We're going to talk a few minutes about the Cold War arms race.
I heard one author describe the Cold War as a contest for the hearts and minds of all
mankind.
Both the United States and its allies – and Soviet Union and its allies, believe their
respective systems to be the best.
This competition takes place across the entire gamut of human endeavor.
Culturally – the liberal Democracies in the West and the Communists
in the East believe their respective societies will create a happier human being, a better
way of life.
Economically – both systems, capitalism and communism – vying to be the most efficient;
the ability to satisfy consumer demands.
Is market capitalism, is that the best way to organize one's economy?
Or centrally-planned communism?
Politically both sides are continually pursuing allies, prospective allies across the globe.
Even in sports, the Soviets and Americans compete every four years in the Olympics – and
I remember in 1972, when the American Bobby Fischer defeated the Soviet chess champion,
Boris Spassky, and it was a big deal; it made all the covers of all the news magazines.
And Bobby Fischer became quite the celebrity for finally defeating the Soviets in Grandmaster
chess.
And then of course, militarily – which is the point of this short lecture – the competition
between the Soviets and the Americans manifests itself with the creation of the two alliances
– NATO, the military alliance led by the United States, it's the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization and of course, the Warsaw Pact, the military alliance led by the Soviet Union
and including those, what we used to call those ‘captive nations’ in Eastern Europe.
Now where did this competition, this military competition, take place between the two alliances?
Well generally, in what political scientists refer to as the Third World.
Political scientists have sort of divided the world up into these categories: the First
World are the industrialized nations led by the United States; the Second World are the
communist countries led by the Soviets; and then the Third World, sometimes referred to
as those underdeveloped nations.
We see this competition, military competition, taking place in Africa, in the Horn of Africa
and Angola; we see it in North Vietnam; we see it – the conflict between North Korea
and South Korea; we see it in the Caribbean, with the Cuban crises of the early 1960s;
we see it in Guatemala and Chile; Venezuela; Peru; other places in South America.
This military competition between the two sides prompted the United States government
to generally support these very sort of hardline, right-wing governments in Central America;
South America; and other places because they were anti-communist – to be anti-communist
was enough to gain U.S. patronage and U.S. support.
This sort of blind obedience to anti-communism would in time lead to a reaction, President
Jimmy Carter's emphasis on human rights – everywhere, not just in communist nations – pointed
out that our allies were often as brutal to their populations as were the communist governments
that we were opposed to.
So this is a subtle, but important change.
I want to introduce some key terms here when we talk about the Cold War arms race.
From the 1950s, we have the term brinksmanship – as if you're going to the brink.
The Eisenhower administration threatened to go to the brink of nuclear war in response
to any Soviet move, any Soviet aggression.
The acronym that runs along with this, of course, is mad – M-A-D.
I believe Robert McNamara, the secretary of defense in the 60s, coined this phrase.
It’s mutual-assured destruction.
You can sort of think of this as a nuclear game of chicken with the United States and
the Soviets rushing toward one another.
Who's going to turn aside?
The Eisenhower administration – its nuclear policy – was based on massive retaliation,
again –brinksmanship, taking right up to the edge of actual hostilities – and then
should the Soviets do something against our interest, we would respond with massive retaliation
– that is, a full-scale nuclear assault on the Soviet Union.
In the late 50s, the Soviets launched the first successful satellite – the Sputnik;
this caused great deal of alarm in the United States and prompted the U.S. government to
begin funding science and math much more heavily in order to make sure the Soviets didn't leave
us behind, technologically speaking.
The nuclear arms race gave rise to some odd notions.
We have what was called a first strike – this would simply be a surprise nuclear attack
against the enemy.
The so-called second strike would be the enemy's capacity to respond to a surprise nuclear
attack.
The idea here is that whichever side suffered in such a surprise nuclear attack would have
sufficient missiles left over to destroy the enemy.
So there was no reasonable – or there was no reasonable or no good reason to carry out
such an attack – since you, too, would be destroyed in a second strike.
So what we're doing here is getting around to the idea of deterrence.
Now deterrence is the policy of creating the fear in the mind of the enemy to attack.
So we're kind of at a Mexican standoff, where the two sides have nuclear missiles pointed
at each other but neither side is willing to commit themselves to it because it would
mean national suicide.
In the 1970s, with President Nixon, we see the advent of what we called a détente – Nixon's
attempt to reduce nuclear armaments, to reduce the tension of the Cold War.
These took place during what we call the SALT Talks – SALT, an acronym, S-A-L-T - strategic
arms limitation talks.
Again, we associate this with the Nixon administration.
And finally, the last key term I'm going to introduce to you is Nixon's triangular diplomacy.
Nixon, in his attempt to lower the tensions of the Cold War, sought to make friends with
both the Red Chinese and the Russians, knowing the Chinese and the Soviets were suspicious
and did not like each other.
Nixon sought to make friendships with both to drive a wedge between the Communist powers.
He believed this might also help in the War in Vietnam.
Now we've been talking about nuclear weapons – I wanted to mention the U.S. nuclear triad;
these are three systems developed to threaten the Soviet Union with nuclear war.
First are the B-52 bombers.
Everyday – 24/7 365 – squadrons of B-52s approached Soviet airspace from Japan, from
Turkey, from Canada, over the North Pole, from Europe – and as they approached Soviet
airspace, they would turn back and go to base – replaced by another squadron.
The idea here, of course, is that these B -52s are fully armed with nuclear weapons
and if given the order, could proceed into Soviet airspace and destroy Soviet cities
or military targets.
Now the United States has a second system in this triad and that's our intercontinental
ballistic missiles – ICBMs.
There are hundreds of missile silos scattered across the upper plains in the United States.
In these silos are ICBMs poised to be launched – and then to take their route over the
North Pole, and to destroy their targets in Russia.
And then the final leg of this triad are the U.S. nuclear submarines; this is the ultimate
deterrent.
Our subs were nuclear-powered and hard to track; Soviet subs tended to be diesel-powered
and easy to track.
So our nuclear subs surround the Soviet Union under the seas, ready to destroy Soviet society
if necessary.
I'm going to mention a few hot spots in this Cold War.
You remember the Americans and the Russians do not kill each other in the Cold War, but
their clients do.
So we have North Korea and North Vietnam – anti-colonial movements in both Pacific Rim countries – follow
the Second World War with the communists, as the vanguard in each case – both in North
Korea and in Vietnam.
Now the Korean War was the first hot war in this bigger Cold War, and it pitted U.S. and
United Nation forces against North Korea and Red China in the early 1950s.
An armistice has been in place since 1953 in Korea.
A peace treaty appears now possible – even as we speak.
We'll have to wait and see what happens.
Maybe this peace treaty will put an end to this dangerous standoff on the Korean Peninsula.
Further south in Vietnam, the communist attempt to unify that country provoked a long series
of wars against the French and then the Japanese and then the French again – and then finally,
the United States.
This war wouldn't end until 1975, with Vietnam united as one country under a communist rule.
And I mentioned Cuba here, as closer to home.
Cuba traditionally had been a protectorate of the United States.
It shed that role in 1959 with a Cuban Revolution and the rise of Fidel Castro.
Castro allied his country with the Soviet Union, while nationalizing U.S. assets in
Cuba.
The U.S. attempts to reverse this situation in 1961 with the disastrous Bay of Pigs.
This triggers Soviet aid – military aid.
The Russians begin bringing nuclear missiles to Cuba aimed at United States targets.
This provokes, of course, the Cuban Missile Crisis.
This was resolved.
Soviet missiles were removed, while the United States promised not to invade Cuba.
So some conclusions here – remember Americans and Russians did not shoot at each other during
the Cold War; their proxies did across the globe kill many thousands of people.
The U.S. policy of containment appears to have worked in the long run.
U.S. deterrence also appears to have worked, as the two superpowers never engaged one another.
Mankind survived perhaps the most dangerous period of its history as two nations – armed
to the teeth with an array of nuclear weapons – never used them.
Don't forget that the U.S. and Russia still have these weapons.
Don't forget that only the United States has ever used nuclear weapons – twice, against
Japan.
Even though the Russians and the Americans still have thousands of nuclear weapons, what
we don't have are the Cold War tensions and the continuing arms race that characterize
the Cold War in 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s.
So I'll stop there.
Thank you.