Conflicting Superpowers WHAP/Napp

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“The USSR, as leader of the communist world, feared American capitalist hegemony and military power, and despite the devastation it had suffered during World War II, it challenged American military and economic supremacy. First it built a wall of allied states as a defensive buffer to its west, using its powers of post-war military occupation to install favorable governments. Great Britain’s Winston Churchill declared ruefully, ‘An iron curtain has descended across the continent.’ In reply, the United States created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949. NATO included democratic countries with capitalist, socialist, and mixed economies of Western Europe. The USSR then formally established the Warsaw Pact among the nations of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania, which were communist in their politics and economics. Forty years of ‘cold war’ competition had begun.

The United States had exploded the world’s first atomic bomb in 1945; the USSR followed in 1949. The USA’s first hydrogen bomb in 1952 was matched by the USSR in the next year. The heavens, too, became a field of contest as Russia put the first satellite, the Sputnik, in space orbit in 1957 followed by the first manned satellite in 1961. America landed the first man on the moon in 1969. Each side provoked the other, sometimes to the brink of war. Following World War II, Germany had been divided east and west by the allied victors and in 1948 the USSR blockaded land access to West Berlin, an area held by the US, Britain, and France, but situated deep within Soviet-held territory. American President Harry Truman responded with the Berlin airlift of supplies and personnel and after a few months the blockade was lifted. Germany remained a divided country, however, until 1989. In East Germany (1953), Hungary (1956), and Czechoslovakia (1968), and Poland (1981), the USSR crushed democratic revolts; NATO protested but did not intervene.

Following a revolution in 1959, Cuba became a communist country ‘only 90 miles off the coast of Florida,’ threatening America’s self-confidence and its hold over Latin America. In 1961, President Kennedy backed an invasion of the island by Cuban refugees in the United States (the Bay of Pigs invasion); it failed catastrophically. In 1962 he announced evidence that the USSR had installed missiles on the island and demanded their removal (Cuban Missile Crisis). In fear of imminent Armageddon, the world watched the face-off until, a few days later, Nikita Khrushchev announced that the USSR would remove the missiles in exchange for American promises not to invade Cuba again and to remove its own missiles from Turkey. Despite, or perhaps because of, the destructive power of their arsenals, the European and North American powers exercised restraint. The Cold War never turned hot within their borders. But in client states in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, warfare did break out repeatedly. Here the Great Powers could sell or give away their older weapons and test the newer ones in countries whose leaders were only too eager to receive them.”

~ The World’s History

1-Discuss some of the key developments of the Cold War. ______

2-Why did the Cold War never turn hot? ______

  1. An Introduction to the Cold War
  1. 1949 was a key year in the globalization of the Cold War
  2. In Europe, NATO was established
  3. Soviets tested first atomic bomb, eliminating America’s military advantage
  4. On the mainland, Communists established the People’s Republic of China
  5. After WWII, Korea divided: communist north/noncommunist south
  6. 1950, communist dictator of North Korea, Kim Il Sung, invaded South Korea
  7. U.S.A. policy of containment would not allow it to stand by (Korean War)
  8. By 1953, cease-fire provided for split of Korea at original line of demarcation
I.Stalin died (1953); succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev (1953-1964), Leonid Brezhnev
J. Over time, a loose strategic arrangement: mutually assured destruction (MAD)
K. Soviets and Chinese tried to spread communism to Africa, Asia, Latin America
L. United States tried to contain communism and prevent its spread
M. Believed in Domino Theory: if one country in a region became communist, all would
II. The Changing Nature of Global Politics
  1. In 1956, Egypt’s nationalization (to convert from private to government property) of the Suez Canal
  2. French and British – owned controlling shares in Canal – were humiliated by Soviet-American agreement to allow nationalization to proceed
  3. 1957, “space race” began, USSR launched first human-made object, Sputnik
  4. In 1959, Fidel Castro, “Che” Guevara – Communist revolution in Cuba
III. Crises and Cuba
  1. Bay of Pigs (1961) was a failure in foreign policy for U.S.A.
  2. U.S. had aided Cuban exiles in an attempt to invade the island but failed
  3. Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) was a success for American foreign policy: Soviet missiles on Cuba – Kennedy demanded removed and yes, removed
IV. More Cold War Conflicts and Facts
  1. American spy plane, pilot was Francis Gary Powers, shot down over U.S.S.R. (1960)
  2. In April 1961, USSR sent a human pilot, Yuri Gagarin, into space – first time
  3. In August 1961, USSR sealed East Berlin from West Berlin by building, literally overnight, infamous Berlin Wall
  4. During “Prague Spring” of 1968, Czechoslovakia embarked on a campaign of liberalizing reforms, Brezhnev sent in a Warsaw Pact invasion force
  5. Brezhnev Doctrine: USSR had right to intervene in Eastern Europe
  6. Truman Doctrine (1947): material aid to all countries whose political stability was threatened by communism; to help Greece and Turkey
  7. Later in 1947, U.S. unveiled European Recovery Plan or the Marshall Plan
  8. $13 billion to Europe for purposes of economic reconstruction
  9. North Atlantic treaty Organization or NATO bound U.S., Canada, Britain, and nine other Western European states into a formal strategic alliance
  10. Strategy was known as containment (to prevent the spread of communism)
  11. Soviets developed their own military bloc, the Warsaw Pact
  12. All of Vietnam fell to communists in 1975
  13. From 1969 through 1979, the Cold War entered a more peaceful period known as détente, a diplomatic term referring to the relaxation of tensions
  14. But greatest surprise was the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991

1-Why was 1949 a significant year in the Cold War? ______

2-What was NATO? What was the Warsaw Pact? ______

3-How did the Cold War affect the Korean Peninsula? ______

4-Identify the cause and the effect of the Korean War. ______

5-What is MAD and what did it signify about nuclear weapons? ______

6-What goal did the Soviets and the Chinese share? ______

7-Define containment. ______

8-What is the Domino Theory and how did it affect U.S. foreign policy? ______

9-Define nationalization. ______

10-Who was Nasser and what did he nationalize? ______

11-How did the British/French respond to Nasser? And the Soviets and Americans? ______

12-Why did the “space race” begin? ______

13-Why was 1959 a turning point in Cuban history? ______

14-What happened at the Bay of Pigs? ______

15-Why was the Bay of Pigs a foreign policy failure for the USA? ______

16-What was the Cuban Missile Crisis? ______

17-Why did the U.S. consider the Cuban Missile Crisis a success? ______

18-Why was the Berlin Wall built? ______

19-What was “Prague Spring”? ______

20-Explain the Brezhnev Doctrine. ______

21-Why is the Truman Doctrine also known as the containment policy? ______

22-What happened to Vietnam in 1975? ______

23-Why was détente important? ______

  1. What diplomatic alignment did the Cold War replace?
(A)Europe’s traditional balance of power
(B)The unipolar domination of global power by Germany
(C)Asiatic hegemony
(D)Global anarchy
(E)A similar condition of bipolar equilibrium
  1. What was the Truman Doctrine?
(A)Truman’s commitment to lend aid to countries threatened by communist takeover
(B)Truman’s promise that the United States would go to war to protect any nation from communist takeover
(C)Truman’s oath to protect Poland from absorption into the Soviet bloc
(D)Truman’s declaration of war on North Korea
(E)Truman’s public refusal ever to use atomic weapons after Hiroshima and Nagasaki
  1. Détente means:
(A)A heightening of tensions
(B)A relaxation of tensions
(C)Containment
(D)Counterespionage
(E)Exposing the enemy /
  1. Which of the following is true about armed conflict during the Cold War?
(A)The United States and Soviet Union declared war on each other several times.
(B)There were almost no armed conflicts during the Cold War.
(C)There were no armed conflicts during the Cold War.
(D)Approximately 50 million people died in various small-to-medium conflicts.
(E)Several tactical nuclear exchanges took place during the Cold War.
  1. The Brezhnev Doctrine was
(A)The USSR’s official protest against U.S. conduct in Vietnam
(B)The USSR’s denunciation of Maoist China, as the Sino-Soviet split worsened
(C)The USSR’s condemnation of NATO’s nuclear-arms buildup
(D)The USSR’s formal outlawing of all dissident activity within its borders
(E)The USSR’s ideological justification of its military intervention in Czechoslovakia
  1. Which of the following helped to make 1949 such an important turning point in the Cold War?
(A)Fidel Castro led the Communists to victory in Cuba.
(B)The Korean War began.
(C)The USSR testedits first atomic weapon

Thesis Practice: Comparative

Analyze similarities and differences in U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. points of view during the Cold War.
______