The Cold War

1. 1979-1991 The Cold War

2. Illustration adapted from Ben Walsh, ‘Modern World History’ An NDM Production

4. Why did the Cold War return in the early 1980s? • The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 re-opened the Cold War. • They invaded to put in place a pro-Soviet government under Babrak Karmal. • This was against the wishes of several Islamic guerrilla groups and soon led to war between them and the Soviet troops. • President Carter boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics in protest. • This new Cold War became even chillier when Reagan became president in 1981. Reagan supplied the Islamic groups with money and weapons – including Bin Laden. • The war lasted until 1989 when the Soviet forces withdrew, after losing 20,000 men. The last column of Soviet troops leaving Afghanistan in 1989

5. Why did Reagan start a new arms race? • Reagan (president 1981-89) was a very conservative Republican and fiercely anti-communist. • Communist guerrillas had seized power in the Central American state of Nicaragua in 1978 – reviving fears of the domino theory in the White House • The invasion of Afghanistan and events elsewhere led him to call the Soviet Union the ‘evil empire’. • He doubled military spending to $367m in five years. • The US military was now able to develop new weapons, such as the neutron bomb and cruise missiles and planned the SDI (‘Star Wars’) space defence system – it was not technologically possible at that time • The USSR boycotted the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. • Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) unsurprisingly collapsed in 1985.

6. Why was the USSR so keen to end the Cold War? • In 1985 the Soviet Union had a new leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. He was young (54 compared to Reagan who was 74), with a charming manner. • Gorbachev realised that the USSR could not afford to go on spending 25% of its income (GDP) on weapons (the USA spent just 7%). • The unpopular war in Afghanistan could not be won by the USSR and was hugely expensive. • The standard of living in the USSR was very low and had to be improved (In the 1980s, 10,000 Soviet-made TVs exploded, killing 1000 people). • The USSR depended on imported grain and technology from the West – these had to be paid for in western currency. • This meant that military spending and Cold War tension had to be reduced so that industry could concentrate on consumer goods. Gorbachev holds up a terrified Soviet baby for Reagan to kiss during the President’s visit to the Moscow in 1988.

7. What did Gorbachev decide? • He decided that there would be, for the first time, a reduction in numbers of actual nuclear weapons – rather than an agreement to make fewer weapons. • The USSR would abandon the Brezhnev Doctrine of 1968. The Soviet satellites of Eastern Europe could decide their own futures. • The USSR would have to change, as well. There would be glasnost (openness and freedom of speech) and perestroika (restructuring of the economy with more capitalist ideas). • However, Gorbachev was soon to discover that the process of change, once started, is impossible to control Queue outside a shop which has just received a delivery of western goods. It was common practice for shoppers to join any queue – without even knowing or caring what they were queuing for.

8. The End of the Cold War • Gorbachev met Reagan in Washington in 1987. The INF (Intermediate Nuclear Force) Treaty agreed to destroy existing stocks of intermediate range nuclear weapons – this was the first ever agreement to do this. • This was followed by the START agreement with George Bush in 1991 to reduce stocks of long range nuclear weapons. • Gorbachev was hugely popular in the West. He was the man who had ended the Cold War. • He was also very popular in eastern Europe as the man who let them break free of the Soviet Union. • Only in the USSR was he less popular as his policy of perestroika failed to improve people’s lives. The remains of a US nuclear missile silo are inspected in 1997 after it was blown up as part of the 1991 START agreement.

9. The End of Communism • Gorbachev’s new ideas backfired on him. ‘Perestroika’ did mean that suddenly the Soviet Union had a real choice of good quality goods – but the prices were high and – for the first time – there was unemployment. • The various states which made up the USSR demanded their independence: Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania all left the USSR. The USSR was breaking up. • The biggest of the USSR’s republics was Russia and its leader, Boris Yeltsin, wanted nothing to do with Gorbachev or Communism or the USSR. • In 1991 hard line Communist army generals tried to get rid of Yeltsin but most of the army stayed loyal to Yeltsin. The coup was defeated. Yeltsin banned the Communist Party in Russia. The USSR ceased to exist and Gorbachev no longer had a country to be president of. The Cold War was over. The Russian Parliament burns during fighting between troops loyal to Yeltsin and those who wanted a return to Communism. The Communist coup d’etat failed. Russia remained a democracy but the the Soviet Union no longer existed.

10. Questions Why was the US keen on improving relations with China? Why was China receptive to détente with the United States? What effect did détente between China and the US have on the USSR? How did the Vietnam War bring about a change in US foreign policy. Why was détente in the economic interests of both Superpowers, but especially the Soviet Union? Why was MAD so important in helping to avoid nuclear war between the two Superpowers? Why – paradoxically – did the Cuban Missile Crisis lead to an improvement in US-Soviet relations? Why do you think events in Nicaragua in 1978 especially worried the US?

11. What event in 1979 ‘kick-started’ the new Cold War of the early 1980s? • In what way could the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan be described as its ‘Vietnam’? • Why was the appointment of Gorbachev as leader of the USSR so important? • (a) What were ‘glasnost’ and ‘perestroika’? • (b) Which of these two was more likely to help improve US-Soviet relations? • Why was the abandonment of the Brezhnev Doctrine by the Soviet Union likely to have such important consequences? • Why was the 1987 INF so different from all previous nuclear arms treaties? • What was the price which Gorbachev paid for ending the Cold War?