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... in 1965. China threatened India and aided Pakistan. Khrushchev fell from power in October 1964.
The new Soviet leaders tried to heal the split with China. But Premier Aleksei N. Kosygin and General Secretary Leonid I. Brezhnev were unable to reunite the Communist bloc. In 1966, China launched a "cultural revolution. " One aim of this revolution was to eliminate all Soviet influence from China. The Chinese accused the Soviet Union of betraying world Communism and being secret allies of the United States.
The Chinese threat to the Soviet Union became more real when China exploded its first hydrogen bomb in June 1967. In March 1969, Soviet and Chinese troops began to fight each other on an island in the frozen Ussuri River. This river is the border between Chinese Manchuria and the Soviet Union's maritime territories. Both countries claimed they owned the island. The fighting soon ended, but the border controversy remained unsettled. Some of the Soviet Union's satellites also shifted their loyalty.
Albania had sided with China in 1961, and neither China nor Albania attended the 23 rd Communist Party Congress in Moscow in 1965. Yugoslavia remained independent, with its own brand of "national Communism. " Other Communist nations, including Romania, Poland, and Cuba, loosened their ties with the U. S. S. R. Differences also sharpened among the Western nations.
President Charles de Gaulle of France challenged the leadership of the United States and the United Kingdom. France established diplomatic relations with China in 1964, and sharply criticized U. S. policy in the Vietnam War.
At de Gaulle's request, NATO moved its military headquarters from France in 1967, and the French withdrew their troops from the alliance. France also blocked the United Kingdom's entry into the European Economic Community (EEC). In 1967, de Gaulle further strengthened France's relations with the U. S. S.
R. and Eastern Europe. In June of that year, France sided with the Arabs against Israel in the Arab-Israeli War. In 1968, France exploded a hydrogen bomb. The growing strength of Europe was another factor in the changing nature of the Cold War. More than 20 years after the end of World War II, the nations of Western Europe were enjoying prosperity.
The EEC, also called the European Common Market, had become a powerful economic force. Western European nations gradually increased trade with Communist countries. Many Western European leaders worried more about Germany's return to power than about the U. S.
S. R. Soviet-American relations in the 1960 's reflected the changing nature of the Cold War. In 1966, the U. S. S.
R. and the United States agreed to permit direct air service between Moscow and New York City. By January 1967, they and 60 other nations had signed the first international treaty providing for the peaceful exploration and use of outer space. President Johnson and Premier Kosygin met for the first time in June 1967.
Kosygin went to the United States to address the UN General Assembly. The two leaders met in Glassboro, New Jersey, and discussed the Vietnam War, the Arab-Israeli dispute, and arms control. In August 1967, the U. S. S. R.
and the United States submitted proposals at the Geneva Disarmament Conference for a treaty to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. In 1968, they agreed on an addition to the treaty providing for international inspection and controls. The U. S. Senate approved it in 1969. The treaty, called the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, went into effect on March 5, 1970, after being ratified (formally approved) by the United States, the U.
S. S. R. , the United Kingdom, and more than 40 other nations. Since then, a vast majority of all nations have ratified it. In 1969, Soviet and U.
S. representatives began a series of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). The representatives worked toward an agreement to control the production of nuclear weapons. The invasion of Czechoslovakia. Hopes for an easing of Cold War tensions in Europe were jolted in August 1968, when Soviet, Bulgarian, East German, Hungarian, and Polish troops invaded Czechoslovakia.
The invasion halted a move by Czechoslovakia to give more individual freedom to the its people. In October, Czechoslovakia and the U. S. S.
R. signed a treaty that allowed Soviet troops to remain and assured that Czechoslovakia would continue as a Soviet satellite. The battle for the neutral nations continued in the 1960 's. In Latin America, the United States still guarded against the threat of Communism. In April and May 1965, the United States, at the request of the Dominican Republic, sent troops to the Dominican Republic to prevent a Communist take-over during a revolt there.
The crisis eased, and the United States troops left. In the Middle East, a six-day war broke out between Israel and the Arab powers in June 1967. The United States backed the Israelis. The U. S. S.
R. helped arm the Arabs before the war began, but this did not prevent their defeat. Scattered fighting continued in the area during the late 1960 's. The United States and the U.
S. S. R. increased aid to the opposing sides. In Africa, most of the newly independent nations remained neutral. They took aid from all the major Cold War powers.
The Vietnam War threatened to turn the Cold War into a general hot war. During the early 1960 's, the United States stepped up its support of South Vietnam against the Communist Viet Cong forces. The United States blamed the struggle on Communist North Vietnam, viewing the war as "aggression from the north. " The United States gradually escalated (increased) its military effort. In 1965, it began large-scale bombing of North Vietnam.
By 1968, over 500, 000 U. S. troops were in Vietnam. The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese received war materials from the Soviet Union and China. The fighting spread throughout Indochina.
Cambodia and Laos, both of which bordered South Vietnam, tried to stay neutral. But Communist forces used both countries as bases for raids into South Vietnam, and the two nations were drawn into the war. Thailand backed the West in the struggle. The United States used bases there for bombing raids on North Vietnam.
Peace talks started in Paris in May 1968. But the talks stalled, and the fighting went on. In 1969, the United States established new training programs to help the South Vietnamese take over most of the fighting. This policy became known as Vietnamization.
Also in 1969, President Richard M. Nixon began to gradually reduce the number of U. S. soldiers in Vietnam. In 1973, the United States completed its withdrawal of ground forces. The war ended in 1975, after Communist troops conquered South Vietnam.
See Vietnam War. The Cold War in the 1970 's The loosening of ties among members of both the Communist and Western blocs during the 1960 's led to new international relationships in the 1970 's. Several Communist and democratic nations developed friendlier relations with one another, helping ease tensions. In 1970, West Germany and Poland signed a treaty to reject the use of force and to recognize the boundaries created in Europe after World War II. West Germany and the Soviet Union ratified a similar treaty in 1972. The status of West Berlin, a major Cold War problem, was settled in the early 1970 's.
France, the United Kingdom, the U. S. S. R. , and the United States signed an agreement in 1971 stating that West Berlin was not part of West Germany. The Berlin agreement also allowed free movement of traffic between West Germany and West Berlin.
The pact took effect in 1972, after details were worked out. In 1973, East and West Germany joined the UN. Also in 1973, the United Kingdom finally entered the European Community. The increased economic ties among the organization's member nations made Western Europe a powerful, independent force in world affairs. Japan also began acting more independently of U. S.
policies. China's relations with the West improved in the early 1970 's. Canada and several other Western nations established diplomatic relations with Communist China for the first time. China was admitted to the UN in October 1971. In February 1972, Nixon visited China for seven days.
During the visit, Nixon and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai agreed to increase contacts between their two countries. In 1979, the United States and China established diplomatic relations. As part of the agreement, the United States ended diplomatic ties with Taiwan. In 1972, Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev signed two agreements, together known as SALT I, to limit the production of U.
S. and Soviet nuclear weapons. SALT stands for Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. In 1979, the two countries signed another pact, SALT II, limiting long-range bombers and missiles. But SALT II did not go into effect officially.
The U. S. Senate stopped considering the treaty after Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan in late 1979 and early 1980. The Cold War after 1980 Cold War tensions increased in the early 1980 's.
The renewed friction resulted chiefly from the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and from continued American fear of Soviet and Cuban influence in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Central America. United States President Ronald Reagan and his administration adopted a policy they called linkage, tying any U. S. arms agreement to consideration of Soviet expansion.
Meanwhile, the growing military power of the Soviet Union led the United States to increase its defense budget. Many observers thought the U. S. defense build-up would lead to a more dangerous nuclear arms race. But events in the late 1980 's led to a sharp reduction in U. S. -Soviet tensions.
In 1987, Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed a treaty to eliminate many of the ground-launched, nuclear missiles of both nations. The treaty went into effect in 1988. In 1988 and 1989, the U. S. S.
R. withdrew its troops from Afghanistan. Also in the late 1980 's, the Soviet Union began to reduce its conventional military forces in Eastern Europe. In the U. S. S.
R. , Gorbachev worked for a more decentralized economic system and allowed more democracy and freedom of expression. He also encouraged similar actions in Eastern Europe. Beginning in 1989, Communist rule came to an end in a number of Eastern European countries, including Poland, Hungary, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia. In addition, East Germany began to allow its people to pass freely to West Berlin through the Berlin Wall, and the East Germans soon began to tear the wall down. Germany was reunified in 1990, when East Germany united with West Germany. In 1991, the Soviet Communist Party lost control of the Soviet government.
Later that year, the Soviet Union was dissolved, and the republics that made up the nation became independent states. Russia was by far the largest of these states. In 1992, Russian President Boris Yeltsin and U. S. President George H. W.
Bush formally declared that their countries did not regard each other as potential enemies. These events marked the end of the Cold War. Contributor: Burton I. Kaufman, Ph.
D. , Professor of History, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. How to cite this article: To cite this article in a footnote, World Book recommends the following format: Burton I. Kaufman, "Cold War, " World Book Online Americas Edition, web May 12, 2002. To cite this article in a bibliography, or to learn about other citation formats, read our help page about citations, or ask your teacher or librarian for help.
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Research essay sample on U S S R Cold War Tensions
