COLD WAR

Prepared by: Abel, Rejay M. (BAPOS 4A)

Instructor: Prof. Melchor D. Salom

DEFINITION

The ongoing antagonism between the two former allies from World War II defined the
Cold War. Violent battles took place in Vietnam's tropical jungles as well as covert
espionage in some of the world's largest cities. It included everything from nuclear
submarines quietly drifting through the ocean's depths to the most cutting-edge
satellites orbiting the earth in geosynchronous orbit. From the Berlin Wall to the
movies, the political and cultural war fought by Communists and Capitalists was a
titanic conflict on a scale never previously witnessed in human history. It was fought
in basketball and hockey, ballet and the arts.
The Cold War was the geopolitical, ideological, and economic struggle between two
world superpowers, the USA and the USSR, that started in 1947 at the end of the
Second World War and lasted until the dissolution of the Soviet Union on
December 26, 1991.
Cold War, the post-World War II competition between the US and the Soviet Union and
its allies, was an open but restrained conflict. There was little use of actual weapons
throughout the Cold War; instead, it was fought on fronts of politics, economics, and
propaganda. The phrase was first used in the United States by American financier and
presidential adviser Bernard Baruch in a speech at the State House in Columbia, South
Carolina, in 1947. It was first used by the English writer George Orwell in a 1945
article to refer to what he predicted would be a nuclear standoff between "two or
three monstrous super-states, each possessed of a weapon by which millions of people
can be wiped out in a few seconds."

Throughout the Cold War, the US and the USSR avoided open military conflict in
Europe and limited their use of combat operations to preventing allies from switching
sides or to overthrowing them after they did. Thus, in order to maintain communist
authority in East Germany (1953), Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968), and
Afghanistan (1979), the Soviet Union dispatched troops. For its part, the United States
supported an unsuccessful invasion of Cuba in 1961, invaded the Dominican Republic
in 1965, Grenada in 1983, and engaged in a protracted (1964–75) and fruitless attempt
to stop communist North Vietnam from annexing South Vietnam (see Vietnam War).

Origins of the Cold War

The first nonaggression pact signed between Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin and Adolf
Hitler in 1939 was not forgotten by Western Allied leaders, and tensions between the
United States and its unusual partner in the Soviet Union remained throughout World
War II. However, an alliance between the USSR and the US was established as a result
of Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union and Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.
Competition between the USSR and the US escalated as World War II changed both
countries, making them strong global powers. Following the defeat of the Axis
powers, an ideological and political rivalry between the United States and the USSR
gave way to the start of the Cold War. The subsequent race for superior military
power sparked an era of espionage, wars over the spread of communism, and a build-
up of nuclear arms that threatened global annihilation.

Near the end of World War II, in May 1945, Nazi Germany surrendered, and the tense
alliance between the Soviet Union and the United States that had been formed during
the conflict started to fall apart. In the nations of eastern Europe that the Red Army
had freed by 1948, the Soviets had erected left-wing regimes. The Soviet Union's
enduring control over eastern Europe and the possibility of communist parties with
Soviet influences gaining power in western Europe's democracies were fears shared by
the United States and the United Kingdom. On the other side, the Soviets were
adamant about keeping hold of eastern Europe in order to protect themselves from a
potential resurgence of German aggression. They were also adamant on establishing
communism globally, partly for ideological reasons. By 1947–1948, when the Marshall
Plan brought western Europe under American influence and the Soviet Union had
established openly communist regimes in eastern Europe, the Cold War had become
more entrenched.

Although President Roosevelt wanted the post-war world order to bring about a
sustainable peace, relations with the Soviet Union hindered that goal. The threat of
communism spreading outside of Russia persisted throughout the twentieth century
ever since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, which resulted in the Soviet Union
overthrowing the Russian monarchy. This apprehension was well-founded because
Soviet officials actively wanted to sabotage or target other countries in order to
increase the USSR's dominance on the world stage. Following Germany's capitulation,
Soviet attempts to reclaim territory in Europe contributed to the perception that the
USSR wanted to spread communism over the continent.

TIMELINE:
1946- One of the earliest events in the origin of the Cold War arose from the anti-
Communism remarks of British leader Winston Churchill. On March 5, 1946, in a
famous speech characteristic of the political climate of the time. Iron Curtain Iron
Curtain, the political, military, and ideological barrier erected by the Soviet Union
after World War II to seal off itself and its dependent eastern and central European
allies from open contact with the West and other noncommunist areas.
From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an “Iron Curtain” has descended
across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of
Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade,
Bucharest and Sofia; all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in
what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not
only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of
control from Moscow. What some historians call anti-communism, others analyze as
fear, because Stalin, shortly after invading Berlin, had gone on to conquer all of
Eastern Europe. The Americans responded to Stalin’s maneuvers in Eastern Europe
with the Marshall Plan, a generous provision of free financial aid for the
reconstruction of war-torn Western Europe.

1947- The Soviets replied to the Marshall Plan with the Zhdanov Doctrine, unveiled in
October of 1947. The Zhdanov Doctrine asserted that the United States sought to
subjugate the world through American imperialism and the dissolution of democracy.
The Soviet Union, on the other hand, was committed to eradicating imperialism and
the last remnants of fascism while advancing democracy, according to this Doctrine.
The so-called "Long Telegram," issued by George Kennan, Deputy Chief of Mission in
Moscow, in response to the Zhdanov Doctrine, contained the following passages:
To limit Soviet worldwide dominance, the United States launched a containment
strategy by 1947. In the administration of President Harry Truman, this came to
define foreign policy. The Truman Doctrine was an open pledge of US support for
any nation threatened by the Soviet Union, as laid out in a speech made to Congress.
Throughout Truman's presidency and the administrations that followed, this pledge
was kept. The "domino theory," which postulated that if one country adopted
Communism, the neighboring countries were likely to follow suit, was later inspired
by the containment strategy. In the end, this approach compelled the US to join the
wars in Korea, Vietnam, and other Cold War conflicts.

1948- The Cold War reached its peak in 1948–53. In this period the Soviets
unsuccessfully blockaded the Western-held sectors of West Berlin (1948–49); the
United States and its European allies formed the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO), a unified military command to resist the Soviet presence in
Europe (1949); the Soviets exploded their first atomic warhead (1949), thus ending
the American monopoly on the atomic bomb; the Chinese communists came to power
in mainland China (1949); and the Soviet-supported communist government of North
Korea invaded U.S.-supported South Korea in 1950, setting off an indecisive Korean
War that lasted until 1953.

1949- The USSR and the United States both installed spies to undermine policy,
gather intelligence, and look for ways to thwart any attempts to increase their
respective countries' worldwide might as part of mutual efforts to weaken their
adversary. Popular depictions of Cold War era spies include high-stakes missions,
assassinations, and covert recording devices that evoke the world of fictional
characters like James Bond; yet, these pictures were taken during actual espionage
operations. The United States and the Soviet Union's conflict reached a nuclear level
when the USSR created its first atomic bomb in 1949, and the world shuddered at the
thought of a global nuclear holocaust.
1950-1960s In the 1950s and 1960s, a variety of such devices were developed, such
as poisonous pellets concealed in umbrellas or firearms concealed inside lipstick
tubes. However, espionage between the USSR and the US had already occurred before
the Cold War even began.

McCarthyism, one of the ugliest and most illiberal ideologies in American political
and social history, first emerged in the 1950s. Numerous Americans were wrongly
accused of being Communists, fellow travelers, or sympathizers by the government
and even private businesses, leading to their detention, investigation, and
punishment.

The Hollywood blacklisting of intellectuals and artists and the infamous "Hearings" of
the House Un-American Activities body—possibly the most ironically titled body in
American history—were the most notable aspects of McCarthyism. McCarthyism grew
into a significant political and cultural phenomena that, in the end, ruined America's
beneficent international reputation.

The long-time Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin's death in 1953 was a major factor in the
Cold War tensions easing between 1953 and 1957, but the standoff persisted.

 In 1955, the Warsaw Pact, a military alliance of the nations of the Soviet
Union, was established. The same year, West Germany was granted
membership in NATO.

 The years 1958–1962 saw another intense phase of the Cold War. The
development of intercontinental ballistic missiles began between the United
States and the Soviet Union, and in 1962 the Soviets started covertly deploying
missiles in Cuba that might be used to conduct nuclear assaults on American
cities. This generated the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, which took the two
countries to the verge of war until a deal to remove the missiles was
negotiated.

Even after McCarthyism was widely revealed as paranoid and self-serving propaganda,
the Cold War went on. Immediately after John F. Kennedy was elected president in
1960, two crises sprang out.
1960s-1970s- However, during the 1960s and 1970s, the globe was no longer divided
into two distinctly opposed blocs, and the bipolar conflict between the Soviet and
American blocs gave way to a more convoluted pattern of international relations. The
communist bloc's unity had been severely weakened by a significant rift that had
developed between the Soviet Union and China in 1960 and grown over time. Western
Europe and Japan saw robust economic growth in the 1950s and 1960s, which helped
them catch up to the United States in terms of relative strength. Less powerful
nations had more freedom to establish their independence and frequently
demonstrated a resistance to force or persuasion from superpowers. As evidenced by
the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) that resulted in the SALT I and II
agreements of 1972 and 1979, respectively, the two superpowers reduced the number
of antiballistic missiles and strategic missiles that could carry nuclear weapons during
the 1970s.

 1961- The Berlin Wall was built by the USSR in August 1961 in an effort to stop
East Germans from leaving Communist East Berlin for the West. Although the
precise number will never be known, up to 200 East Germans may have been
shot and murdered while attempting to cross the Wall.

 1962- Then, in 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis erupted, bringing the world
dangerously close to nuclear conflict. How near did we get? During the crisis, a
captain and political officer on board a Soviet submarine carrying a nuclear
missile decided to unleash their nuclear attack against the United States after
becoming convinced that a nuclear war had already started. The two could
launch because they were in agreement. Only one man's passionate arguments
—Vasili Arkhipov, the man who rescued the world—could stop them. How did
the crisis begin? Fidel Castro took over as president of Cuba in 1959 after
rejecting American influence and siding with the Soviet Union. American spy
planes discovered Castro was deploying Soviet nuclear missiles that were
capable of rapidly hitting targets in the US in the fall of 1962. The US Navy
blockaded Cuba to stop the Soviet Union from delivering war supplies there.
For a terrifying period of time, nuclear war appeared imminent. Eventually,
Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union, consented to the removal of
Soviet missiles from the island in return for the American withdrawal of
similarly well-positioned missiles from Turkey.

 1963- The Cuban Missile Crisis demonstrated that neither the US nor the USSR
were prepared to deploy nuclear weapons because of fear of the other's
retaliation (and consequently of mutual atomic destruction). The Nuclear Test-
Ban Treaty of 1963, which prohibited aboveground nuclear weapons testing,
was quickly signed by the two superpowers. However, the crisis also
strengthened the Soviet Union's resolve to never again suffer military
inferiority, and they started to build up conventional and strategic forces that
the United States was compelled to match for the following 25 years.

 1962-1975- The Soviet Union provided the Viet Cong with weapons during the
American involvement in the Vietnam War from 1962 to 1975, and the United
States helped the Afghan Mujahideen during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
from 1979 to 1988. However, there was never going to be a confrontation
between American and Soviet soldiers. The space race changed during the
1960s into a far more constructive and peaceful competition for technological
and ideological mastery.
 On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first man-made
satellite, seizing the initiative. They then launched the first person into space,
Yuri Gagarin, in 1961, and the first woman, Valentina Tereshkova, in 1963.
 First to exit his ship and do a spacewalk, Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov
nearly became stranded in space. On July 20, 1969, the US reacted to the
Soviet advances with the Apollo 11 moon landing and Neil Armstrong's "giant
leap for mankind," which marked the end of the space race.
 But it was the battles between the two nations over athletics that were,
perhaps, the most entertaining – and the most harmless as well. Except for the
US boycott of the Moscow Olympics in 1980 and the corresponding Soviet
boycott of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, most sports contests had some
underlying political tension but no overt political content. Two outstanding
upsets – the first-ever defeat of the United States in an Olympic basketball
tournament in Germany in 1972, matched by the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” defeat
of the Soviet hockey team in the Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, New York –
have become legends of modern pop culture.
1980- During the 1980s, the crumbling of the economic and political structures of the
Soviet Union became increasingly apparent. By 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev came
to power, the Soviet Union was embroiled in disastrous economic problems. In
addition, the Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe were abandoning communism
one after the other.
 The Soviet Union ended its nine-year Afghan war in 1988. The Communist
governments in the former USSR satellite republics were then significantly
weakened as a result of Gorbachev's refusal to send military assistance to
defend them. In the early 1980s, as the two superpowers continued their major
armament buildup and fought for influence in the Third World, there followed
a period of heightened Cold War tensions.
 1989- This served as the setting for Gorbachev's visit to East Berlin in the fall of
1989, during which his speech in favor of open connection with the West
sparked unrest among the local populace. East Berliners tore down sections of
the Berlin Wall and crossed into West Berlin, demanding to be reunited with
their family. The Iron Curtain came to an end with the fall of the Berlin Wall,
which had immense symbolic significance. Germany was reunited the following
year. The Russian Confederation held a second congress the same year,
electing Boris Yeltsin as president and approving legislation that drove the
Soviet Union out of Russia. As many of the Soviet republics progressively
achieved de facto independence in 1990 and 1991, this type of political and
legal instability persisted. Gorbachev sought to put an end to the Cold War
once the majority of the allied and pro-Soviet regimes in Eastern Europe finally
fell.
1991- Horrified by these events, in what became known as the August Coup, extreme
forces among the remaining Communist Party officials placed Gorbachev under house
arrest in his dasha in the Crimea in August 1991. In Moscow, Boris Yeltsin incited a
bloody uprising that blocked the conspirators' military trucks. At one point, while
standing on a tank to address the audience, he even convinced the commander of a
tank unit to support the Russians against the Soviets. Yeltsin was praised for
successfully putting down the rebellion.
The Soviet Union came to an end as a result of the August Coup's failure. On
December 25, 1991, Mikael Gorbachev, who was still the highest Soviet official,
formally recognized the bankruptcy and collapse of the Soviet Union. Yeltsin had
made agreements with the heads of other Soviet republics for the dissolution of the
USSR, which was to be replaced in December 1991 with a "Commonwealth of
Independent States." The USSR was overthrown. From 1922 to 1991, the globe was
shaped by a very potent socialist state on the Eurasian continent. When that state
vanished, the Cold War was finally over.

INTERNATIONAL LAW COLD WAR

In the decades immediately following World War II, when decolonization led to the
foundation of a large number of newly independent governments, international law,
which had already become geographically international through the colonial
expansion of the European powers, fully internationalized. Due to these governments'
various political, economic, and cultural origins, new influences have been introduced
to the hitherto European-dominated ideas and practices of international law.
International political developments invariably have an impact on how international
law develops, including the institutions and standards that it adopts. From the end of
World War II until the 1990s, the Cold War between the Soviet Union and its allies and
the Western alliance led by the United States posed the majority of threats to world
peace and security. The UN Security Council's operations were hampered by the
prospect that one side would reject any resolutions proposed by the other.

The establishment of regional organizations, such as the Warsaw Pact by the Soviet
Union and NATO by the United States, as well as the escalation of wars on the borders
of the two blocs, such as those in Korea, Vietnam, and Berlin, were all influenced by
the bipolar system of alliances. Furthermore, there were significant ideological gaps
that hindered the formation of rules for safeguarding human rights.

The so-called "Third World," a group of nonaligned and frequently recently

decolonized states that both the United States and the Soviet Union eagerly aspired to
promote, also came into being as a result of the Cold War. The growing importance of
the developing world brought attention to the concerns of those states, particularly
as they pertained to racial discrimination, decolonization, and economic assistance.
Additionally, it promoted a broader universalism in both international law and
politics. According to the ICJ's law, for instance, the court's structure must take into
account the major civilizations and legal systems of the world.

The Security Council's nonpermanent seats must also be distributed according to an

unofficial agreement among its members to provide fair regional representation; five
of the council's ten seats have historically been allocated to countries from Africa or
Asia, two to Latin America, and the remaining ones to Europe or other nations. Similar
organizational structures exist in other UN bodies.
Political cooperation between the United States, Russia, and their allies in the
Northern Hemisphere increased after the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the
Cold War in the early 1990s, but tensions also rose between the northern and
southern states, particularly over matters of trade, human rights, and maritime law.
Technology and globalization, which refers to the swiftly accelerating growth in the
international movement of people, goods, services, money, information, and ideas,
also emerged as powerful forces that sparked cooperation between nations and
somewhat lowered the ideological barriers dividing the world. However, globalization
also contributed to rising trade tensions between allies like the United States and the
European Union (EU).