Cold War

NATO was created in April 1949, and the Warsaw Pact was established in 1955. Both held a policy of mutual military assistance and collective security against an attack made by a nation outside of the treaty organization. Though the United Nations was created to promote peace in the postwar world, the Soviet Union’s position as a member of the Security Council allowed it to veto many of the organization’s intended actions. Western nations began to feel that another institution was needed to protect them from potential Soviet aggression.
In 1949, the United States, Canada, France, Great Britain, and eight other nations formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to protect the West from possible Soviet-led communist aggression. This marked a significant shift in American foreign policy, which since the Monroe Doctrine had avoided permanent military alliances with European powers. In 1955, the Soviet Union retaliated by issuing the Warsaw Pact with its satellite states in Eastern Europe, which also held a policy of mutual assistance, thus furthering the notion of Churchill’s “iron curtain.”

Following the Second World War, the United States adopted policies that were intended to help rebuild war-torn Europe, promote self-determination, and contain the spread of Soviet influence. After Great Britain announced in 1947 that it could no longer afford to aid the Greek government’s fight against the communist insurgents, President Truman asked Congress for nearly $400 million in military and economic aid for Greece and Turkey. Truman stated that it was the duty of the United States to support free nations that were fighting to resist communist domination. The Marshall Plan, also known as the European Recovery Program, was instituted in 1947 in response to fears that communist organizations were gaining strength in democratic nations across Europe. The Marshall Plan illustrated the United States’ belief that American aid in reconstruction would allow for economic recovery and create strong democracies. The Soviet Union openly rejected the Marshall Plan and pressured its satellite nations to not participate in the program.

In July 1957, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower requested permission from Pakistani Prime Minister Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy for the U.S. to establish a secret U.S. intelligence facility in Pakistan and for the U-2 spyplane to fly from Pakistan. A facility established in Badaber (Peshawar Air Station), 10 miles (16 km) from Peshawar.Badaber was an excellent location because of its proximity to Soviet central Asia.
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) shot down an American U-2 spy plane in Soviet air space and captured its pilot, Francis Gary Powers (1929-77). Confronted with the evidence of his nation’s espionage, President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969) was forced to admit to the Soviets that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had been flying spy missions over the USSR for several years. The Soviets convicted Powers on espionage charges and sentenced him to 10 years in prison. However, after serving less than two years, he was released in exchange for a captured Soviet agent in the first-ever U.S.-USSR “spy swap.” The U-2 spy plane incident raised tensions between the U.S. and the Soviets during the Cold War (1945-91), the largely political clash between the two superpowers and their allies that emerged following World War II.

Kennan and Containment, 1947. George F. Kennan, a career Foreign Service Officer, formulated the policy of “containment,” the basic United States strategy for fighting the cold war (1947–1989) with the Soviet Union.
At the end of the war, the Soviet Union was a closed society under the iron grip of Joseph Stalin. Few in the West had experience with the communist state and even fewer understood what motivated the Soviets. One man who had first hand knowledge was a Foreign Service officer, George F. Kennan. In 1946, while he was Chargé d’Affaires in Moscow, Kennan sent an 8,000-word telegram to the Department—the now-famous “long telegram”—on the aggressive nature of Stalin’s foreign policy. Kennan, writing as “Mr. X,” published an outline of his philosophy in the prestigious journal Foreign Affairs in 1947. His conclusion was that “the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.” Containment provided a conceptual framework for a series of successful initiatives undertaken from 1947 to 1950 to blunt Soviet expansion.

The causes of the fall of the Soviet Union were many and included ethnic conflict, a lack of support for the idea of communism and economic troubles caused by a focus on arms. Despite reform efforts by Mikhail Gorbachev, the then leader of the Soviet Union, the country was never able to reorganize and rebuild. In the 1970’s and 1980’s the Soviet Union seemed to be one of the most stable political units in the world. In international politics the Soviet Union was very strong and seemed only to be getting stronger. It was, for example, securing political client states in Africa. The Western powers believed this image was valid. But in the Soviet Union few things were really what they seemed to be. There were many economic problems for the Soviet Stalinist system. One very general problem was the lack of incentives for productivity. As anonymous Soviet citizen said. They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work. The Russian economist, Grigory Yavlinsky, who ultimately became an important advisor to Mikhail Gorbachev, became convinced to the need for reform when he investigated the low productivity in the Soviet mines. He found the miners were not working because they had no incentives to work. Said Yavlinsky