The Cold War Part 4

Global Tensions & Detente

Going Global

De-Stalinization

The ‘Third World’

Strategic Superiority

Berlin

The Summit That Never Was

Up Comes the Wall

Detente

Arms Control

The Limited Test Ban Treaty

The Non-Proliferation

Mutually Assured Destruction

Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty

While it appeared that tensions were on the decline and that diplomacy might yet contain Soviet ambitions, a number of issues still stood in the way of any long term settlement. One of the major factors here were the consequences of Khrushchev's new policies in Europe and in the rest of the world, as well as the continuing struggle to settle the longstanding question of Germany.

The denunciation of Stalin led to wide scale purging of orthodox Stalinists in favour of reformists in the various Eastern European satellites.

In Poland this resulted in a new regime that, while still communist and loyal to the USSR, sought to address the complaints of the population by reneging on unpopular policies and reducing economic hardship.

However the new, more tolerant communism had limits: in Hungary the people became enraged in late October 1956 when during protests in favour of Poland's recent reforms, police forces fired into the crowd.

The situation careened out of control, with large scale uprisings and the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the capital city of Budapest. The reformist leader, Imre Nagy banded together with an outlawed political party in a coalition government, and announced free elections would be held, as well as Hungary's withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact.

Imre Nagy

This was too much for the Soviets, and they immediately ordered their forces back into Hungary, where they swiftly crushed what came to be known as the Hungarian Revolution.

Despite an assurance of safe passage out of the country, Nagy was arrested and later executed, and Hungary placed under the rule of those loyal to Moscow.

While this was a propaganda victory for the West, NATO ultimately did nothing to stop the Soviet intervention, having been caught unprepared and distracted by issues elsewhere in the world.

The Soviets hoped to bypass the deadlock in Europe by focusing on the part of the planet known as the 'Third World': the old European colonial empires that had or were about to achieve independence.

The Soviets were well placed ideologically to take advantage of nationalist sentiment in the Third World, and began to supply foreign aid to various countries in the hopes of wooing them.

However, the much wealthier United States could afford to provide much more extensive and generous aid packages than the economically underdeveloped Soviets, meaning that few new countries actually allied themselves with the Soviets fully.

The Americans were able to create pseudo-counterparts to NATO in Southeast Asia and in the Middle East, theoretically creating to ring of containment around southern Eurasia.

However, notable gaps such as India and virtually the entire Arab world meant that the Soviets still had much room to manoeuvre in finding some kind of support in the wider world.

By mid-1953 both the U.S. and the USSR had developed Thermonuclear (or hydrogen) bombs, and began racing to build up their nuclear weapons stockpile as well as their delivery systems.

Here the Soviets lagged considerably in both numbers and technology, and while the Soviets managed to use clever intelligence work and misinformation to trick the Americans into thinking they were more powerful than they were, the truth was far different.

The number of long-range Soviet bombers was pitifully low, and their newly developed Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) prototypes, though in theory able to strike America through its until then nigh impenetrable radar and air defence systems, were so poorly conceived they had to be entirely redesigned.

The Soviets did however gain massive prestige (and increased American paranoia) by being the first nation to place satellites in orbit, winning the first phase of what would come to be called the 'Space Race'.

The Western Europeans feared that America would be unwilling to defend them now that the Soviets could retaliate against American home soil. Eventually the Americans revealed to their allies that they had discovered the Soviet's deception, and that they were of no real threat to the American homeland, reassuring the Europeans that the U.S. would indeed stand by them.

Since the creation of the two separate German states, the East German leaders had been concerned about the status of Berlin. The western half of the city (located deep inside East Germany) was controlled by West Germany and garrisoned by U.S., British, and French troops.

Not only was this highly embarrassing to a supposedly sovereign country, but Berlin acted as a bastion of capitalist success, showing off to poor East Germans the wealth of West Germany. This was a serious problem, as East Germany's best and brightest citizens had flooded across from east to west Berlin for the last decade in search of a better life. Flying from there into West Germany itself, some 2.5 million East Germans had left in this way (about a sixth of the population).

Responding to pressure from the East Germans, the Soviets in the fall of 1958 sent an ultimatum, wishing to end the joint occupation of Berlin and to transform it into a free city within 6 months. The allies agreed to negotiations but refused the deadline.

Negotiations got nowhere in the summer of 1959, but President Eisenhower and Khrushchev agreed to hold direct negotiations after Khrushchev's visit to the U.S. in the fall (the first ever for a Russian leader) scheduled for May of 1960. It appeared that after so much amicable negotiations that a major improvement in East-West relations was around the corner.

It all came crashing down when days before the summit was to begin, the Soviets announced that they had shot down one of the United State's top secret Lockheed U-2 spy planes operating deep inside the USSR.

Eisenhower claimed it was a weather survey craft that had gone off course, but when the Soviets presented the spy cameras and the (living) pilot, the jig was up.

Demands for an apology and an end to spy flights were impossible for Eisenhower in an election year, and the summit was promptly called off by the Soviet leader. It was just as well for Khrushchev, who had been taking severe criticism for his western-friendly policies from fellow Soviet officials and from foreign allies (notably China).

Negotiations continued in the summer of 1961 between Khrushchev and the new President John F. Kennedy, but proved equally indecisive.

In the meantime, more and more East German refugees continued to pour into west Berlin, while the leaders of East Germany begged for a solution from their Soviet ally.

In the end, the solution was very simple (and kind of crazy when you really think about it): on August 13 East German police blocked off west Berlin form the rest of the GDR with barbed wire, and then began building a wall to enclose it.

The construction of the Berlin Wall was a public relations disaster for East Germany, but it did keep their citizens as home, where over the course of the coming decades they built the most advanced economy of any of the Soviet satellites.

In a way however, this solution was positive for both the U.S. and the USSR: both had been beholden to their German allies for fear of a reunited Germany one day going over to the other side. Now with the most contentious issue in Europe solved, each Germany settled into its respective alliance, and their Superpower patrons were no longer required to risk nuclear war over one city.

For half a century the world wondered whether a war unlike any other would bring about not just the end of human civilization, but of the very Earth itself. This anxiety resulted from the development of nuclear weapons, and led the Superpowers to exert huge efforts ensuring that they would never have to use the arsenals they had so laboriously created.

In the years immediately after the Second World War the United States possessed a monopoly on nuclear arms, and even when the Soviet Union managed to develop the atomic bomb, the primitive state of its nuclear forces meant that it was no real threat to the United States in the short term.

The U.S. however, realizing the inherent danger of a world full of nuclear powers, proposed a bold solution: the Baruch Plan. This plan proposed that the United States would turn over all its fissionable materials to the United Nations, and then destroy its own nuclear arsenal. In exchange, other nations would agree not to develop nuclear weapons and would likewise submit to periodic inspections of their own nuclear sites (i.e. power plants).

Bernard Baruch

The Soviets rejected it as an intolerable breach of their own sovereignty, and were unwilling to allow the U.N. (in those days dominated by the U.S. and its Western European and Latin American allies) to be the sole possessor of nuclear weapons.

However, the dangers of nuclear arms were made evident during the Cuban missile crisis, and this convinced the Superpowers to attempt some kind of agreement with regards to these powerful weapons.

After the disastrous Castle Bravo nuclear test, serious concerns began to be raised about the dangers of testing nuclear weapons on the Earth's environment.

Both sides however wished to continue testing to perfect their own nuclear technologies, and lesser powers also wished to acquire nuclear weapons. After arduous negotiations the United States, Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTB) in August of 1963.

This agreement pledged to end atmospheric testing as well as any subterranean testing large enough to be detected by the other nation's seismograph technology.

While France and China became nuclear powers around the same time and refused to sign the LTB, the ending of major tests by the three LTB powers seriously reduced the danger to Earth's biosphere and to human life.

After the success of the LTB, the Superpowers next sought to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to other countries. This resulted in the signing in March 1970 of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in which the majority of the world's countries pledged not to develop nuclear weapons.

The nuclear powers likewise pledged not to transfer nuclear weapons or weapons technology to these nations, and in order to assist the NPT countries with civilian nuclear programs the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was formed.

Both France and China refused to sign the NPT, and the unwillingness of the U.S. and USSR to assist their nuclear programs was a big factor in the deterioration in relations between the Superpowers and their respective clients.

While the NPT had severely limited the testing of nuclear weapons by the Superpowers, it did nothing to stop the expansion of nuclear arsenals.

While the Soviets had started with a considerable disadvantage, by the end of the 1960's they had caught up to the U.S. in many respects, with each side boasting more than a thousand ICBMs.

Having achieved relative parity with the Americans, the Soviets were willing to discuss nuclear arms control, while the Americans likewise wished to reduce the onerous expense of building up their arsenal.

At the end of the 1960's negotiations began to actually limit the number of nuclear weapons in the possession of either side. This resulted after lengthy negotiations in the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty I (SALT I) in May 1972.

This resulted in a freeze in the number of nuclear armed ICBMs and SLBMs (Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles) that each side possessed.

The Soviets had a substantial numerical advantage by now in both areas, which was compensated for by way of the Americans more advanced nuclear technology, larger number of nuclear bombers, and the closely allied British nuclear arsenal (which was not a part of SALT I).

While there were considerable gaps in the treaty's provisions, additional talks and a more comprehensive agreement were planned for the future, as negotiations to solve the political disagreements between the two sides (which had stimulated the arms race) went on in parallel to the arms talks.