8.2 The Cold War from 1945 to 1980

The Cold War was a long rivalry between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, fought through alliances, arms races, propaganda and wars between other countries rather than direct fighting between the superpowers. Soviet control of Eastern Europe, described by Winston Churchill in 1946 as an 'iron curtain', convinced American leaders that the Soviets were expanding.

Diplomat George Kennan argued in 1946–1947 that the U.S. should contain Soviet expansion with patient, firm pressure until the Soviet system weakened. Containment became the core of U.S. foreign policy for four decades.

• Truman Doctrine (1947): Truman asked Congress for $400 million to help Greece and Turkey resist communist pressure, pledging to support free peoples resisting subjugation.
• Marshall Plan (1948): about $13 billion in aid to rebuild Western Europe's economies, so poverty would not make communism attractive. It also created markets for American goods. The Soviets refused it for Eastern Europe.
• Berlin Airlift (1948–1949): when the Soviets blockaded West Berlin, U.S. and British planes flew in food and fuel for almost a year until the blockade ended.
• NATO (1949): the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the first U.S. peacetime military alliance, committed members to defend each other. The Soviets formed the Warsaw Pact in 1955.
• 1949 shocks: the Soviets tested an atomic bomb, and Mao Zedong's communists won China's civil war.
• NSC-68 (1950): a secret policy paper called for a huge military buildup, and defense spending soared after the Korean War began.

In June 1950 communist North Korea invaded South Korea. With UN approval, U.S.-led forces drove the North back, but when General Douglas MacArthur pushed toward the Chinese border, China entered the war. MacArthur publicly demanded wider war against China, and Truman fired him in 1951, upholding civilian control of the military. An armistice in 1953 left Korea divided near the 38th parallel, where it began. About 36,000 Americans died. Korea showed that containment could mean limited war.

President Dwight Eisenhower's 'New Look' relied on nuclear weapons for massive retaliation, which was cheaper than large ground forces, plus covert operations by the CIA (8.7). The arms race grew to include the hydrogen bomb and missiles. When the Soviets launched Sputnik, the first satellite, in 1957, Americans feared falling behind. Congress created NASA and passed the National Defense Education Act (both 1958) to fund science and math education.

In October 1962 U.S. spy planes found Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. President John F. Kennedy ordered a naval 'quarantine' of Cuba, and for thirteen days the world faced the threat of nuclear war. The Soviets agreed to remove the missiles in exchange for a U.S. promise not to invade Cuba, and the U.S. secretly agreed to remove its missiles from Turkey. Afterward the two sides set up a hotline and signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty (1963).

Détente means an easing of tension. President Richard Nixon and adviser Henry Kissinger visited communist China in 1972, opening relations, and signed the SALT I arms agreement with the Soviets the same year. The Helsinki Accords (1975) recognized Europe's borders and included human rights pledges. Détente collapsed after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979; President Jimmy Carter halted grain sales and led a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics.