Cold War
Following the defeat of Hitler in 1945, U.S.-Soviet relations began to deteriorate. Between the late 1940s and the late 1980s, the United States and the Soviet Union (current day Russia) were locked in the Cold War. Because both the Soviet Union and the United States had nuclear weapons and were in competition around the world, nearly every foreign policy decision was intricately examined for its potential impact on U.S.-Soviet relations. During this period, both the Soviet Union and the United States devoted vast resources to increasing their military might and competed to extend their influence in every corner of the globe. Because neither country engaged in direct military action against the other the war was characterized as "cold." The fact that each country developed nuclear arsenals large enough to completely destroy the world many times over causes some to question just how "cold" the war actually was.
"During the Kennedy administration, they designed a 100 megaton bomb. It was tested in the atmosphere. I remember this. Cold War? Hell, it was a hot war!"
-Robert McNamara, The Fog of War
At the heart of U.S. strategy were the ideas of George Kennan, the State Department's principal expert on the Soviet Union. Kennan proposed that the United States work to halt both overt Soviet military expansion and the covert spread of communist influence through subversion and armed insurrection. The United States adopted a policy of containing the spread of Soviet communism, leading to U.S. intervention around the world in the decades to follow-most notably, in Vietnam.
"It's impossible for our people today to put themselves back into that period. In my seven years as Secretary, we came within a hair's breath of war with the Soviet Union on three different occasions. Twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year for seven years as Secretary of Defense, I lived the Cold War."
-Robert McNamara, The Fog of War
The U.S. policy of "containment" was first applied to defeat Soviet-supported rebels in Greece and to counter Soviet political pressure against Turkey. In a speech before Congress on March 12, 1947, President Harry S Truman outlined what would later become known as the "Truman Doctrine."
"At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one. One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression. The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms. I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."
-President Harry S Truman
In the early 1960s the United States entered a violent conflict between North and South Vietnam for fear that a victory by the Communist North could lead to the spread of communism. U.S. involvement came at a grave cost. Tens of thousands of American soldiers (along with countless Vietnamese) died in the Vietnam War, a war that ended over a decade later with few decisive outcomes to show for the struggle.
"[The Vietnamese] believed that we had simply replaced the French as a colonial power, and we were seeking to subject South and North Vietnam to our colonial interests, which was absolutely absurd. And we, we saw Vietnam as an element of the Cold War. Not what they saw it as: a civil war."
-Robert McNamara, The Fog of War
Another critical moment of the Cold War came in 1962 when President Kennedy learned that the Soviet Union had placed several nuclear missiles on the island of Cuba. The thirteen days that ensued are known as the Cuban missile crisis and were defined by extraordinary tension between the two nuclear superpowers in their mutual effort to protect their national interests, however necessary, while at the same time recognizing that the outbreak of nuclear war would spell disaster for all of humanity.
"On the calendar are engraved the dates: October 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23,24, 25, 26, 27, and finally 28, were the dates when we literally looked down the gun barrel into nuclear war."
-Robert McNamara, The Fog of War
This heightened level of mutually-felt military threat that comes with the inclusion of nuclear weapons in warfare has come to be expressed in the idea of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). The idea of MAD is that if one nuclear power attacks another, a nuclear response on behalf of the originally attacked is sure to occur. With the United States and the Soviet Union, for example, each country knew when considering military action that an attack would be a decision not only to destroy the enemy but also to destroy themselves.
"It horrifies me to think what would have happened in the event of an invasion of Cuba! . It would have been an absolute disaster for the world.... No one should believe that a U.S. force could have been attacked by tactical nuclear warheads without responding with nuclear warheads. And where would it have ended? In utter disaster."
-Robert McNamara, The Fog of War
Background readings on related topics is available in the following texts:
Coming to Terms with Power: U.S. Choices after World War II
The Cuban Missile Crisis: Considering its Place in Cold War History
The Limits of Power: The United States in Vietnam