position of toward the Soviet Union. Many clustered around hawkish Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a Democrat, and pressured President Carter into a more confrontational stance. Eventually they aligned themselves with and the conservative wing of the Republicans, who promised to confront charges of Soviet expansionism.

The election, firstly of as in 1979, followed by that of to the in , saw the elevation of two hardline Cold Warriors to the leadership of the Western World.

Others events included the and .

This section is a . You can by .

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End of the Cold War

Changes in borders in Europe and Central Asia with the end of the Cold War 23 new countries were formed.

The period between the rise of as leader in to the collapse of the in .

Events included the in , and in the , the (which includes the famous in ), the and the in .

Others include the implementation of the policies of and , public discontent over the Soviet Union's war in , and the socio-political effects of the accident in 1986. East-West tensions eased rapidly after the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev. After the deaths of three elderly Soviet leaders in a row since 1982, the Politburo elected Gorbachev Soviet Communist Party chief in 1985, marking the rise of a new generation of leadership. Under Gorbachev, relatively young reform-oriented technocrats, who had begun their careers in the heyday of "de-Stalinization" under reformist leader Nikita Khrushchev (1953-1964), rapidly consolidated power, providing new momentum for political and economic liberalization, and the impetus for cultivating warmer relations and trade with the West.

Meanwhile, in his second term Reagan surprised the neoconservatives by meeting with Gorbachev in in 1985 and in 1986, the latter to continue discussions about scaling back their intermediate missile arsenals in Europe. The talks broke down in failure. Afterwards, Soviet policymakers increasingly accepted Reagan administration warnings that the U.S. would make the arms race a huge burden for them. The twin burdens of the Cold War arms race on one hand, and the provision of large sums of foreign and military aid, which their socialist allies had grown to expect, possibly left Gorbachev's efforts to boost production of consumer goods and reform the stagnating economy all but impossible. The result in was a dual approach of cooperation with the west and economic restructuring (perestroika) and democratization (glasnost) domestically, which eventually made it impossible for Gorbachev to reassert central control and influence over member states.

Conservatives often argue that the primary cause of death of the was the massive fiscal spending on military technology that the Soviets saw as necessary in response to 's increased armament of the 1980s. efforts to keep up with military expenditures resulted in massive economic disruption and the effective bankruptcy of the Soviet economy, which had always laboured to keep up with its western counterparts. The pace of military technology was advancing such that the Soviets were simply incapable of keeping up and still maintaining a healthy economy. The , both and conventional, was too much for the underdeveloped Soviet economy of the time. For this reason President is seen by many conservatives as the man who 'won' the Cold War indirectly through his escalation of the arms race. However the proximate cause of the end of the Cold War was ultimately Mikhail Gorbachev's decision, publicized in 1988, to repudiate the .

The Soviet Union provided little infrastructure help for its Eastern European satellites, but they did receive substantial military assistance in the form of funds, matériel, and advisors. Their integration into the inefficient military oriented economy of the Soviet Union caused severe readjustment problems after the fall of Communism.

Though the Cold War is seemingly over, its effects continue to be felt to the present day. American involvement in first supporting the rebels in Afghanistan and subsequently abandoning that region, the military and economic hegemony of the United States, and the rise of previously suppressed nationalisms are but some of the factors emerging from shadows of the Cold War leading extremists in the Middle East to oppose the United States in a new kind of war.

Research shows that the fall of Communism was accompanied by a sudden and dramatic decline in total , interstate wars, wars, wars, the number of and , and an increase in the number of democratic states.

Arms race

The intercontinental bomber, designed in the late 1940s, remains in operation in 2006.

A major feature of the Cold War was the arms race between the member states of the and those of . This resulted in substantial scientific discoveries in many technological and military fields.

Some particularly revolutionary advances were made in the field of and , which led to the (many of the rockets used to launch humans and satellites into orbit were originally based on military designs formulated during this period).

Other fields in which arms races occurred include: , , , , , (including and ), (as well as ), , , and , , , , and .

All of these fields required massive technological and manufacturing investment. Except in and rocket and missile design, the West mainly created weapons with superior effectiveness, mainly due to their lead in after 1965. However, the Eastern bloc fielded a larger number of designs in each field and built a larger number of many types of weapons.

One prominent feature of the nuclear arms race, especially following the massed deployment of nuclear due to the flawed assumption that the manned bomber was fatally vulnerable to , was the concept of deterrence via , later, or "MAD". The idea was that the Western bloc would not attack the Eastern bloc or vice versa, because both sides had more than enough nuclear weapons to reduce each other to nothing, and to make the entire planet uninhabitable. Therefore, launching an attack on either party would be suicidal, and so neither would attempt it. With increasing numbers and accuracy of delivery systems, particularly in the closing stages of the Cold War, the possibility of a doctrine weakened the deterrence theory. A first strike would aim to degrade the enemy's nuclear forces to such an extent that the retalitatory response would involve "acceptable" losses.

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Intelligence

Main article:

Military forces from the countries involved rarely had much direct participation in the Cold War; the war was primarily fought by like the (United States), (United Kingdom), (West Germany), (East Germany) and the (Soviet Union).

The abilities of , a U.S.-UK intelligence sharing organization that was created during World War II, were used against the USSR, China and their allies.

According to the , much of the technology in the states consisted simply of copies of Western products that had been legally purchased or gained through a massive espionage program. Stricter Western control of the export of technology through and providing defective technology to Communist agents after the discovery of the contributed to the fall of Communism.

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Origin of the Term "Cold War"

The origins of the term "Cold War" are debated. The term was used hypothetically by in 1945, though not in reference to the struggle between the USA and the Soviet Union, which had not yet been initiated. American politician began using the term in April 1947 but it first came into general use in September 1947 when journalist published a series of newspaper columns (and book) on US-Soviet tensions entitled The Cold War.

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Historiography

Three distinct periods have existed in the Western scholarship of the Cold War: the traditionalist, the revisionist, and the post-revisionist. For more than a decade after the end of , few American historians saw any reason to challenge the conventional "traditionalist" interpretation of the beginning of the Cold War: that the breakdown of relations was a direct result of 's violation of the accords of the , the imposition of Soviet-dominated governments on an unwilling Eastern Europe, Soviet intransigence, and aggressive Soviet expansionism. They would point out that theory rejected , while prescribing a worldwide , and argue that this stance made conflict inevitable. Organizations such as the were regarded as actively working for the overthrow of all Western governments.

Later revisionist historians were influenced by Marxist theory. of the in his The Tragedy of American Diplomacy and in his America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-1968 argued that the Cold War was primarily an outgrowth of American economic interests, which led Moscow to react defensively to potential U.S. imperial encroachment in its backyard. Some new left revisionist historians have argued that U.S. policy of containment as expressed in the were at least equally to blame, if not more so. Some date the onset of the Cold War to the , regarding the U.S. use of nuclear weapons as a warning to the Soviet Union, which was about to join the war against the nearly defeated Japan. In short, historians have disagreed as to who was responsible for the breakdown of U.S.-Soviet relations and whether the conflict between the two superpowers was inevitable. This revisionist approach reached its height during the when many began to view the U.S. and U.S.S.R. as morally comparable empires.

In the later years of the Cold War, there were attempts to forge a "post-revisionist" by historians. Prominent post-revisionist historians include . Rather than attribute the beginning of the Cold War to the actions of either superpower, post-revisionist historians have focused on mutual misperception, mutual reactivity, and shared responsibility between the leaders of the superpowers. Gaddis traces the origins of the conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union less as the lone fault of one side or the other and more as the result of a plethora of conflicting interests and misperceptions between the two superpowers, propelled by domestic politics and bureaucratic inertia. Leffler contends that Truman and Eisenhower acted, on the whole, thoughtfully in meeting what was understandably perceived to be a potentially serious threat from a totalitarian communist regime that was ruthless at home and that might be potentially threatening abroad. Borrowing from the school of international relations, the post-revisionists essentially accepted U.S. European policy in Europe, such as aid to Greece in and the . According to this synthesis, "Communist activity" was not the root of the difficulties of Europe, but rather a consequence of the disruptive effects of the Second World War on the economic, political, and social structure of Europe which threatened to drastically alter the balance of power in a manner favorable to the U.S.S.R.

The end of the Cold War opened many of the archives of the Communist states, which has increased the support for the traditionalist position. Gaddis has written that Stalin's "authoritarian, paranoid, and narcissistic predisposition" locked the Cold War into place. "Stalin alone pursued personal security by depriving everyone else of it: no Western leader relied on terror to the extent that he did. He alone had transformed his country into an extension of himself: no Western leader could have succeeded at such a feat, and none attempted it. He alone saw war and revolution as acceptable means with which to pursue ultimate ends: no Western leader associated violence with progress to the extent that he did."