James Lincoln Collier - The United States in the Cold War: 1945 - 1989

T HE D RAMA OF A MERICAN H ISTORY

The UNITED STATES in the COLD WAR

19451989

Christopher Collier

James Lincoln Collier

ACKNOWLEDGMENT: The authors wish to thank Tom Paterson, Professor Emeritus, University of Connecticut, for his careful reading of the text of this volume of The Drama of American History and his thoughtful and useful comments. The work has been much improved by Professor Paterson's notes. The authors are deeply in his debt, but, of course, assume full responsibility for the substance of the work, including any errors that may appear.

Photo research by James Lincoln Collier.

COVER PHOTO: Corbis

PICTURE CREDITS: The photographs in this book are used by permission and through the courtesy of:

Chapter I: Corbis: water mill, Karl Marx. Library of Congress : tailor. New York Public Library: crockery menders in Samarkand, child labor political cartoon, Vladimir Lenin, Soviet industry in 1949.

Chapter II: Corbis: Roosevelt with Churchill and Stalin, Truman with Attlee and Stalin, freedom fighters in Budapest, Russian tanks in Budapest, George C. Marshall, Berlin children waving to an American plane. New York Public Library: Greek troops fighting rebels.

Chapter III: Corbis: Mao Zedong, American troops in a North Korean village, American machine gun emplacement. National Archive: American troops in Seoul. V.S. Center of Military History: American trucks under fire.

Chapter IV: Corbis: John Foster Dulles, Nikita Khrushchev with Tito, building the Aswan Dam, Fidel Castro, Cuban exiles preparing an invasion, Bay of Pigs invaders heading to jail, American destroyer checking a Soviet freighter. NASA: American flag on the moon. New York Public Library: Yuri Gagarin in Krokodil .

Chapter V: Corbis: Ho Chi Minh, Lyndon Johnson, Huey helicopters, Henry Kissinger. V.S. Center of Military History: soldiers fighting through a swamp, Race Against Death , Vietnamese women with a dead child.

Chapter VI: Corbis: East Berliners tearing down the wall, Boris Yeltsin; New York Public Library: Mikhail Gorbachev with Ronald Reagan; V.S. Center of Military History: Body Count .

2002 Christopher Collier and James Lincoln Collier

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the copyright holders.

First ebook edition 2012 by AudioGO. All Rights Reserved.

Trade ISBN 978-1-62064-531-4

Library ISBN 978-0-7927-9594-0

The UNITED STATES in the COLD WAR

19451989

C ONTENTS

P REFACE

OVER MANY YEARS of both teaching and writing for students at all levels, from grammar school to graduate school, it has been borne in on us that many, if not most, American history textbooks suffer from trying to include everything of any moment in the history of the nation. Students become lost in a swamp of factual information, and as a consequence lose track of how those facts fit together and why they are significant and relevant to the world today.

In this series, our effort has been to strip the vast amount of available detail down to a central core. Our aim is to draw in bold strokes, providing enough information, but no more than is necessary, to bring out the basic themes of the American story, and what they mean to us now. We believe that it is surely more important for students to grasp the underlying concepts and ideas that emerge from the movement of history, than to memorize an array of facts and figures.

The difference between this series and many standard texts lies in what has been left out. We are convinced that students will better remember the important themes if they are not buried under a heap of names, dates, and places.

In this sense, our primary goal is what might be called citizenship education. We think it is critically important for America as a nation and Americans as individuals to understand the origins and workings of the public institutions that are central to American society. We have asked ourselves again and again what is most important for citizens of our democracy to know so they can most effectively make the system work for them and the nation. For this reason, we have focused on political and institutional history, leaving social and cultural history less well developed.

This series is divided into volumes that move chronologically through the American story. Each is built around a single topic, such as the Pilgrims, the Constitutional Convention, or immigration. Each volume has been written so that it can stand alone, for students who wish to research a given topic. As a consequence, in many cases material from previous volumes is repeated, usually in abbreviated form, to set the topic in its historical context. That is to say, students of the Constitutional Convention must be given some idea of relations with England, and why the Revolution was fought, even though the material was covered in detail in a previous volume. Readers should find that each volume tells an entire story that can be read with or without reference to other volumes.

Despite our belief that it is of the first importance to outline sharply basic concepts and generalizations, we have not neglected the great dramas of American history. The stories that will hold the attention of students are here, and we believe they will help the concepts they illustrate to stick in their minds. We think, for example, that knowing of Abraham Baldwin's brave and dramatic decision to vote with the small states at the Constitutional Convention will bring alive the Connecticut Compromise, out of which grew the American Senate.

Each of these volumes has been read by esteemed specialists in its particular topic; we have benefited from their comments.

C HAPTER I: T HE C AUSES OF THE C OLD W AR

IN HISTORY WE very often see events caused by well-meaning people doing things that seem right at the time, but unhappily lead to tragedy. Such was the case with the Cold War between the United States and the USSR: Both sides thought they were doing the right thing, but in the end it brought death and destruction to millions of people.

The Cold Wara term in wide use as early as 1949ran from the end of World War II to 1989, when the Communist system in Russia collapsed. Put in the simplest terms, the Cold War was a standoff between the two dominant powers in the world. Because both Russia and the United States had huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons, enough to destroy much of human civilization, they were deterred from starting a realor "hot"war between them. But neither could they find ways to live in peace and harmony with each other. Indeed, instead of engaging in good-faith negotiations, they often engaged in propaganda wars over the virtues of capitalism and communism.