Cold War

Cold War A term coined by Baruch in 1947 to describe the emerging tensions between the Soviet Union and the Eastern European states under its influence on the one hand, and the USA and its Western European allies on the other. The tensions had been apparent ever since the division of occupied Germany into four zones and the beginning of Soviet administration in Eastern Europe, and was intensified by the Marshall Plan, which the Soviet Union forbade the countries under its control to accept. The Cold War can be subdivided into three periods:1. The first, most hostile phase began after the Potsdam Conference, included the Greek Civil War 1946–9 and the Berlin Blockade in 1948, and reached a first climax with the Korean War (1950–3). There was a slight relaxation after Stalin's death in 1953, but it continued until the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. This brought the two superpowers of the USA and the USSR to the brink of a nuclear war, and thus caused a change of attitude which led to first efforts at disarmament. 2. Despite the fact that indirect confrontation between the USSR and the USA never stopped, such as during the Vietnam War, tensions began to ease during the 1960s. This development culminated in Brandt's ‘Ostpolitik’ (German question) beginning in 1969, the Helsinki Conference (1973–5), and the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe after 1975. 3. The phase of détente ended in 1979 with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the suppression of the Polish Solidarność Movement from 1980, and the deployment of Soviet nuclear ballistic missiles (SS20) in Eastern Europe, to which NATO responded with the deployment of US Pershing missiles in Western Europe. Tensions declined with the coming to power of Gorbachev in the USSR, as he appreciated that his country's deteriorating economic position meant that it could never keep up with the USA in the arms race which had developed by then. In 1988, the USSR declared officially that it would no longer interfere in another country's affairs. The late 1980s saw the steady improvement of relations between the USSR and the USA, and in 1991, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, US President Bush officially declared the Cold War over.

SDI; brinkmanship; nuclear bomb