The Bipolar World And The Arms Race

The Emergence of the Bipolar World

The division between East and West, already sharp after World War II, was intensified by two major events. At the end of August 1949, the Soviets detonated their first atomic bomb, ending the American nuclear monopoly. On October 1, the People's Republic of China was proclaimed, governed by Mao Zedong's Chinese Communist Party.

Mao regarded the Americans as a threat to the security of his regime and, on February 14, 1950, signed an alliance treaty with the USSR.

A few months later, Korea became the scene of a dangerous confrontation between the United States and the newly formed Sino-Soviet alliance. Like Germany, postwar Korea had been divided between American and Soviet occupation forces, which established two separate administrations: a Communist government in the north and a pro-Western government in the south, separated roughly along the 38th parallel.

Kim Il Sung, leader of North Korea, wanted to reunify the country under his control. On June 25, 1950, with Soviet support in the form of weapons and military advisers, his army attacked and overwhelmed the South Korean forces, driving them into the southernmost part of the peninsula.

The Korean War

The United States intervened quickly in defense of South Korea, defeating the invading forces and not only restoring the original border but advancing north. On October 19, American forces entered Pyongyang.

At the same time, the United States began constructing a containment perimeter around China, strengthening its own position and that of its allies in Taiwan, the Philippines and Indochina.

In November, China, urged on by Stalin and threatened by the American presence around its borders, intervened with a massive offensive that forced American forces to retreat. Chinese troops reached Seoul, but after a series of bloody battles the border was restored along the 38th parallel.

The risk that the war could become a global conflict was substantial. General MacArthur wanted to extend the war into Chinese territory by attacking the bases supporting the North Korean offensive. Washington disagreed, and MacArthur was removed from command.

Despite their nuclear superiority—the United States had 841 warheads in 1952, compared with roughly fifty that the Soviets could use only near their own borders—the Americans were deterred from directly confronting the USSR and China by the dangerous alliance between the two powers, as well as by the possibility that the Soviets could easily invade much of Western Europe if necessary.

The war ended in 1953 with an armistice, facilitated by Stalin's death, since he had consistently obstructed a negotiated settlement. The Korean Peninsula was devastated, and more than three million people had lost their lives.

Containment Beyond Europe

As part of the containment strategy, in June 1953 the CIA secretly intervened in Iran to overthrow the independent government of Mohammad Mossadeq, who was nationalizing the country's oil resources, previously controlled by a British company. The operation helped install a pro-Western regime.

Meanwhile, the arms race continued. In 1952, the United States tested the first hydrogen bomb, Ivy Mike, which released 10.4 megatons of energy—almost one thousand times the yield of Little Boy, dropped on Hiroshima. The following year, the USSR detonated its first thermonuclear bomb. In 1954, the United States conducted another nuclear test in the Pacific, whose radiation was detected in Asia and even Europe.

The destructive potential of nuclear weapons was becoming unmistakable and alarming. Soviet scientists warned the Kremlin that the explosion of one hundred hydrogen bombs would make life on Earth impossible. India called on the United Nations to ban atmospheric nuclear tests.

Civilian initiatives also emerged, including the Einstein-Russell Manifesto of 1955 and, in 1958, the creation of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the first major collective movement dedicated to nuclear disarmament.

The Eisenhower administration, meanwhile, developed the strategy of “massive retaliation”, under which the United States would respond to aggression with its entire nuclear arsenal.

Khrushchev and “Peaceful Coexistence”

Stalin's death in March 1953 brought profound changes to the Soviet Union. In September, Nikita Khrushchev became First Secretary of the Communist Party. Around one million prisoners were released from the gulags, and Stalinist persecutions were brought to an end.

Prime Minister Malenkov called for “peaceful coexistence” between East and West. In light of the first Soviet hydrogen-bomb test, he recognized that a war would mean “the destruction of civilization on a worldwide scale”. The Leninist doctrine of an inevitable conflict between capitalism and communism was thus called into question.

Malenkov's statements failed to overcome American distrust and were not fully supported by Khrushchev, who was still consolidating his own authority at Malenkov's expense.

From 1954–55 onward, however, Soviet military and foreign policy increasingly reflected the substance of those statements, even as the USSR continued expanding its arsenal. Khrushchev chose to prioritize the development of intercontinental missiles carrying thermonuclear warheads, in order to close the strategic gap with the United States, while substantially reducing other military expenditures in favor of domestic needs.

The ability to strike American territory would create the possibility of mutual destruction and therefore strategic parity between the two superpowers. This would help contain the risk of war, and the concept of peaceful and equal coexistence became central to Kremlin propaganda.

The Third World Becomes a New Battlefield

At the same time, the USSR supported or cooperated with postcolonial independence movements and regimes, including those in Vietnam, India and Egypt.

After breaking with Israel because of the anti-Jewish persecutions during Stalin's final years, the Soviets moved closer to the Arab countries. In 1955, Khrushchev authorized Czechoslovakia to supply weapons to Egypt, seeking to establish ties with Arab nationalism.

Moscow's strategy was to worsen relations between the Arabs and the West and provoke an oil crisis.

The high point of Soviet support for independence movements came in 1959 with the Cuban Revolution. Fidel Castro overthrew the pro-American government and established a socialist regime, establishing relations with the USSR soon afterward.

The Soviets became convinced that the Third World would be the arena in which the confrontation with the West would ultimately be decided, while the Americans began to fear the spread of radical ideologies in those regions.

President John F. Kennedy, elected in 1960, responded by launching an aid program for Latin America and authorizing the CIA to organize the landing of 1,400 anti-Castro exiles at the Bay of Pigs on Cuba's southern coast. The operation was intended to overthrow Castro's regime but failed.

Berlin and the Cuban Missile Crisis

On August 13, 1961, the Soviets began construction of the Berlin Wall. On October 30 of the same year, they tested the most powerful hydrogen bomb ever detonated, known as the Tsar Bomba. It produced an estimated 50 megatons of energy—roughly four thousand times the yield of Little Boy.

The following year, the Cuban Missile Crisis brought tensions to their highest point.

After the United States installed medium-range missiles in Turkey and Italy, Khrushchev launched Operation Anadyr in May 1962, secretly transferring forty missiles of the same type and their nuclear warheads to Cuba.

In October, the Americans discovered the missile sites under construction, and Kennedy convened a crisis committee, the ExComm. On October 24, American forces went to the highest state of alert and imposed a naval blockade on Cuba.

On October 26, as an American offensive appeared imminent, Khrushchev offered to withdraw the missiles if Washington guaranteed that it would not attack Cuba. Castro, meanwhile, urged the Soviet leadership to launch a nuclear attack on the United States in the event of an American assault.

On October 27, Khrushchev proposed withdrawing the missiles if the Americans did the same in Turkey. A few hours later, the conflict came dangerously close to breaking out when an American reconnaissance aircraft flying over Cuba was shot down and the ExComm considered an immediate retaliatory strike.

Kennedy ultimately agreed publicly to the Soviets' first proposal and secretly to the second. The following day, Moscow announced the withdrawal of its missiles. The American missiles in Turkey were withdrawn several months later, provided that the Soviets kept the agreement secret.

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