Describe the causes and results of the arms race between the United States and Soviet Union.

Objectives • Describe the causes and results of the arms race between the United States and Soviet Union. • Explain how Eisenhower’s response to communism differed from that of Truman. • Analyze worldwide Cold War conflicts that erupted in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and other places. • Discuss the effects of Soviet efforts in space exploration.

Terms and People • arms race − race in which countries compete to build more powerful weapons • mutually assured destruction − policy in which the U.S. and Soviet Union hoped to deter nuclear war by building up enough weapons to destroy each other • John Foster Dulles − diplomat and secretary of state under President Eisenhower • massive retaliation − policy of threatening to use massive force in response to aggression

Terms and People(continued) • brinkmanship – belief that only by going to the brink of war could the U.S. prevent war • Nikita Khrushchev − leader of the Soviet Union after Stalin’s death • nationalize − to place under government control • Suez crisis − crisis in which Britain and France attempted to seize control of the Suez canal from Egypt

Terms and People(continued) • Eisenhower Doctrine − President Eisenhower’spolicy that stated the U.S. would use force to help nations threatened by communism • CIA − Central Intelligence Agency; American intelligence-gathering organization • NASA − National Aeronautics and Space Administration; American organization that coordinates the space-related efforts of scientists and the military

What methods did the United States use in its global struggle against the Soviet Union? By 1950, the United States and the Soviet Union were world superpowers. Tensions ran high as each stockpiled weapons and struggled for influence around the globe.

On September 2, 1949, the balance of power between the U.S. and the Soviet Union changed forever. That day, the Soviet Union tested an atomic bomb. The threat of nuclear war suddenly became very real.

In response, Truman ordered scientists to produce a hydrogen bomb—a bomb 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb. In 1952, the U.S. tested the first H-bomb. The next year, the Soviets tested their own H-bomb. The arms race had begun.

Once elected, Eisenhower quickly ended the Korean War after hinting at possible use of nuclear weapons. But Cold War tensions increased. In 1952, the United States exploded the first hydrogen bomb, which was far more destructive than the atom bomb. The next year, the Soviets had the hydrogen bomb, too, and both powers built long-range bombers capable of delivering nuclear weapons across the globe. By the late 1950s intercontinental missiles (ICBMs) made it possible to launch missile strikes and reach targets across the globe in less than one hour.

Although Eisenhower was a professional soldier who hated war, his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, seemed to relish it. In 1954, Dulles updated U.S. containment policy with his doctrine of “massive retaliation.” This policy stated that any Soviet attack on a U.S. ally would be met with a nuclear assault on the Soviet Union.

This new focus on nuclear weapons let Eisenhower reduce spending on conventional military forces. During his presidency the size of the armed forces dropped, while the number of nuclear weapons increased dramatically to 18,000. Massive retaliation seemed to risk that even a small conflict might rapidly escalate into a nuclear war that would destroy the United States and the Soviet Union. Critics called it “brinksmanship,” but the reality that war would result in “mutual assured destruction” (MAD)made the United States and USSR more cautious.

(MAD) also spread fear of an imminent nuclear war. Government appeals to build bomb shelters in back yards, and school drills where students hid under their desks, were meant to convince Americans that they could survive a nuclear war. But these only increased widespread fear.

Both sides hoped that this program of mutually assured destruction would serve as a deterrent. In time, the United States and the Soviet Union would build enough nuclear weapons to destroy each other many times over.

For many, however, the existence of so many weapons was a further threat to peace.

Americans reacted to the nuclear threat by following civil defense guidelines. Families built bomb shelters in backyards. Students practiced “duck and cover” drills at school.

Instead, he focused on stockpiling nuclear weapons. President Eisenhower encouraged such efforts, believing that if there was another major war, it would be nuclear. Unlike Truman, Eisenhower was not interested in fighting communism by building conventional forces.

Joseph Stalin died in 1953. After a brief power struggle, he was succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev. Cold War hostilities eased for a time, with the new leader speaking of “peaceful coexistence.”

Though Eisenhower embraced Cold War rhetoric, he believed the Korean War’s end and Stalin’s death in 1953 signaled that the Soviets were reasonable and could be reached through normal diplomacy. In 1955, he met with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev in Switzerland. The next year, Khrushchev denounced Stalin’s crimes at a Moscow Communist Party Congress. These revelations sparked a crisis of belief and confidence in communists worldwide, including the United States, where most remaining members of the Communist Party abandoned it. That same year, Khrushchev called for “peaceful coexistence” with the United States.

But this “thaw” in the Cold War ended in 1956 when Soviet troops suppressed an anti-communist revolt in Hungary. While some Republicans called for liberating Europe, Ike did not aid the Hungarian rebels; he did not believe it was possible to “roll back” Soviet power in Eastern Europe. In 1958, the United States and USSR agreed to halt nuclear weapons tests (this lasted until 1961). In 1959, Khrushchev even toured the United States and met with Eisenhower. But in 1960, tensions returned when the Soviets shot down a U.S. spy plane over Soviet territory.

The Soviets crushed protests against communist rule in Hungary in 1956. • The Suez crisis added to the tensions. Yet hopes for peace faded quickly. As Americans watched events unfold, the threat of massive retaliation suddenly seemed useless in the fight against communism. Eisenhower refused to intervene in Hungary. Ike, despite the rhetoric continued containment.

Nuclear weapons would not be used in the world’s “hot spots.” Global Cold War, 1946−1956

Other methods, however, would be used to help nations threatened by communism. • Eisenhower sent troops to quell conflicts. • He also approved secretCIAoperations to promote American interests abroad. (ex. Iran, Guatemala)

Even though the Cold War permanently divided Europe into communist and capitalist regions without war, it sparked competition and military conflict in what came to be called the “Third World. The term was used to describe developing countries aligned with neither the United States or the USSR, which wanted to develop their economies without central government planning or free market capitalism.

Containment policy soon created U.S. opposition to any government, whether communist or not, which appeared to threaten U.S. strategic or economic interests. Although Jacabo Arbenz Guzman in Guatemala and Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran were elected as homegrown nationalists and were not Soviet agents, their determination to end foreign corporations’ domination of their economies provoked American intervention.

Arbenz enacted land reforms that threatened the domination of the Guatemalan economy by the U.S.-owned United Fruit Company. Mossadegh nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, whose refinery in Iran was Britain’s largest overseas asset. Their enemies branded them as communists, and in 1953 and 1954, the CIA orchestrated coups against both governments, in violation of the UN charter. The US gave its support to the Shah who became a dictator. Our actions in Iran would later come back to haunt us.

Cold War Hot Spots • Roots of US Involvement in Vietnam In Vietnam in 1945, when the Japanese were expelled, the French moved to crush a national independence movement led by Ho Chi Minh and reassert its colonial rule. Anti-communism pulled the United States deeper into involvement in southeast Asia. Following a policy set by Truman, Eisenhower gave billions of dollars in aid for French efforts, and by the early 1950s, the United States was paying for four-fifths of the costs of France’s war in Vietnam.

Vietnam • Vietnam But Eisenhower did not sent U.S. troops in 1954, when French forces were on the verge of defeat. Rejecting National Security Council advice to use nuclear weapons, Eisenhower left France no choice but to concede Vietnamese independence. A peace conference in Geneva divided Vietnam temporarily into northern and southern districts, with elections in 1956 set to unify the country.

Vietnam War’s Roots • Vietnam But the anti-communist southern leader Ngo Dinh Diem, at the suggestion of the United States, refused to hold elections, which both parties knew would result in communist victory. Diem’s Catholicism and his ties to landlords in a country of small famers and Buddhists alienated him from many Vietnamese, and only U.S. aid let his regime survive. By 1960, Diem faced a guerrilla war launched by the communist-led National Liberation Front.

While the U.S. worked to contain communism on the ground, they suffered a serious setback in space. In 1957, the Soviets launched the Sputnik I satellite into orbit around the earth. Fearing Soviet dominance of space, Congress approved funding to create NASA. Federal funding for education for the first time in math and science. The arms race was now joined by a space race.

The Impact of Sputnik • Sputnik opened the door for Democrats to criticize Eisenhower. By 1960, the Democrats were hard at capitalizing on a growing perception that America had fallen behind, become complacent. John F. Kennedy would benefit from this perception. • Critics on both the left and the right spoke of a missile-gap. (It did exist, but Eisenhower couldn’t say anything or else expose US spying on the USSR.)

Section Review QuickTake Quiz Know It, Show It Quiz

Describe the causes and results of the arms race between the United States and Soviet Union.