The Super Summary of World History (85 page)

The Cold War was going to be something entirely new for planet Earth. Actions in the international arena were not what they might seem to be. Some event may have a hundred starting points, no real end point, and what actually occurred might be foggy at best and denied by everyone in every government everywhere. It is very hard to tell the history of something so close in time when a lot of emotional baggage is still around and documents are all but impossible to come by in some cases. The Cold War was fought with technology, spies, and nerves. Clandestine operations were often the key to everything, and secret operations are not disclosed by most governments until many years have passed—if ever.

Economics played a large part in the Cold War. In Europe, with US help, a recovery without precedent took place between the end of the war and 1970. The recovery rate in the output of goods exceeded 200 percent. In 1957 France, Italy, and Germany led the way in starting a customs union, the European Economic Community. This union was the precursor of the European Union. In Asia, Japan’s economy boomed with the Korean War era, and with American help Japan grew to a superpower, in economic terms anyway. The economic gap between the Soviet and American systems consistently widened during the entire Cold War period.

Soon after World War II, Winston Churchill, always good with a phrase, said that an
iron
curtain
had fallen across Eastern Europe. He was more right than he may have imagined. Once the Soviets were in control of an area, no one and no information came out of that area again. Stalin, the so-called man of steel, had placed an iron curtain over his empire and that curtain would hang about until 1989.

Before and during World War II the Soviet Union developed clandestine cells and placed them throughout the world with the idea of spreading the communist revolution through subversion and violence. If these revolutions took control of many small nations, and perhaps a few large ones, the communists would control the world de facto if not directly. They also placed spies at the highest levels of governments all over the world. The Soviets were masters of the game and managed to insert spies into the uppermost levels of the Nazi, Japanese, British, and American governments. In the case of the American and British governments they penetrated to the heart of the espionage communities and even the counterespionage units of these democracies.

Communist spies in the American nuclear development program stole the secrets of the atomic bomb and the hydrogen bomb, and gave them to the Soviets. The Soviets recruited many spies from the ranks of Britain’s top universities, mainly on ideological grounds, and simply waited until they entered the premier levels of government or technological work to extract secrets from them. The USSR placed spies at high levels of US Policy determination, in the US Treasury, and in many other important positions in the military and government bureaucracy. They even penetrated the American CIA and FBI, thereafter using these human resources to track what America knew about Soviet spies and to uncover American spies in the USSR. One spy was in the US Nuclear Submarine program and delivered to the Soviets complete details on how the US Navy was building super quiet submarines that were following the Soviet subs effectively. After these details were absorbed by the Soviets the United States could no longer track Soviet submarines, and many of these were nuclear missile submarines—also copied from American technological plans.

Throughout the Cold War the Americans were at a significant disadvantage in clandestine operations; and the Soviets easily matched the West’s technological miracles by simply stealing the technology. This saved the Soviets billions of dollars in development costs. It also kept the Soviets at par with the West militarily. Not only did the Soviets steal plans, they stole many of the actual technological units. As the Cold War progressed into the 1980s, President Reagan used this Soviet ability against the USSR by allowing them to steal purposely planted defective parts and computer chips used for operating complex equipment. Because the parts were designed to be defective and for the defect to be nearly impossible to unearth, tremendous damage was done to critical Soviet operations, such as their Siberian oil pipeline, by component failures. It was one of the very few American espionage successes during the Cold War.

The Cold War brought the United States and the Soviet Union into a dangerous and deadly arms race. Each nation constructed more and larger nuclear warheads, better missile delivery systems, better jet bombers and fighters, and a lot more. Submarines showed dramatic improvements, which included the ability for one ship to launch up to
sixteen
nuclear-armed missiles while submerged. These missiles were intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) carrying multiple independently targetable nuclear warheads. Each ICBM could carry up to ten warheads and each were capable of being sent to a different target. One missile could annihilate up to ten objectives. The Soviets constructed larger warheads, up to twenty megatons (twenty million tons of TNT), which was far more than the ten-kiloton bomb (ten thousand tons of TNT) that leveled Hiroshima. These multiple warhead ICBMs were installed on missile submarines thereby enabling one submarine to bring nuclear devastation to 160 targets.

As the Soviet warheads grew in power, the United States constructed hardened underground missile silos with the capability to withstand an atomic blast and still fire back. America maintained a number of B-52 bombers aloft at all times to enable them to attack the Soviet Union after an atomic attack on the United States and its airfields. The United States also placed missiles into mobile launchers and constantly drove them around the nation to make targeting them all but impossible. Another tool in the arsenal of second strike capability was the so-called doomsday tapes. It is said the hardened missile silos had computers which, once enabled, would fire their missiles at some predetermined future date even if everyone in the silo (or even the United States) was dead. As eerie as it may sound, everyone on earth could be dead from the nuclear war and months or years later the computers would still be launching continued atomic attacks on smoldering enemy landscapes.

The entire point to all of this military expenditure on the American side was to ensure the ability to strike back at the USSR after a surprise atomic attack on the United States. Much of this fear of a surprise attack was left over from Pearl Harbor and the resolve of the United States to never allow that kind of attack to happen again. In addition, the United States did not trust the Soviets or Stalin. They equated Stalin to Hitler, and the United States was determined to avoid any hint of appeasement. The name for this fantastic deterrent capability held by the Soviets and the United States was
Mutually
Assured
Destruction
(
MAD)
.
[335]
A fitting name, but what was amazing about the entire philosophy is—it worked. War itself was not banned by the atomic bomb; however, no nuclear exchange has taken place (yet) so a crazy sounding policy has worked for sixty-five plus years.

From 1945 to 2010, the United States of America exercised a strong stabilizing force on the world. For over fifty years the USA held the line against communism, aggression, and instability. In 2010, forces within the nation are eroding its ability to stand firm against new threats. As the United States shrinks from its former position of insuring stability the world will go through many changes akin to the withdrawal of Great Britain from the world stage after 1945, but with no nation to step into the void as a replacement. Instability and chaos may well result from the resulting world realignment.

Truman:
Neophyte
Cold
Warrior

1945
to
1952

Truman adopted a policy of
containment
regarding the Soviet Union and the communist threat. George Kennan, a State Department analyst, outlined this policy in 1947. Kennan assumed the Soviet Union would do everything in its power to spread communism. The purpose of the containment policy was to stop the USSR from spreading communism through invasion or subversion. To forward this policy, Truman gave aid to Greece in its war against communist insurgents, instituted the Marshall Plan to revitalize Western Europe, helped reconstruct West Germany to offset Soviet power, and fought the Korean War to repel a communist invasion. His problems included the loss of China to the Reds, large numbers of Soviet spies in the US Government and military, and his failure to remain ready to fight conventional wars.

During the Truman administration an American senator, Joe McCarthy, started a well publicized “commie hunt” within the US Government. Many of his accusations were challenged at the time, but a short window of opportunity opened for US intelligence when they broke the Soviet codes and began uncovering information about Soviet spies in the United States. The
Verona
decrypts
proved many communist spies were operating at high levels of the US Government and intelligence services. This window was closed when a Soviet spy operating
within
this
most
secret
unit
discovered the decrypts and the Soviets changed their codes. The press and the liberal establishment vilified McCarthy, and his name is still used as a weapon against anyone wanting to throw a wide net in search of traitors or spies. For some reason he is often associated with the House Un-American Activities Committee, but McCarthy was a US Senator and was
not
part of the House committee.

In 1949, Truman failed to prevent the communist takeover of China.
One
of
the
greatest
political,
diplomatic,
military,
and
strategic
failures
in
modern
history
was
the
loss
of
China
to
Mao
Zedong
and
the
communists.
The Kuomintang Army of General Chiang Kai-shek was corrupt to the core and a poor fighting unit by any measure; however, General Chiang Kai-shek was far better than any communist regime. At one point, the Kuomintang Army was about to crush Mao Zedong and his communists in spite of Soviet aid, but the United States stepped in and prevented what should have been the final assault on Mao. This American cease-fire let the communists regroup and then survive the attacks of Chiang. All of this was orchestrated by General George Marshall, famous for leading the US military throughout World War II, and the Marshall Plan that saved Europe from economic collapse after WWII. Somehow, his key role in the communist’s victory in China is ignored by history. (
The
Korean
War
is
covered
in
another
section.)

The fall of China to communism produced the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and a lot of international tension over Taiwan. The communists also conquered Tibet, oppressing and slaughtering its people by claiming it was part of China, and thereafter moved Chinese settlers into the region. In fact, Tibet was not and had not been part of China for centuries. The invasion went unnoticed by the West as Western media and governments ignored what was happening. Even today communist China is a major threat to the West. Red China opened its economy to some capitalist ways and it has prospered beyond all expectation; however, Red China and its leaders are still communist dictators who have taken the lives of millions in their quest for power. They will stop at nothing to keep themselves in power. Human life is not now, nor has it ever been, something to worry about for the communists. Human beings are alive to serve the state and no other reason.
The
sole
purpose
in
life
under
a
communist
regime
is
service
to
the
state
. These malefic dictators are no different than Stalin or Hitler, except for their extreme subtleness in presenting themselves to the world.

Truman did move dramatically in Europe in the aftermath of WWII. Europe was desolate, Germany was prostrate, and America was disarming rapidly. It was a recipe for disaster because the Soviet Union maintained its military power and Stalin awaited his chance to acquire the devastated area (he already had Eastern Europe). The communists could prevail by winning elections or subverting governments or waging guerrilla war. Stalin could “win” Western Europe without an invasion, and the attendant risk of a nuclear war, with subversive activities. Communist cells worked to convince the populace of Europe that capitalism had failed so they should turn to the East and communism to find a prosperous and peaceful future. The Americans sent General George Marshall to study the situation and he returned with a radical idea. The United States would have to rebuild Western Europe to save itself and democracy.