Examine in brief the rise and fall of the Cold War. (2016, 15 Marks)
The Cold War (1947–1991) was a strategic and ideological rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union in which the principals never fought each other directly. Bernard Baruch applied the term in April 1947 and Walter Lippmann popularised it. Its rise is best read as a security dilemma hardened by ideology, and its fall as a choice made in Moscow.
The rise: from wartime partners to two camps
- Inherited suspicion: the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the delayed second front and the Manhattan Project made the alliance one of convenience; Yalta and Potsdam divided Europe without agreeing what the division meant.
- A vacuum with two claimants: German and Japanese collapse left two states to fill the vacuum. Kenneth N. Waltz treats rivalry as built into bipolarity itself.
- Action and reaction: the failed Baruch Plan (1946), George F. Kennan’s containment, the Truman Doctrine (12 March 1947) and the Marshall Plan were answered by the Cominform, COMECON and the Berlin Blockade (1948–49); NATO (1949) and the Warsaw Pact (1955) followed.
- Ideological totality: each side treated the other’s social system as illegitimate. The post-revisionism of John Lewis Gaddis and Melvyn P. Leffler holds both responsible, though not equally.
Oscillation and globalisation
| Phase | Logic | Landmark |
|---|---|---|
| 1947–53 | Blocs formed | Berlin airlift, Korea |
| 1953–62 | Limits found by crossing them | Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962 |
| 1962–79 | Managed rivalry (détente) | PTBT, SALT I and ABM, Helsinki |
| 1979–85 | Second Cold War | Afghanistan, Euromissiles, SDI |
| 1985–91 | Endgame | INF Treaty, Malta |
Odd Arne Westad (The Global Cold War, 2005) shows that the contest ran hottest in the Third World, through interventions and proxy wars from Korea to Angola and Afghanistan. Srinath Raghavan (1971, 2013) places Bangladesh’s war in that frame: the Indo-Soviet Treaty of 9 August 1971 answered a US–China–Pakistan alignment, even as Jawaharlal Nehru’s non-alignment remained the South’s attempt to stay outside both blocs.
The fall: one side stops competing
- Exhaustion of the Soviet model: growth stalled, defence absorbed an unusually large share of output, clients drained resources, and the 1986 oil-price collapse cut hard-currency earnings.
- Mikhail Gorbachev’s “new thinking” treated the arms race and empire as costs: the INF Treaty (1987), the Afghan withdrawal (February 1989) and the “Sinatra Doctrine” in place of the Brezhnev Doctrine let East European regimes and the Berlin Wall fall within months.
- The formal end: at Malta (December 1989) Gorbachev and George H. W. Bush declared the confrontation over, without signing any agreement. Moscow backed Resolution 678 against its former client Iraq, Germany reunified inside NATO, and the USSR dissolved on 26 December 1991.
- Rival explanations: realists stress material decline and Ronald Reagan’s build-up; constructivists such as Alexander Wendt stress changed identity, since nothing in the balance required a peaceful, unilateral retreat.
Conclusion
The Cold War rose from structure and stayed total because of ideology; it ended because one leadership chose to stop competing faster than its system could absorb. That asymmetry makes today’s “Cold War 2.0” analogy with US–China rivalry imperfect, even though New START’s expiry on 5 February 2026 removed the last binding cap on the two largest arsenals.