History 104

Outline Week 10

Cold War: Containing Communism Abroad and Containing Danger at Home.

 

American celebration: Copeland 3^rd Symphony

 

America was sitting on top of the world.  Americans believed they had saved the world from Hitler, and now they would save the world from communism.   Americans were told by Life magazine that they were now in the “American Century.”  Henry Luce wrote that Americans must “accept wholeheartedly our duty and our opportunity as the most powerful and vital nation in the world and in consequence to assert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such means as we see fit.”  America looked to extend its political influence, businessmen looked for markets and cheap raw materials, and the military looked for new bases strategically located.  All of this fit into the American crusade for freedom.  Accordingly, America expanded the definition of areas of vital interest around the world.  From 1950 to 1980 America ’s Foreign Direct Investment increased 1800%, about twice the rate of investing within America.

 

Those goals were supported by America’s domination of the World  Bank and the International Monetary Fund.  That gave America leverage to open markets and shape global economic development, by supporting countries that agreed to open markets and not supporting governments that threatened to nationalize industries.  To the Soviets, this seemed a strategy to destroy communism.    

 

The war saw the victory of Keynesian economics among American liberals, and the postwar prosperity contributed to the consolidation of such views among the economic elites. Ideologically, the war pushed the fear of totalitarian regimes to the center of American liberalism. One major effect of this mindset was to see America as having a mission to accomplish in the postwar global arrangement, namely to spread the virtues of American life throughout the globe in order to counteract totalitarianism.

 

The change in American liberalism after the war led to an "appealing sense of hope and commitment" in the belief that "great lives" and a promising future were within reach.

 

AT HOME:  Shutting down the Arsenal for Democracy

The end of war meant an abrupt closing of the shipyards and aircraft production. People feared the return of the depression.   But, post war depression never materializes: GI Bill provided tuition for 2.3 million veterans at America’s colleges.  That delayed their entry into the labor market and prepared them for a successful integration in the labor market.  The release of pent-up demand for consumer goods combined with the maintenance of defense industries provided work for millions of workers, ensuring a  successful postwar transition into near full employment.  The feared prospect of renewed recession did not materialize.  New Homes full of new furniture and appliances, new cars in the driveway, new jobs, and new babies galore.   Equally important, the Cold War Arms Race propelled continuing high levels of federal spending. Technological competition fueled an arms race that led to military-industrial cooperation that Eisenhower dubbed the military-industrial complex.  In effect, the U.S. reinstated a conservative business elite linked to U.S. strategic umbrella in place of the cooperative relationship between business/government/labor that held sway during the war.

Current Arms Spending: http://www.cdi.org/issues/wme/spendersfy04.html

 

 

The Atom Bomb ushers in the Cold War.

            At Potsdam Truman decided he did not have to go easy on Stalin.

 

Winston Churchill, at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, USA on March 5th 1946:

 

It is also an honour, ladies and gentlemen, perhaps almost unique … that the President has travelled a thousand miles to dignify and magnify our meeting here to-day…

The President has told you that it is his wish, as I am sure it is yours, that I should have full liberty to give my true and faithful counsel in these anxious and baffling times. I shall certainly avail myself of this freedom … Let me however make it clear that I have no official mission or status of any kind, and that I speak only for myself.

A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory. Nobody knows what Soviet Russia and its Communist international organization intends to do in the immediate future …

… We understand the Russian need to be secure on her western frontiers by the removal of all possibility of German aggression. We welcome Russia to her rightful place among the leading nations of the world … It is my duty however, for I am sure you would wish me to state the facts as I see them to you, to place before you certain facts about the present position in Europe.

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.

The Communist parties, which were very small in all these Eastern States of Europe, have been raised to pre-eminence and power far beyond their numbers and are seeking everywhere to obtain totalitarian control. Police governments are prevailing in nearly every case, and so far, except in Czechoslovakia, there is no true democracy.

Turkey and Persia are both profoundly alarmed and disturbed at the claims which are being made upon them and at the pressure being exerted by the Moscow Government. An attempt is being made by the Russians in Berlin to build up a quasi-Communist party in their zone of occupied Germany by showing special favors to groups of left-wing German leaders.

From what I have seen of our Russian friends and Allies during the war, I am convinced that there is nothing they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for weakness, especially military weakness. For that reason the old doctrine of a balance of power is unsound. We cannot afford, if we can help it, to work on narrow margins, offering temptations to a trial of strength. If the Western Democracies stand together in strict adherence to the principles of the United Nations charter, their influence for furthering these principles will be immense and no one is likely to molest them. If however they become divided or falter in their duty and if these all-important years are allowed to slip away then indeed catastrophe may overwhelm us all.

Joseph Stalin:
Reply to Churchill, 1946

... In substance, Mr. Churchill now stands in the position of a firebrand of war. And Mr. Churchill is not alone here. He has friends not only in England but also in the United States of America.

In this respect, one is reminded remarkably of Hitler and his friends. Hitler began to set war loose by announcing his racial theory, declaring that only people speaking the German language represent a fully valuable nation. Mr. Churchill begins to set war loose, also by a racial theory, maintaining that only nations speaking the English language are fully valuable nations, called upon to decide the destinies of the entire world.

The German racial theory brought Hitler and his friends to the conclusion that the Germans, as the only fully valuable nation, must rule over other nations. The English racial theory brings Mr. Churchill and his friends to the conclusion that nations speaking the English language, being the only fully valuable nations, should rule over the remaining nations of the world....

As a result of the German invasion, the Soviet Union has irrevocably lost in battles with the Germans, and also during the German occupation and through the expulsion of Soviet citizens to German slave labor camps, about 7,000,000 people. In other words, the Soviet Union has lost several times more personnel than Britain and the United States together.

It may be that some quarters are trying to push into oblivion these sacrifices of the Soviet people which insured the liberation of Europe from the Hitlerite yoke.

But the Soviet Union cannot forget them. One can ask therefore, what can be surprising in the fact that the Soviet Union, in a desire to ensure its security for the future, tries to achieve that these countries should have governments whose relations to the Soviet Union are loyal? How can one, without having lost one's reason, qualify these peaceful aspirations of the Soviet Union as "expansionist tendencies" of our Government?. . .

Mr. Churchill wanders around the truth when he speaks of the growth of the influence of the Communist parties in Eastern Europe.... The growth of the influence of communism cannot be considered accidental. It is a normal function. The influence of the Communists grew because during the hard years of the mastery of fascism in Europe, Communists slowed themselves to be reliable, daring and self-sacrificing fighters against fascist regimes for the liberty of peoples.

Mr. Churchill sometimes recalls in his speeches the common people from small houses, patting them on the shoulder in a lordly manner and pretending to be their friend. But these people are not so simpleminded as it might appear at first sight. Common people, too, have their opinions and their own politics. And they know how to stand up for themselves.

It is they, millions of these common people, who voted Mr. Churchill and his party out in England, giving their votes to the Labor party. It is they, millions of these common people, who isolated reactionaries in Europe, collaborators with fascism, and gave preference to Left democratic parties

From "Stalin's Reply to Churchill," March 14, 1946 (interview with Pravda), The New York Times, p. 4.

Truman soon came out with his program for countering the Iron Curtain. His policy had three components:

1. Truman Doctrine was the ideological component

2. Marshall Plan was the economic component

3. NATO was the military component.

           

 

 

TRUMAN DOCTRINE

 

Harry Truman, informed by George Kennan, articulated a strategy of containment aimed to meet Soviet pressure wherever it surfaced.  America did not have the capability to destroy the Soviet bloc without unacceptable risk, thus the effort was to contain communism.  A situation in Greece presented Truman the opportunity to articulate a new ideology to guide American foreign policy. Early in 1947 the British said they could not support the Greek government after March 31.  

 

In Greece, which had been a right-wing monarchy and dictatorship before the war, a popular left-wing National Liberation Front was put down by a British army of intervention immediately after the war. A right-wing conservative monarchical group was restored. When opponents of the regime were jailed and trade union leaders removed, a left-wing guerrilla movement began to grow against the regime, soon consisting of 17,000 fighters, 50,000 active supporters, and perhaps 250,000 sympathizers, in a country of 7 million. Great Britain said it could not handle the rebellion, and asked the United States to come in. As a State Department officer said later: "Great Britain had within the hour handed the job of world leadership . . . to the United States."

 

Truman addressed the vacuum about to be created by British withdrawal of support in a speech to Congress in the spring of 1947, in which he asked for $400 million in military and economic aid to Greece and Turkey. Truman said the U.S. must help "free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."

 

In fact, the biggest outside pressure was the United States. The Greek rebels were getting some aid from Yugoslavia, but no aid from the Soviet Union, which during the war had promised Churchill a free hand in Greece if he would give the Soviet Union its way in Rumania, Poland, Bulgaria. The Soviet Union, like the United States, did not seem to be willing to help revolutions it could not control.

 

The United States moved into the Greek civil war, not with soldiers, but with weapons and military advisers. In the last five months of 1947, 74,000 tons of military equipment were sent by the United States to the right-wing government in Athens, including artillery, dive bombers, and stocks of napalm. Two hundred and fifty army officers, headed by General James Van Fleet, advised the Greek army in the field. Unfortunately, the U.S. ambassador to Greece admitted "the best men in Greece are the heads of the Communist movement." The Greek government became so brutal that the State Department warned it must stop torturing political prisoners or it would damage the President's program.

 

Truman said the world "must choose between alternative ways of life." One was based on "the will of the majority . . . distinguished by free institutions"; the other was based on "the will of a minority . . . terror and oppression . . . the suppression of personal freedoms."   Truman prersented the situation in Greece as emblematic of a new world paradigm. He explained, "Peace, freedom and world trade are indivisible." The economic component was integral. The reach of Truman’s Doctrine was global; the U.S. vowed to confront the expansion of communism anywhere in the world.  Truman Doctrine 

Founding of CIA, 1947. 

 

MARSHALL PLAN

 

Marshall Plan and GATT, 1947  

The U.S. sponsored a European Recovery Plan, named for army chief of staff George Marshall in 1947 as a complement to Truman’s foreign policy doctrine.  European nations entered into bilateral agreements with America to receive economic aid, which involved billions of dollars. The intention was to redevelop central Europe's industrial economy to stabilize Europe and provide a bulwark against Soviet expansion, while ensuring markets for American goods.

 

In Japan a similar program was instituted by MacArthur to rebuild Japan. 

 

Both plans intended to stabilize those countries destroyed by the war and reestablish international markets. U.S. used economic incentives to shore up Allied side of “Iron Curtain”.

 

NATO

Berlin 1949.  The issue took shape in 1948 when the British, French, and American sectors of Germany were unified, posing a threat of the rise of German industrialism to Stalin.  In response, Stalin blockaded Berlin, located well within the Soviet sector.  The Allies mounted an airlift to Berlin, and after nine months the Soviets reopened the ground links to Berlin.  The outcome was the organization of NATO.

 

Election 1948 :  Truman: “Fair Deal” 

            Immediately after the war Truman had pushed for a number of progressive programs for reconversion, including better unemployment, minimum wage, and health care but was rebuffed by Congress.   The New Deal model was officially dead. At the same time, the conservatives began to challenge any political activists who might be associated with "socialist" ideas. To fend off the right Truman issued orders for Loyalty Oaths for government employees.

Truman integrated the armed forces just ahead of tight election, and managed to gain just enough support in a fractured election to win.  He began his administration with a call for “A Fair Deal.”  Truman gave up on any redistributive programs and settled in on the liberal agenda of economic growth, a considerable part of which was in Cold War defense spending.  Part of his strategy was to marginalize a challenge from the left, led by Henry Wallace and his Progressive Party, by characterizing them as “communists,” while rebuffing conservatives on the right by claiming the FDR legacy.

Security Concerns in Truman's second Term:

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, especially after the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, perceived Western military weakness led to intelligence evaluations of threatening Soviet military intentions. An internal CIA Intelligence Memorandum in August 1950, not coordinated with other intelligence agencies but circulated to them, stated that Soviet war readiness was such as to "suggest strongly that the Soviet leaders [believe that they] would be justified in assuming a substantial risk of war during the remainder of 1950." Moreover, there was no hesitation in concluding that "the USSR is vigorously and intensively preparing for the possibility of direct hostilities with the U.S."(Intelligence Memorandum No. 323-SRC, Soviet Preparations for Major Hostilities in 1950 (25 August 1950), p. 1. )

The first CIA-drafted National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Soviet Capabilities and Intentions (NIE-3, 15 November 1950) reported that "There is, and will continue to be, grave danger of war between the USSR and its satellites on the one hand and the US and its allies on the other." Further, the NIE warned that "the Soviet rulers may deliberately provoke such a war [‘general war with the Western Powers'] at the time when, in their opinion, the relative strength of the USSR is at its maximum. It is estimated that such a period will exist from now through 1954, with the peak of Soviet strength relative to the Western Powers being reached about 1952."

The blueprint for American security was a National Security Council plan issued in 1950 (NSC-68 the conceptual blueprint for security policy). First the document stated that world power was now polarized between America and the Soviets, "which confronts the slave society with the free." Us against Them. The second assertion was that the Soviets were commited to "dynamic extension of theiur authority and the ultimate elimination of any opposition." That essentially put America and its allies on a permanent war footing. The Soviet menace justified taking initiatives anywhere in the world and silencing critics at home. The key to NSC-68 was military power.The plan called for eschewing negotiations with tjhe Soviets, developing the hydrogen bomb, a rapid build up of conventional military forces, increased tax revenues, mobilization of American society through a government created consensus, a strong alliance system, and subverting the Russian people. 

 

Note difference from WWI: after the first global war ended, America demobilized and effectively undertook a policy of unilateral disarmament, turning inward (isolationist foreign policy).   In contrast, after WWII America maintained continuing arms programs and entered into numerous collective agreements for collective security in competition with the Soviets.   Examples of  Multilateralism:

             1945: United Nations

             1948 Organization of American States

             1949 North Atlantic Treaty Organization

            General Agreement of Trade and Tariffs

            1954 in response to Geneva Armistice on Vietnam U.S. organized the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization

 Note: multilateral defense organizations compensated for America's reluctance to sustain large standing armies, instead preferring to be a provider of munitions, communications, advisors, etc.

Tensions

            1948 Confrontation in Berlin Airlift

            1949 China falls to Mao; first Soviet abomb test

            The atomic bomb race: U.S. develops hydrogen bomb, 1951; USSR, 1953. (impact of NSC 68)

            1950 Korean War

            1951. On April 11, 1951, President Truman relieved Gen. Douglas MacArthur of his commands in the Far East.

             1953 Soviets test Hydrogen Bomb   Civil Defense Poster

 

In this context....

Assault on Labor:  One left over issue from the New Deal era was how far unions should be allowed to go in having a voice in management and control over the workplace? In 1946 unions recognized their peril in facing rising prices, lower wages, and a surge of unemployment. That year there was a wave of strikes, in the steel, coal and auto industries.  Congress mounted a counterattack on unions, which were at their all time peak with some 40% of the workforce.  The Republican Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act which rolled back many of the rights obtained in the Wagner Act. (On June 23, 1947, the Senate joined the House in overriding President Truman's veto of the Taft-Hartley Act.) The Taft-Hartley allowed states to pass 'right to work' laws that outlawed closed union shops, set strict limits on sympathy strikes, and placed numerous restrictions on union membership dues, financial filings, etc.    It also required union leaders to swear they were not communists.  Refusal meant losing the remaining federal protections offered by the NLRB. 

 

The results of Taft-Hartley and the subsequent red scare purge of labor leaders resulted in a roll back from industrial unionism to the old familiar Bread&Butter union focus, in relative harmony (read submission) with industrial expansion.

 

HUAC: When created by Congress in 1945 as a standing committee of the House of Representatives under House Resolution 5 of the 79th Congress, HUAC was authorized: "to make investigations into the extent, character, and objects of un-American activities in the United States" and to assess the "diffusion of subversive and un-American propaganda."

 

 

Testimony of Walter E. Disney before HUAC

October 24, 1947

ROBERT E. STRIPLING, CHIEF INVESTIGATOR:

SMITH: What is your personal opinion of the Communist Party, Mr. Disney, as to whether or not it is a political party?

DISNEY: Well, I don't believe it is a political party. I believe it is an un-American thing. The thing that I resent the most is that they are able to get into these unions, take them over, and represent to the world that a group of people that are in my plant, that I know are good, 100 percent Americans, are trapped by this group, and they are represented to the world as supporting all of those ideologies, and it is not so, and I feel that they really ought to be smoked out and shown up for what they are, so that all of the good, free causes in this country, all the liberalisms that really are American, can go out without the taint of communism. That is my sincere feeling on it.

SMITH: Do you feel that there is a threat of communism in the motion-picture industry?

DISNEY: Yes, there is, and there are many reasons why they would like to take it over or get in and control it, or disrupt it, but I don't think they have gotten very far, and I think the industry is made up of good Americans, just like in my plant, good, solid Americans. My boys have been fighting it longer than I have. They are trying to get out from under it and they will in time if we can just show them up.

1948: Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss: Communists in the State Department (enter Richard Nixon) clip1 clip2

 

Anti-Communism and McCarthy:

            Context: Although during the war Russia was one of America ’s allies, this relationship was instantly inverted in 1945, even before the war was over.  Walter LaFeber calls the Cold War a “competition between two historical systems”

 

 

Richard Nixon: "We won the Hiss case in the papers. We did. I had to leak stuff all over the place. Because the Justice Department would not prosecute it. Hoover didn't even cooperate. It was won in the papers. We have to develop a program, a program for leaking out information. We're destroying these people in the papers."

"I had Hiss convicted before he got to the grand jury....I no longer have the energy, [but we need] a son of a bitch who will work his butt off and do it dishonorably. I know how to play the game and we're going to play it."
[July 1, 1971]

to Secretary of State Rogers:"....[A congressional committee] destroys a man's character in public and, second, if a file is turned over; you know, they will prosecute the poor guy....We did it to Hiss."

To aides Robert Haldeman and Charles Colson: "...You know the great thing about--I got to say for Hiss. He never ratted on anybody else. Never. He never ratted."

 

The FBI   

 

McCarthy The senator from Wisconsin began his hunt for communists in earnest in 1950, playing on the unease over the "fall" (liberation from colonialism?) of China. He went after the State Department, the CIO (ostensibly to root out subversives from defense industries), Hollywood, librarians and teachers, and finally in 1954, the U.S. Army. By then Eisenhower and conservatives decided to reign him in. His political usefulness had expired.

 

Oppenheimer testimony to AEC: Do you now or have you ever belonged to the Communist Party....

The Rosenbergs, Klaus Fuchs, and brother Frank.

Frank Sinatra - House I Live In Lyrics (from the film, a war time production promoting tolerance between Italians and Jews)

Writer(s): robinson/allen

 

 

What is America to me

A name, a map, or a flag I see

A certain word, democracy

What is America to me

 

The house I live in

A plot of earth, a street

The grocer and the butcher

Or the people that I meet

 

The children in the playground

The faces that I see

All races and religions

That’s America to me

 

The place I work in

The worker by my side

The little town the city

Where my people lived and died

 

The howdy and the handshake

The air a feeling free

And the right to speak your mind out

That’s America to me

 

The things I see about me

The big things and the small

That little corner newsstand

Or the house a mile tall

 

The wedding and the churchyard

The laughter and the tears

And the dream that’s been a growing

For more than two hundred years

 

The town I live in

The street, the house, the room

The pavement of the city

Or the garden all in bloom

 

The church the school the clubhouse

The millions lights I see

But especially the people

- yes especially the people

That’s America to me

 

In 1945, Sinatra starred in the RKO short film, The House I Live In, scripted by Communist Party member Albert Maltz. In it, Sinatra sang and spoke of the need for tolerance and brotherhood -- racial and religious differences “make no difference except to a Nazi or somebody who's stupid”, his character announced. Profits from the film went to charity and to the California Union School, a school for trade unionists.

Four years later, Sinatra's career was in ruins, following a campaign by the anticommunist right based on his alleged links with the Mafia and the Communists. He was dumped by the radio and movie bosses and red-baited by the press.

The Hollywood Blacklist: 

Steve Allen, Lauren Bacall, Joan Bennett, Leonard Bernstein, Walter Bernstein, Joseph Biberman, Charles Bickford, Betsy Blair, Marlon Brando, Bertold Brecht, Richard Brooks, Eddie Cantor, Charlie Chaplin, Lee Cobb, Lester Cole, Betty Comden, Richard Conte, Aaron Copeland, Jeff Corey, Norman Corwin, Joseph Cotten, Hume Cronyn, Jules Dassin, Bette Davis, Albert Dekker, I.A.L. Diamond, Wilhelm Dieterle, Edward Dmytryk, Melvin Douglas, Howard Duff, Philip Dunne, Douglas Fairbanks jr., José Ferrer, Henry Fonda, Carl Foreman, Martin Gabel, John Garfield, Betty Garrett,  Ira Gershwin, Frances Goodrich, Lee Grant, Adolph Green, Albert Hackett, Olivia de Havilland, Ben Hecht, Harold Hecht, Lillian Hellman, John Houseman, Marsha Hunt, Sam Jaffe, Garson Kanin, Michael Kanin, Elia Kazan, Howard Koch, Stanley Kramer, Fritz Lang, Ring Lardner jr., Joseph Losey, Norman Mailer, Albert Maltz, Burgess Meredith, Lewis Milestone, Agnes de Mille, Arthur Miller, Vincente Minelli, Karen Morley, Zero Mostel, Paul Muni, Dudley Nichols, Dorothy Parker, Larry Parks, Gregory Peck, Irving Pichel, Sidney Poitier, Otto Preminger, Vincent Price, Anthony Quinn, Anne Revere, Martin Ritt, Edward G. Robinson, Robert Rossen, Robert Ryan, Adrian Scott, Silvia Sidney, Frank Sinatra, Gale Sondergaard, Lionel Stander, Jessica Tandy, Frank Tarloff, Franchot Tone, Dalton Trumbo, Orson Welles, Shelley Winters und Keenan Wynn.

Howard Koch who wrote the movie classic "Casablanca" (1942), for which he got an Oscar together with the Epstein Brothers gave his opinion about the time of the black list:

“We were all part of the progressive movement that flourished during the Franklin Roosevelt Presidency, some members of the party, others, like myself, not members but working along with them on good causes to make a better world - and also better movies. When Roosevelt died, the reactionary element took over, began to dismantle the New Deal and start the Cold War to stop the spread of socialism here and abroad. It was simply a class struggle, capitalism taking its stand against socialism (which they mis-named communism and which doesn't exist.)  Since I was against war, hot or cold, they had to get rid of me and others like me. It was not personal, there was no malice. We were caught in an historical situation".

 

Vietnam:

 

1952 Truman appropriated $60 million for aid to the French in Vietnam.  French withdraw from Vietnam after debacle at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.  Eisenhower introduces the domino theory to the American people.

 

Eisenhower

 

Economic stability amidst Ike’s warning of military-industrial complex.

U.S. hegemony in international economy .

Liberal welfare and business integrated in “Mixed Economy.”

 

U.S. backs conservative regimes in Latin/Central America:  In Guatemala, in 1954, a legally elected government was overthrown by an invasion force of mercenaries trained by the CIA at military bases in Honduras and Nicaragua and supported by four American fighter planes flown by American pilots. The invasion put into power Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, who had at one time received military training at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.  The President, Jacobo Arbenz, was a left-of-center Socialist; four of the fifty-six seats in the Congress were held by Communists. What was most unsettling to American business interests was that Arbenz had expropriated 234,000 acres of land owned by United Fruit, offering compensation that United Fruit called "unacceptable." Armas, in power, gave the land back to United Fruit, abolished the tax on interest and dividends to foreign investors, eliminated the secret ballot, and jailed thousands of political critics.

 

Note list of American foreign interventions: http://www.history.navy.mil/wars/foabroad.htm

 

NY Times report on Iran and Guatemala. U.S. interests in Iraq.

MORE GLOBAL TENSIONS:

 

Nasser nationalizes Suez.  U.S. backs out on English/French seizure of Suez ; calls for withdrawal of Israelis, attempts to sustain credible anti-communist posture with Egypt and Middle East.

 

Major fracture of old Allied alliance--France begins aggressive nuclear development, DeGaulle takes France out of multilateral relation w/ U.S.

1956 Soviets crush Hungarian independence movement.

1957 Sputnik: the international arms race becomes a technology, prestige, and military race

 

On Aug. 3, 1958, the nuclear-powered submarine Nautilus became the first vessel to cross the North Pole underwater.

1959: American consumer versus Russian bear: On July 24, 1959, during a visit to the Soviet Union, Vice President Richard M. Nixon got into a "kitchen debate" with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev at a U.S. exhibition.

U-2 pilot Gary Powers capture by the Soviets inflames U.S.-Soviet tensions

 

Cuba:  Castro wins power, Batista and the Mafia are out.

 

Kennedy: Camelot and Cold War

 

1961 Berlin Wall: Khrushchev tests Allies resolve

On Aug. 13, 1961, Berlin was divided as East Germany sealed off the border between the city's eastern and western sectors in order to halt the flight of refugees. Two days later, work began on the Berlin Wall. Kennedy was more concerned with his responsibilities to fight the cold war than he was with domestic issues. Focused on Soviet threats in Berlin and Cuba, Kennedy did not consider civil rights as a front burner issue--until the issue was forced upon him by African American activists.

 Bay of Pigs, 1961--indecision, embarrassment for Kennedy. On April 17, 1961, about 1,500 CIA-trained Cuban exiles launched the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in a failed attempt to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro.

After the Bay of Pigs, President Kennedy spoke to newspaper publishers and said: "This administration intends to be candid about its errors. For as a wise man once said, `An error does not become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.' . . . Without debate, without criticism, no administration and no country can succeed — and no republic can survive."

 

 Missile Crisis--Kennedy blockade forces Soviet withdrawal of missiles

 http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/index.htm

Viet Nam: Partitioned decolonized country in a civil war falls into East/West Paradigm

Following French withdrawal, U.S. backs pro-western regime in  South Vietnam

 

Johnson:

 1964-Gulf of Tonkin--resolution of sweeping presidential authority to “resist aggression”--major escalation rationalized by the “domino theory”