Cold War: Origins and Ideology

4.1 Why "Cold" War?

The term Cold War describes a conflict that never became a direct ("hot") military clash between the two superpowers — though it involved espionage, propaganda, proxy wars, arms races, and repeated crises that brought the world to the brink of nuclear conflict. The fear of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) — both sides having enough nuclear weapons to annihilate the other even after absorbing a first strike — paradoxically maintained a terrible peace between USA and USSR.

Why Did the Cold War Start?

• Ideological incompatibility: American capitalism and democratic liberalism vs. Soviet communism and Marxist-Leninist state socialism — each claimed to be the model for humanity's future
• Mutual distrust from WWII: USA resented the Nazi-Soviet Pact (1939); USSR resented the delayed D-Day landing; both suspected each other's post-war intentions
• Soviet expansion into Eastern Europe: USSR established communist satellite states in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, East Germany — creating Churchill's "Iron Curtain" (speech, Fulton, Missouri, March 1946)
• US atomic monopoly (1945–49): America's nuclear advantage heightened Soviet insecurity and drove their accelerated nuclear programme
• Power vacuum in Europe and Asia: Britain and France were exhausted; USA and USSR moved to fill the geopolitical space

4.2 USA's Cold War Policies

Containment Doctrine (George F. Kennan, 1946–47)

State Department official Kennan's "Long Telegram" (1946) and his anonymous "X Article" (1947) argued the USSR was expansionist by nature and could only be stopped by systematic containment. This became the intellectual foundation of US Cold War strategy for 40 years.

Truman Doctrine (12 March 1947)

President Truman addressed Congress requesting $400 million in aid for Greece and Turkey. He declared the US would "support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." This universalised the commitment to fight communism anywhere.

Marshall Plan (European Recovery Programme, June 1947)

Secretary of State George Marshall proposed a massive US aid programme for European reconstruction. Total aid: $13 billion (1948–52), equivalent to ~$150 billion today. Sixteen Western European nations participated. The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe declined — Stalin viewed it as a tool of American imperialism. Western Europe recovered rapidly, providing a stable "showcase" for capitalism.

NSC-68 (1950)

National Security Council paper that recommended quadrupling US defence spending — accepted after the Korean War outbreak (June 1950) and the Soviet nuclear test (August 1949). US defence budget jumped from $13 billion (1950) to $52 billion (1953).

4.3 USSR's Cold War Policies

Cominform (Communist Information Bureau, 1947)

Soviet response to the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan; coordinated Communist parties of Eastern Europe and Western Europe (France, Italy).

Comecon (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, 1949)

Soviet economic integration bloc for Eastern Europe — alternative to the Marshall Plan. Included USSR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, East Germany, Albania.

Zhdanov Doctrine (1947)

Soviet ideologist Andrei Zhdanov framed the world as two hostile camps: the "imperialist" US-led bloc and the "anti-imperialist, democratic" Soviet-led bloc — mirror image of the Truman Doctrine.

Soviet Nuclear Programme

• USSR tested its first atomic bomb in August 1949 — four years after the US, earlier than expected (aided partly by espionage — Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, British spy Klaus Fuchs)
• First hydrogen bomb in August 1953
• Soviet ICBM programme (R-7 Semyorka, 1957) — the same rocket that launched Sputnik

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