HIST103 Study Guide

Unit 13: Cold War Conflicts

13a. Summarize the major events of the Cold War and the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union

  • How did the Cold War begin?
  • Why was it called a Cold War?
  • What were the objectives of both sides?
  • How did the Space Race factor into it?
  • How did the transition to communism affect the people living in China?

The Cold War (1947-1991) was the power struggle that followed World War II between the two superpowers that emerged from the war – the United States and the Soviet Union. As we studied in Unit 12, the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union divided Europe and Asia into two spheres of influence – capitalist Western Europe and communist Eastern Europe – at the Yalta (February 1945) and Potsdam (July–August 1945) conferences. 

In 1946, George Kennan (1904–2005), an American diplomat in Moscow, wrote the Long Telegram, which argued that the United States and its allies must stop the Soviet Union's aggressive policies to spread communism. Harry Truman, U.S. president from 1945–1953, developed the Truman Doctrine, also known as the policy of containment, which pledged the United States would support democracies and combat Soviet and other authoritarian threats. In 1954, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower coined the idea of the Domino Theory, which warned that democracies around the globe, such as Vietnam and countries in Latin America, would fall to communism like dominos due to the Soviet Union's aggressive tactics.

On April 4, 1949, the United States and Western Europe formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), an alliance to discourage the Soviet Union from attacking any of its member states. On May 14, 1955, the Soviet Union followed with the Warsaw Pact, a similar agreement among members of the Soviet Bloc in Eastern Europe.

Due to their military strength and fear of nuclear annihilation or mutually assured destruction (MAD), the United States and the Soviet Union (USSR) engaged in a series of indirect proxy conflicts, such as in Korea, Angola, Vietnam, and Cuba, to contain the other side and establish their hegemony. For example, the United States lent financial, development, and military support to countries in Asia that became close allies, such as Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines. The Soviet Union did the same. 

The "space race" was a unique product of the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union vied for dominance in space after the Soviet Union sent the first satellite (Sputnik) into space in 1957. In 1958, the United States established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which led the scientific effort to send men to land on the moon on July 20, 1969.

Meanwhile, Mao Zedong's (1893–1976) communist forces took control of China and established The People's Republic of China in October 1949. Mao imposed a series of measures to forcefully industrialize China. Similar to what occurred in the Soviet Union, historians estimate that Mao's Great Leap Forward (1958–1962), mandatory collectivization, forced labor, and the famine that ensued caused the deaths of 18–30 million people in China. The Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) was Mao's attempt to purge China of anything deemed corruptive to the communist cause. The government and local citizens suppressed anything that promoted capitalism or democracy or was considered Western, American, or European. 

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13b. Explain how the Cold War intersected with other global events, such as decolonization

  • How did the Cold War impact decolonization?
  • What was the Non-Aligned Movement?
  • How did the Angolan Civil War symbolize the transition from colonialism?

During his speech at the 1955 Asian-African Conference of newly independent nations in Bandung, Indonesia, Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964), the prime minister of India, argued that developing nations did not benefit from military alliances with the United States or the Soviet Union. Instead, developing nations should work together to pursue independent developmental paths free of burdensome pro-communist or anti-communist (capitalist) alliances. This Non-Aligned Movement expressed the benefits of avoiding the entanglements of Cold War politics.

A proxy war would develop in Angola, a Portuguese colony that plunged into a long and deadly civil war when it gained independence in 1975. Fighting continued between the communist Cuban-backed People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the capitalist South-African-backed National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), and the National Liberation Front (FNLA). In this proxy war, the Soviet Union indirectly supported the MPLA while the United States supplied aid and training to FNLA and UNITA. The Korean and Vietnam wars offer similar examples.

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13c. Discuss how and why so many new states came into existence after World War II

  • What countries were created after World War II?
  • What was the Year of Africa, and why is it important?
  • How did communism contribute to the formation of new countries?

Many former European colonies obtained independence during the period of decolonization as Europe turned inward to recover from World War II. We see examples in India, Indonesia, and the Philippines. 

In October 1945, delegates who met at the Fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester, England, called for an end to colonialism. In August 1947, Ghanaian leaders called for their independence during the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), which they obtained in 1957. The Belgian government agreed to grant independence to Congo in June 1960 following violent nationalist protests. The United Kingdom granted independence to Kenya in 1963 following the bloody Mau Mau Rebellion from 1952 to 1956. Civil war also erupted in Rhodesia, which the United Kingdom recognized as Zimbabwe in 1980. In 1947, the United Kingdom created the Commonwealth of Nations, which consists of Britain's former imperial possessions, except for Ireland and Zimbabwe.

Other nations formed as communist forms of government spread. For example, Che Guevara (1928–1967), an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, helped Fidel Castro (1926–2016), a Cuban revolutionary, wrest control from Fulgencio Batista, whom the United States supported financially, to establish the Republic of Cuba in 1959, which had ties to the Soviet Union. This change of government led to a massive exodus of people from Cuba to the United States and threatened nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962.

However, efforts in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia devolved into the Vietnam War (1954–1975), when their leaders tried to break free from French and U.S. interests. 

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13d. Explain how the Cold War ended and what factors led to its end

  • Why did the Cold War end?
  • How were the Soviet-Afghan War and the Vietnam War symbolic of the Cold War?
  • What was Tiananmen Square, and what does it symbolize?
  • How did the Soviet Union come to an end?

During the 1980s, the Soviet Union could no longer hide the constant food lines, corruption, and inequities of its centralized economy. Mikhail Gorbachev (1931–2022), the new president of the Soviet Union in 1985, adopted the policies of Glasnost (openness) and Perestroika (restructuring) to transition the Soviet economy to greater private ownership of the factors of production. However, the drastic changes led to economic and political turmoil, and the Soviet Union officially collapsed in 1991. The United States quickly recognized 12 independent republics and established diplomatic ties with Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, and Kyrgyzstan. At that time, the United States became the world's sole superpower.

After Mao Zedong's death in 1976, the Chinese government, led by Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997), also implemented several capitalist reforms, such as inviting foreign trade and investment. However, Deng had no intention of allowing opposition to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In 1986, university students protested in major Chinese cities.

The government suppressed their actions but hesitated to be as heavy-handed when students gathered at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on April 17, 1989, to mourn the death of party official Hu Yaobang, who had supported them. They began demanding democratic reform, an end to government censorship, greater rights to protest, and more money for education. Some decried corruption in the CCP. On June 3, 1989, tanks entered Beijing and cleared the square, killing up to several thousand people. A journalist captured an iconic moment when a student defiantly stared down a tank. 

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Unit 13 Vocabulary

  • Angolan Civil War
  • Asian-African Conference
  • Cold War
  • Commonwealth of Nations
  • Containment
  • Cultural Revolution
  • Deng Xiaoping
  • Domino Theory
  • Eastern Europe
  • Fifth Pan-African Congress
  • George Kennan
  • Glasnost
  • Great Leap Forward
  • Harry Truman
  • Long Telegram
  • Mao Zedong
  • Mau Mau Rebellion
  • Mikhail Gorbachev
  • mutually assured destruction (MAD)
  • National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
  • non-aligned movement
  • North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
  • nuclear annihilation
  • People's Republic of China
  • Perestroika
  • Potsdam Conference
  • proxy conflict
  • Sputnik
  • Tiananmen Square
  • Truman Doctrine
  • United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC)
  • Vietnam War
  • Warsaw Pact
  • Western Europe
  • Yalta Conference