Ch 31: The Cold War and Decolonization, 1945-1975 Flashcards
What was the iron curtain?
Winston Churchill’s term for Cold War division between the East and West, especially generally between the US and its allies in NATO countries on one side and the USSR and Warsaw Pact countries on the other.
What was the Cold War?
the state of political tension and military rivalry between the US and their allies and the USSR and their allies
What was the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)?
military alliance established by US and W. Europe
“North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), military alliance established in 1949 that sought to create a counterweight to Soviet armies stationed in central and eastern Europe after World War II. Following the end of the Cold War, NATO was reconceived as a “cooperative-security” organization. It has 32 member states.” https://www.britannica.com/topic/North-Atlantic-Treaty-Organization
What was the Warsaw Pact?
military alliance created by USSR
“Warsaw Pact, (May 14, 1955–July 1, 1991) treaty establishing a mutual-defense organization (Warsaw Treaty Organization) composed originally of the Soviet Union and Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. (Albania withdrew in 1968, and East Germany did so in 1990.) The treaty (which was renewed on April 26, 1985) provided for a unified military command and for the maintenance of Soviet military units on the territories of the other participating states.” https://www.britannica.com/event/Warsaw-Pact
What was the United Nations?
international peace-keeping organization
“United Nations (UN), international organization established on October 24, 1945. The United Nations (UN) was the second multipurpose international organization established in the 20th century that was worldwide in scope and membership. Its predecessor, the League of Nations, was created by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 and disbanded in 1946. Headquartered in New York City, the UN also has regional offices in Geneva, Vienna, and Nairobi. Its official languages are Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish.” https://www.britannica.com/topic/United-Nations
What were the 2 main bodies of the UN?
- General Assembly: members from all states
- Security Council: 5 permanent members: China, France, GB, US, USSR
What power did the Security Council have?
veto power
“[The 5 nations most responsible for the creation of the United Nations] were granted the special status of Permanent Member States at the Security Council, along with a special voting power known as the “right to veto”. It was agreed by the drafters that if any one of the five permanent members cast a negative vote in the 15-member Security Council, the resolution or decision would not be approved.
All five permanent members have exercised the right of veto at one time or another. If a permanent member does not fully agree with a proposed resolution but does not wish to cast a veto, it may choose to abstain, thus allowing the resolution to be adopted if it obtains the required number of nine favourable votes.” https://main.un.org/securitycouncil/en/content/voting-system
What did a flood of new members to the UN after the decolonization of Africa cause?
A voting majority that was more concerned with poverty, racial discrimination, and the struggle against imperialism than the Cold War.
Western powers increasingly disregarded the General Assembly.
What did the World Bank do in the aftermath of World War II?
provided funds for reconstructing Europe and helping needy countries
What was the Marshall Plan?
US provided billions of $ in aid to friendly European countries, mostly in the form of food, raw materials, and other goods
“Marshall Plan, (April 1948–December 1951), U.S.-sponsored program designed to rehabilitate the economies of 17 western and southern European countries in order to create stable conditions in which democratic institutions could survive.
The United States feared that the poverty, unemployment, and dislocation of the post-World War II period were reinforcing the appeal of communist parties to voters in western Europe. On June 5, 1947, in an address at Harvard University, Secretary of State George C. Marshall advanced the idea of a European self-help program to be financed by the United States[.]” https://www.britannica.com/event/Marshall-Plan
What was the European Community?
enlarged alliance between European countries
“European Community (EC), former association designed to integrate the economies of Europe. The term also refers to the “European Communities,” which originally comprised the European Economic Community (EEC), the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC; dissolved in 2002), and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom). In 1993 the three communities were subsumed under the European Union (EU). The EC, or Common Market, then became the principal component of the EU. It remained as such until 2009, when the EU legally replaced the EC as its institutional successor.” https://www.britannica.com/topic/European-Community-European-economic-association
What did prosperity cause in W. Europe?
Increased wages, government spending on health care and unemployment, increase in mass consumer society
What was growth in the Soviet Union like?
rapid at first, then control of the economy became less efficient
What was the Truman Doctrine?
offered military aid to help Turkey and Greece resist Soviet military pressure and subversion
“With the Truman Doctrine, President Harry S. Truman established that the United States would provide political, military and economic assistance to all democratic nations under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces. The Truman Doctrine effectively reoriented U.S. foreign policy, away from its usual stance of withdrawal from regional conflicts not directly involving the United States, to one of possible intervention in far away conflicts.” https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/truman-doctrine
What led to the creation of the Warsaw Pact?
Western powers’ decision to let West Germany rearm within the limits set by NATO
“The immediate occasion for the Warsaw Pact was the Paris agreement among the Western powers admitting West Germany to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The Warsaw Pact was, however, the first step in a more systematic plan to strengthen the Soviet hold over its satellites, a program undertaken by the Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolay Bulganin after their assumption of power early in 1955.” https://www.britannica.com/event/Warsaw-Pact
What defeated the 1948-1949 Berlin Blockade by the USSR in East Germany?
airlifts of food and fuel
“Berlin blockade, international crisis that arose from an attempt by the Soviet Union, in 1948–49, to force the Western Allied powers (the United States, the United Kingdom, and France) to abandon their post-World War II jurisdictions in West Berlin.
[…]
On June 26 the United States and Britain began to supply the city with food and other vital supplies by air. They also organized a similar “airlift” in the opposite direction of West Berlin’s greatly reduced industrial exports. […] Tension remained high, but war did not break out.
Despite dire shortages of fuel and electricity, the airlift kept life going in West Berlin for 11 months, until on May 12, 1949, the Soviet Union lifted the blockade. The airlift continued until September 30” https://www.britannica.com/event/Berlin-blockade
World War II left who in control of Korea?
Soviet troops in control north of 38th parallel, Americans in control of South
What caused the Korean War?
North Korea invaded South Korea
Expansionist intentions on the part of the Communists in the North lead them, with the assent of the Soviets, to invade the South on 25 June 1950.
What was the resolution of the Korean War?
truce, but no peace treaty concluded it
“By spring 1951, UN forces had recovered sufficiently, and the conflict settled into a protracted war of attrition that ended after 2 years of negotiations produced, in July 1953, an armistice that restored the status quo antebellum.” https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/News-Article-View/Article/2421435/more-afraid-of-your-friends-than-the-enemy-coalition-dynamics-in-the-korean-war/
status quo antebellum: state of affairs before the war, in this case the 38th parallel separating the two countries.
How did Japan benefit from the Korean War?
massive purchasing of supplies and spending by US stimulated the economy
Whose coalition fought the French with help from PRC in Vietnam?
Ho Chi Minh’s nationalist coalition, the Viet Minh
Where did Viet Minh take over?
North Vietnam
JFK decided to support South Vietnam and engaged in what?
Vietnam War
“As the situation continued to deteriorate, Kennedy sent two key advisers, economist Walt W. Rostow and former army chief of staff Maxwell Taylor, to Vietnam in the fall of 1961 to assess conditions. The two concluded that the South Vietnamese government was losing the war with the Viet Cong and had neither the will nor the ability to turn the tide on its own. They recommended a greatly expanded program of military assistance, including such items as helicopters and armoured personnel carriers, and an ambitious plan to place American advisers and technical experts at all levels and in all agencies of the Vietnamese government and military. They also recommended the introduction of a limited number of U.S. combat troops, a measure the Joint Chiefs of Staff had been urging as well.
[…]
[The] administration proceeded with vigour and enthusiasm to carry out the expansive program of aid and guidance proposed in the Rostow-Taylor report. A new four-star general’s position—commander, U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam (USMACV)—was established in Saigon to guide the military assistance effort. The number of U.S. military personnel in Vietnam, less than 800 throughout the 1950s, rose to about 9,000 by the middle of 1962.” https://www.britannica.com/event/Vietnam-War/The-U-S-role-grows
Kennedy similarly increased US support, short of the commitment of combat troops, until his death in 1963.
What did the 2 parts of Vietnam become united under?
The Communist government of North Vietnam.
What was the Cuban missile crisis?
USSR deployed nuclear missiles in Cuba in response to US efforts to overthrow the government of Cuba
“Cuban missile crisis, (October 1962), major confrontation that brought the United States and the Soviet Union close to war over the presence of Soviet nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba.”
Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev thought that the relatively young US President John F. Kennedy was a weak leader, promised to defend Cuba with Soviet arms in May of 1960, and and began shipping nuclear-capable missiles to Cuba. The US discovered these shipments in July of 1962 and learned of the presence of Soviet technicians in Cuba via a U2 spy plane in August of that year.
Kennedy considered his options of invading Cuba, blockading it, or other diplomatic action, choosing to blockade the island, announcing this on October 22, 1962. There was much tension as the two leaders exchanged messages, almost absent the bureaucracy. “On October 28 Khrushchev capitulated, informing Kennedy that work on the missile sites would be halted and that the missiles already in Cuba would be returned to the Soviet Union. In return, Kennedy committed the United States to never invading Cuba. Kennedy also secretly promised to withdraw the nuclear-armed missiles that the United States had stationed in Turkey in previous years. In the following weeks both superpowers began fulfilling their promises, and the crisis was over by late November. Cuba’s communist leader, Fidel Castro, was infuriated by the Soviets’ retreat in the face of the U.S. ultimatum but was powerless to act.” https://www.britannica.com/event/Cuban-missile-crisis
What was the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty?
agreement to ban testing of nuclear weapons
“Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, agreement of July 1, 1968, signed by the United Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union, and 59 other states, under which the three major signatories, which possessed nuclear weapons, agreed not to assist other states in obtaining or producing them. The treaty became effective in March 1970 and was to remain so for a 25-year period. Additional countries later ratified the treaty; as of 2007 only three countries (India, Israel, and Pakistan) have refused to sign the treaty, and one country (North Korea) has signed and then withdrawn from the treaty. The treaty was extended indefinitely and without conditions in 1995 by a consensus vote of 174 countries at the United Nations headquarters in New York City.” https://www.britannica.com/event/Treaty-on-the-Non-proliferation-of-Nuclear-Weapons
What were the Helsinki Accords?
affirmed that no boundaries should be changed by military force
“Helsinki Accords, (August 1, 1975), major diplomatic agreement signed in Helsinki, Finland, at the conclusion of the first Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE; now called the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe). The Helsinki Accords were primarily an effort to reduce tension between the Soviet and Western blocs by securing their common acceptance of the post-World War II status quo in Europe. The accords were signed by all the countries of Europe (except Albania, which became a signatory in September 1991) and by the United States and Canada. The agreement recognized the inviolability of the post-World War II frontiers in Europe and pledged the 35 signatory nations to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms and to cooperate in economic, scientific, humanitarian, and other areas. The Helsinki Accords are nonbinding and do not have treaty status.” https://www.britannica.com/event/Helsinki-Accords
What was an offshoot of the nuclear arms race?
Space exploration; the Space Race, ca. 1957-1969.
“On October 4, 1957, the U.S.S.R. launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite.
[…]
On July 20, 1969, the first humans landed on the Moon: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on Apollo 11.” https://www.britannica.com/story/timeline-of-the-space-race
What added to tensions of independence in India?
Hindu ruler of Jammu and Kashmir decided to join India without consulting majority Muslim subjects
“The decision by Hari Singh, the Dogra maharaja of Kashmir, to sign the Instrument of Accession in October 1947—thus joining Kashmir to the Indian union—precipitated warfare between India and Pakistan that culminated in the establishment of the line of control (cease-fire line) in the region in July 1949. The territory that India administered on its side of the line, which contained both Jammu (the seat of the Dogra dynasty) and the Vale of Kashmir, took on the name Jammu and Kashmir. However, both India and Pakistan have continued to claim the entire Kashmir region, and tensions generally have remained high along the line. Fighting has occasionally broken out between the two sides, notably in 1965. India has also contested China’s presence in areas that India claimed as part of Hari Singh’s accession. Meanwhile, the process of formalizing Jammu and Kashmir’s status as a state took several years and was completed only in 1957.” https://www.britannica.com/place/Jammu-and-Kashmir/Government-and-society
What was the war between India and Pakistan over?
Kashmir
“The conflict between India and Pakistan arose out of the 1947 Partition of British India, enshrined in the Indian Independence Act. The Partition established a Muslim-majority Pakistan and a Hindu-majority India and provided the diverse regions of Jammu and Kashmir the opportunity to choose which country to accede to. The maharaja (Kashmir’s monarch) at the time initially sought independence, as Kashmir was neglected and subjugated for centuries by conquering empires. However, he ultimately agreed to join India in exchange for help against invading Pakistani herders, triggering the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947-48. The Karachi Agreement of 1949 temporarily ended violence in the Jammu-Kashmir region by establishing a cease-fire line (CFL) overseen by members of a UN truce sub-committee.” https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/conflict-between-india-and-pakistan
What did Pakistan break up into?
Bengal-speaking e. section became Bangledesh
“In 1971, an internal crisis in Pakistan resulted in a third war between India and Pakistan and the secession of East Pakistan, creating the independent state of Bangladesh. […]
The partition of India in 1947 created West and East Pakistan, two noncontiguous territories that shared a dominant religion of Islam but were very different in terms of language, ethnicity and culture. In the 1970 parliamentary elections, an overwhelming number of East Pakistanis voted for a political party that advocated autonomy for the East, but it was blocked from governing by the army and the existing Pakistani government, and its leader was jailed. The resulting mass protests in the East were brutally suppressed by the Pakistani army, which caused a massive refugee movement into neighboring India. East Pakistani guerilla forces, supported by India, fought with the Pakistani Army in the late autumn of 1971. West Pakistan responded with air attacks on India, resulting in open war between the two powers beginning on December 3.
[…]
India’s relationship with the Soviet Union ensured that the United Nations would not intervene, and helped deter China from opening a second conflict on India’s northern border. Defeated on both fronts, Pakistan was forced to accede to the establishment of an independent Bangladesh in place of East Pakistan. Bangladesh was admitted to the United Nations in 1974.” https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/dr/99696.htm
The postwar French government was determined to keep what?
Algeria
“Algerian War, (1954–62) war for Algerian independence from France. The movement for independence began during World War I (1914–18) and gained momentum after French promises of greater self-rule in Algeria went unfulfilled after World War II (1939–45). In 1954 the National Liberation Front (FLN) began a guerrilla war against France and sought diplomatic recognition at the UN to establish a sovereign Algerian state. Although Algerian fighters operated in the countryside—particularly along the country’s borders—the most serious fighting took place in and around Algiers, where FLN fighters launched a series of violent urban attacks that came to be known as the Battle of Algiers (1956–57). French forces (which increased to 500,000 troops) managed to regain control but only through brutal measures, and the ferocity of the fighting sapped the political will of the French to continue the conflict. In 1959 Charles de Gaulle declared that the Algerians had the right to determine their own future. Despite terrorist acts by French Algerians opposed to independence and an attempted coup in France by elements of the French army, an agreement was signed in 1962, and Algeria became independent.” https://www.britannica.com/event/Algerian-War
What was the Front de Liberation National?
supported by Egypt and Arabs on principle that all Arab peoples should be able to choose own governments
“National Liberation Front, the only constitutionally legal party in Algeria from 1962 to 1989. The party was a continuation of the revolutionary body that directed the Algerian war of independence against France (1954–62).” https://www.britannica.com/topic/National-Liberation-Front-political-party-Algeria
What happened when Algeria won the revolt?
Angry colonists returned to France, which undermined the Algerian economy because few Arabs had technical training or management experience
Most of the independence in Sub-Saharan Africa was achieved through what?
negotiation
In colonies with significant white settler minorities, African peoples had to resort to what?
armed struggle
What did educated African nationalists use to help build multiethnic coalitions?
languages introduced by colonial governments
Who was Kwame Nkrumah and what did he do?
“Francis Kwame Nkrumah (21 September 1909 – 27 April 1972) was a Ghanaian politician, political theorist, and revolutionary. He served as Prime Minister of the Gold Coast from 1952 until 1957, when it gained independence from Britain.[1] He was then the first Prime Minister and then the President of Ghana, from 1957 until 1966. An influential advocate of Pan-Africanism, Nkrumah was a founding member of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and winner of the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union in 1962.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwame_Nkrumah
What delayed the independence process in Kenya?
Kenya coffee planters- “Mau Mau”
“Mau Mau, militant African nationalist movement that originated in the 1950s among the Kikuyu people of Kenya. The Mau Mau (origin of the name is uncertain) advocated violent resistance to British domination in Kenya; the movement was especially associated with the ritual oaths employed by leaders of the Kikuyu Central Association to promote unity in the independence movement.
In 1950 the Mau Mau were banned by British authorities, and in October 1952, after a campaign of sabotage and assassination attributed to Mau Mau terrorists, the British Kenya government declared a state of emergency and began four years of military operations against Kikuyu rebels. By the end of 1956, more than 11,000 rebels had been killed in the fighting, along with about 100 Europeans and 2,000 African loyalists. More than 20,000 other Kikuyu were put into detention camps, where intensive efforts were made to convert them to the political views of the government—i.e., to abandon their nationalist aspirations. Despite these government actions, Kikuyu resistance spearheaded the Kenya independence movement, and Jomo Kenyatta, who had been jailed as a Mau Mau leader in 1953, became prime minister of an independent Kenya 10 years later. In 2003 the ban on the Mau Mau was lifted by the Kenyan government.” https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mau-Mau
African leaders in Sub-Saharan French colonies were more reluctant to what?
call for full independence
Most new African politicians who sought election were civil servants which means that they what?
recognized the importance of French public investment and dependence on civil service salaries
South African governments had constructed a state and society based on what?
apartheid/ racial separation
What continued in Latin America after independence?
European and American economic domination
What was Guatemala’s largest landowner?
US corporation United Fruit Co.
What agricultural policy did the United Fruit Co. enforce in Guatemala in the period after World War II?
kept a lot of fields fallow to surpress banana production and keep prices high
What happened when Jacabo Arbenz, President of Guatemala, tried land reform and tried to decrease US political influence in the 1950s?
CIA sponsored takeover by Guatemalan military removed Arbenz, condemned Guatemala to decades of government instability and violence
“Arbenz made agrarian reform the central project of his administration. This led to a clash with the largest landowner in the country, the U.S.-based United Fruit Company, whose idle lands he tried to expropriate. He also insisted that the company and other large landowners pay more taxes. As the reforms advanced, the U.S. government, cued by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, became increasingly alarmed, fearing the threat to sizable American banana investments and to U.S. bank loans to the Guatemalan government as well. Also of concern to the United States were the increasingly close relations between Guatemala and the communist bloc of nations. A public-relations campaign painted Arbenz as a friend of communists (whose support he undoubtedly had); however, the contention of the U.S. government, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and much of the U.S. media that Arbenz had close connections with the Soviet bloc proved to be unsubstantiated. Working in Honduras and El Salvador, the CIA helped to organize a counterrevolutionary army of exiles led by Col. Carlos Castillo Armas. Exaggerations of the size of the invading force panicked the capital; the Guatemalan army refused to fight for Arbenz, and he was forced to resign (June 27, 1954) and go into exile. He traveled to Mexico, Switzerland, and Paris and was offered asylum in the Soviet-bloc countries for a time. Meanwhile, in Guatemala, Castillo Armas, who soon became president, reversed most of the reforms of the previous decade and offered generous concessions to foreign investors.” https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jacobo-Arbenz
When Fidel Castro overthrew Fulgencio Batista, what did he do?
redistributed land, lowered urban rents, increased wages, transferred 15% of national income from rich to poor, seized property of almost all US corps and elite
To achieve his transformation, Castro sought economic support from who which caused what?
USSR, US suspended sugar agreement, sought to destabilize the Cuban economy, CIA landed at Bay of Pigs in attempt to overthrow Castro- Cuban army won and placed nuclear weapons in Cuba
What were nonaligned nations/ the Third World?
developing countries that announced neutrality in the Cold War
What was the Bandung Conference?
beginning of effort by new, poor, non- European nations to gain influence
“In April, 1955, representatives from twenty-nine governments of Asian and African nations gathered in Bandung, Indonesia to discuss peace and the role of the Third World in the Cold War, economic development, and decolonization.” https://history.state.gov/milestones/1953-1960/bandung-conf
What did the Cold War do to Japan and what were they able to do because of it?
isolated and excluded from most world political issues, able to develop economic strength
What were the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution?
In China, failed revolutionary reforms and a campaign to purge the Communist Party of opponents and instill revolutionary values in the younger generation
The rift between the PRC and USSR was so wide that Nixon allowed the PRC to do what?
join UN, occupy China’s permanent seat on Security Council
The General Assembly of the UN voted in favor of doing what with Palestine in 1947?
partitioning it into 2 states
“The General Assembly is the main deliberative organ of the United Nations, composed of representatives of all Member States. The question of Palestine was first brought before the General Assembly in 1947. By resolution 181 (II), the Assembly decided to partition Palestine into two states, one Arab and one Jewish, with Jerusalem placed under a special international regime.” https://www.un.org/unispal/data-collection/general-assembly/
What happened after Palestine was partitioned into 2 states?
Jewish declared independence, Palestinians, who felt land division= unfair, took up arms but Israel prevailed
“The Arab-Israeli War of 1948 broke out when five Arab nations invaded territory in the former Palestinian mandate immediately following the announcement of the independence of the state of Israel on May 14, 1948.” https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/arab-israeli-war
What was the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)?
organization to promote collective interest in increased revenues among oil-producing states
Instead of focusing on involving itself with world affairs after WWII, what did Japan focus on?
improving economy
What happened in China immediately following WWII?
Mao Zedong and communists defeated nationalists, established PRC and began to politically diverge from USSR
How was Israel created?
Division of Palestine
What was the 6 Day War of 1967?
Israel attacked Egyptian and Syrian air bases, won
“Six-Day War, brief war that took place June 5–10, 1967, and was the third of the Arab-Israeli wars. Israel’s decisive victory included the capture of the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip, West Bank, Old City of Jerusalem, and Golan Heights; the status of these territories subsequently became a major point of contention in the Arab-Israeli conflict.” https://www.britannica.com/event/Six-Day-War
Jordan entered war- Israel won control of Jerusalem
