1950’s Cold War

1
1950s Cold War

• Peaceful Coexistence?

2
Dwight Eisenhower 52-60

• Republican
• McCarthyism at its height
• Promised to go to Korea himself and end the war

3
Cautious Approach to Cold War Politics

• Negotiate w/ Russia while creating alliances
  around the world
• SEATO
• CENTO
• NATO (with added re-armed Germany in 1955)

4
Stalin Out, Khrushchev In

• After battling with Malenkov in USSR, Nikita
  Khrushchev takes control
• Destalinization renounces Stalins harsh tactics
• Seeks to have a peaceful coexistence with the
  west

5
New Look Defense Strategy

• Goal reduce defense spending by
• Increasing nuclear weapons
• Decreasing conventional weapons
• Increase cheaper, covert missions
• EX Guatemala (54), Iran (53), Vietnam (54)

6
Ex 1 Iran, 1953

• Prime Minister Mossadegh has vote of the people
• Nationalizes the Anglo-Iranian oil company
• US/CIA intervenes, created chaos in the country,
  helps oust Mossadegh and supports the Shah
  Pahlavi of Iran
• The Shah is sympathetic to US interests (or can
  be convinced to be)

7
Ex2 Guatemala, 1954

• Arbenz plans to nationalize United Fruit Company
  land return to landless(UFC called el pulpo)
• CIA helps overthrow reform-minded Jacobo Arbenz
• Train soldiers in Honduras, support the
  installation of Armas

8
Ex 3 Vietnam

• US support of Diem
• US trainging of Vietnamese against the communists
  in Vietnam

9
Brinkmanship

• Term coined by Sec. of State John Foster Dulles
• Willingness to go to the brink of war (use of
  threats to make enemy back off)
• US promises to use all its force, including
  nuclear weapons, against any aggressor nation

10
Arms Race Accelerates

• 1955 begins U-2 program CIA pilots fly over
  Soviet skies esp. after Open Skies proposal
  is shot down _at_ Geneva
• Sputnik 1957 sets off the space race
• Russias ICBM in 1957 shows missile gap
• By 1960, 1 million bomb shelters built by private
  citizens

11
MAD!

• Mutually Assured Destruction
• IR is based on the idea of reciprocity if we
  bomb them, theyll bomb us
• By both sides having bombs, their use is
  prevented - deterrence

12
Military Industrial Complex

• The sector of the economy that is privately
  owned, but holds government contracts for weapons
  and war materiel
• Becomes politically, economically influential
• Q Does the M-I complex create/foster the arms
  race?

13
Eisenhower Warns US