23.2: Major Cold War Conflicts

Fortunately, the Cold War never turned into a “hot” war between the two superpowers, despite close calls like that of the Cuban Missile Crisis. However, many conflicts in the postwar era represented a combination of battles for independence from European empires and proxy wars between the two camps of the Cold War.

Korea

Since 1910, Korea had been occupied by Japan, part of Japan’s bid to create an East Asian and Pacific empire that culminated in the Pacific theater of World War II. After the defeat of Japan, Korea was divided between a communist north and an anti-communist republican south. In 1950, North Korean troops supported with Soviet arms and allied Chinese troops invaded the south in the name of reuniting the country under communist rule. A United Nations force consisting mostly of the U.S. army fought alongside South Korean troops against the North Korean and Chinese forces.

Figure 23.1: An armistice was signed on July 27, 1953. The agreement drew a new boundary near the 38th parallel that gave South Korea an extra 1,500 square miles of territory; and created a 2-mile-wide “demilitarized zone” that still exists today.

In 1945, Vietnamese insurgents declared Vietnam's independence from France. As a result, French forces hastily invaded in an attempt to hold onto the French colony of Indochina. When the Korean War exploded a few years later, the United States intervened to support France, convinced by the events in Korea that communism was spreading like a virus across Asia. As U.S. involvement grew, orders for munitions and equipment revitalized the Japanese economy, and a strong political alliance between the U.S. and Japanese governments emerged.

After three years of bloody fighting, the Korean War ended in a stalemate. Both sides agreed to a cease fire, and a demilitarized zone was established. Technically, the war has never officially ended, with the truce remaining in place to this day. The conflict was costly with an estimated three million casualties. As South Korea evolved into a modern, technologically advanced and politically democratic society, the north devolved into a nominally “communist” tyranny in which poverty and famine were tragic realities of life.

Vietnam

The Korean War energized the U.S. obsession with preventing the spread of communism. Against the bitter protests of the British and French, U.S. President Truman insisted that West Germany be allowed to rearm in order to help bolster the anti-Soviet alliance. As French forces suffered growing defeats in Indochina, the US ramped up its commitment in order to prevent another Asian nation from becoming a communist state. The “domino effect” seemed entirely plausible at the time. Across the U.S. political spectrum, there was a strong consensus that communism could be held in check primarily by the application of military force.

The Vietnam War (or the American War as it is called in Vietnam) is one of the most controversial in U.S. History. The conflict was as much about colonialism and imperialism as it was about communism: the essential motivation of the North Vietnamese forces was the desire to seize genuine independence from foreign powers. The war itself was an outgrowth of the conflict between the Vietnamese and their French colonial masters, one that eventually dragged in the United States.

Dating the start of the war is difficult. During World War II, the Japanese seized Vietnam from the French. However, after the Japanese defeat, the French tried to reassert control, putting a puppet emperor on the throne and moving their forces back into the country. Vietnamese independence leaders, principally the former Parisian college student Ho Chi Minh, led the communist North Vietnamese forces (the Viet Minh) in a vicious guerrilla war against the beleaguered French. The Soviet Union and China provided weapons and aid to the North Vietnamese, while the US anticipated its own (later) invasion by supporting the South.

Figure 23.2: Ho Chi Minh in 1946.

In 1954, the French were soundly defeated at Dien Bien Phu, a French fortress that was overwhelmed by the Viet Minh. The French retreated, leaving Vietnam torn between the communists in the north and a corrupt but anti-communist force in the south. From 1961 to 1968, U.S. involvement skyrocketed as the South Vietnamese proved unable to contain the Viet Minh and the south-Vietnamese insurgency called the Viet Cong. Over time, thousands of U.S. military “advisers,” which would become known as special forces, were joined by hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops. In 1964, citing a fabricated attack on an U.S. ship in the Gulf of Tonkin, President Lyndon Johnson called for a full-scale armed response, which opened the floodgates for a true commitment to the war. Technically, war was never declared. Thus, the entire conflict constituted a “police action” from the U.S. policy perspective.

Ultimately, U.S. and South Vietnamese forces were fought to a standstill by the Viet Minh and Viet Cong, with neither side winning a definitive victory. All the while, the war was becoming increasingly unpopular in the United States and its allied countries. As the years went by, journalists reported on how jungles were leveled by chemical agents and napalm, as well as the massacring of civilians. The United States resorted to a lottery system tied to conscription - “the draft” - in 1969, which forced U.S. men to fight in the jungles thousands of miles from home against their will. Despite the vast military commitment, by 1970, US and South Korean forces started to lose ground.

The entire youth movement of the 1960s and 1970s was deeply embedded in the anti-war stance caused by the mendacious press campaigns carried on by the US government, by atrocities committed against Vietnamese civilians, and by the deep unpopularity of the draft. In 1973, with U.S. citizens' approval for the war hovering at 30%, President Richard Nixon oversaw the withdrawal of U.S. troops, which ended support for the South Vietnamese. In 1975, the Viet Minh seized the capital of Saigon. The human cost was immense: over a million Vietnamese died, along with some 60,000 U.S. troops.

Figure 23.3: Borders of North and South Vietnam before the withdrawal of U.S. troops. Source: Asia Pacific Curriculum

In historical hindsight, one of the striking aspects of the Vietnam War was the relative absence of the Soviet Union. The USSR did provide some military supplies and financial aid to North Vietnamese forces, but it fell far short of any kind of sustained intervention along the U.S. model in the south. In other words, whereas the US regarded Vietnam as a crucial bulwark against the spread of communism, and subsequently engaged in a full-scale war as a result, the USSR remained circumspect, focusing on maintaining power and control in the eastern bloc itself.

Egypt and the Suez Canal

Egypt represents another case of an independence movement that became embedded in Cold War politics. Both superpowers played a major role in determining the future of a nation emerging from imperial control, although neither committed itself to war.

Since 1882, Egypt had been part of the British empire when it was seized during the Scramble for Africa. Although a degree of independence had been achieved after World War I, it remained squarely under British control in terms of its foreign policy. Likewise, the Suez Canal, which linked the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, was under the direct control of a Canal Company dominated by the British and French. In 1952, the Egyptian general Gamal Abdel Nasser overthrew the British regime and asserted complete Egyptian independence. The United States initially offered funds for a massive new dam on the Nile, but then Nasser made an arms deal with (communist) Czechoslovakia. The funds were denied, and Nasser reacted by opening talks with the Soviets, who offered funding and weapons in return for Egyptian cotton and for added influence in North Africa and the Middle East.

In 1956, Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. Henceforth, all of the traffic going through the vitally important canal would be regulated by Egypt directly. Immediately, Israeli, British, and French forces invaded Egypt. Enraged by the attack on a burgeoning ally, Russian Premier Khrushchev threatened nuclear strikes. In turn, President Dwight Eisenhower forcefully demanded that the Israelis, French, and British withdraw, threatening economic boycotts (all while attempting to reduce the volatility with the Soviets). The Israeli, French, and British forces withdrew. The “Suez Crisis” demonstrated that the US dominated the policy decisions of its allies almost as completely as the Soviets.

In the aftermath of the Suez Crisis, Egypt's control of the canal was assured. While generally closer to the USSR than the US in its foreign policy, the country tried to initiate a genuine "third way" between the two superpowers. Meanwhile, Egyptian leaders (all of them military leaders) called for Arab nationalism and unity in the Middle East as a way to stay independent of the Cold War.

Source: The Sun