Russian leader Joseph Stalin’s tyrannical rule of his own country as well as Soviet communism concerned and wared Americans for a long time.
For their part, Americans’ decades-long refusal to treat the USSR as a legitimate part of the international community as well as their delayed entry into World War II, which resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of Russians, were resented by the Soviets.
These grievances ripened into an overwhelming sense of mutual distrust and enmity in the post war era.
Many Americans’ feared of a Russian plan to control the world with the Postwar Soviet expansionism in Eastern Europe. No single party was entirely to blame for the Cold War in such a hostile atmosphere; in fact, some historians believe it was inevitable.
The Cold War: Containment
By the time World War II ended to oppress the Soviet threat many American officials agreed for a strategy named "containment"which was according to them was their best defence.
The diplomat George Kennan (1904-2005) explained the policy, in his famous “Long Telegram,” : The Soviet Union, he wrote, was “a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with the U.S. there can be no permanent modus vivendi.”
As a result, America’s only choice was the “long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.”
The Cold War: The Atomic Age
The United States buildup an unprecedented arms with the help of containment strategy. A National Security Council Report known as NSC–68 had echoed Truman’s recommendation in 1950.
According to it the communist expansionism would be contained by the use of country's military force at anywhere it seemed to be occurring. To that end, the report called for a four-fold increase in defense spending.
In particular, the development of atomic weapons that had ended World War II were encouraged by the American officials which fuelled the beginning of a deadly “arms race.
The Soviets tested their own atom bomb in 1949. Responding to it the United States' President Truman announced that they would build an even more destructive atomic weapon: the hydrogen bomb, or “superbomb.”
It resulted in the highest stakes in the Cold War. The first H-bomb test showed just how fearsome the nuclear age could be. It was tested in the Eniwetok atoll in the Marshall Islands.
It had the power to destroy half of Manhattan as it created a 25-square-mile fireball that vaporized an island and blew a huge hole in the ocean floor. Radioactive waste spewed into the atmosphere with the subsequent American and Soviet tests.
The Cold War was a constant presence in Americans’ everyday lives in many ways.
The Cold War Extends to Space:
Cold War competition found another dramatic arena in Space exploration.
A Soviet R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile launched Sputnik (Russian for “traveling companion”), on October 4, 1957 which made it the world’s first artificial satellite and the first man-made object to be placed into the Earth’s orbit.
Most of the Americans were surprised yet unpleasant with the launch of Sputnik. Space was seen as the next frontier in the United States. The grand American tradition of exploration found another logical extension to explore and it was crucial not to lose too much ground to the Soviets.
Explorer I the first satellite designed by the U.S was officer in 1958. Wernher von Braun the rocket scientist who led the Army to compete in the race which got underway and this incident was known as the beginning of Space Race.
That same year, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was created when President Dwight Eisenhower signed a public order. It was a federal agency dedicated to space exploration, as well as several programs seeking to exploit the military potential of space.
Though still, the Americans were one step behind as Soviets launched the first man into space in April 1961. Alan Shepard became the first American man in space in the month of May of that same year.
A bold public claim was made by President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) which stated that the U.S. would land a man on the moon by the end of the decade.
Neil Armstrong of NASA’s Apollo 11 mission made his prediction correct as he became the first man to set foot on the moon, effectively winning the Space Race for the Americans on July 20, 1969.
Soviet were pictured as the ultimate villains, with their massive, relentless efforts to surpass America and prove the power of the communist system while U.S astronauts became the ultimate American Heroes.
The Cold War: The Red Scare
Meanwhile, The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) which began in 1947 brought the Cold War home in another way. To show that communist subversion was alive and well in the United States the committee been a series of hearings.
In Hollywood hundreds of people who worked in the movie industry were forced by HUAC to renounce left-wing political beliefs and testify against one another. It cost 500 people their precious jobs. Many writers, directors, actors and others got “blacklisted” and were unable to work again for more than a decade.
State Department workers were accused by HUAC for engaging in subversive activities. Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908-1957) a renowned anticommunist politician was notable among those politicians who expanded this probe to include anyone who worked in the federal government.
In 1950s anticommunist hysteria spread throughout the country as liberal college professors lost their jobs with thousands of federal employees who were investigated, fired and even prosecuted. People were forced to testify against colleagues and “loyalty oaths” became commonplace.
The Close of the Cold War:
President Richard Nixon (1913-1994) began to implement a new approach to international relations as soon as he took office. He suggested to use diplomacy instead of military action to create more poles instead of viewing the world as a hostile, “bi-polar” place.
To that end, after a trip there in 1972, he encouraged the United Nations to recognize the communist Chinese government and began to establish diplomatic relations with Beijing.
He adopted a policy of “détente”–”relaxation”–toward the Soviet Union during the same time period. In 1972, the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) was signed by him and Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev (1906-1982).
The Treaty prohibited the manufacture of nuclear missiles by both sides and took a step toward reducing the decades-old threat of nuclear war.
The Cold War heated up again under President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) despite Nixon’s efforts. Reagan like many leaders of his generation, believed that the spread of communism anywhere threatened freedom everywhere.
As a result, the anticommunist governments and insurgencies around the world got financial and military aid from Reagan's side. The developing world and places like Grenada and El Salvador got the help from this policy which was known as the Reagan Doctrine.
The Soviet Union was already disintegrating when Reagan fought communism in Central America.
Premier Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-) took office in 1985 and introduced two policies that redefined Russia’s relationship to the rest of the world while responding to severe economic problems and growing political ferment in the USSR: “glasnost,” or political openness, and “perestroika,” or economic reform.
In 1989, Soviet influence in Eastern Europe waned as every other communist state in the region replaced its government with a noncommunist one. The most visible symbol of the decades-long Cold War was the Berlin Wall in November of that same year was finally destroyed.
Reagan had challenged the Soviet premier in a speech at Brandenburg Gate in Berlin: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” just two years before finally it was down. The Soviet Union itself had fallen apart by 1991 which marked the end of the Cold War.
Written by: Gourav Chowdhury
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