The Cold War: Reescalation and the End of the Cold War

1980s Final Shift

rise of nationalist movements in Middle East + Reagan who rejects detente = re-escalation of Cold War tensions & eventual end of the Cold War

The Cold War Spheres of Power: Reescalation + End of Cold War

• Middle East Sphere: 1979-1989: US influence in Middle East is threatened and reasserted

• Soviet Sphere: 1980-1989: Reescalation and ending the Cold War

• The Chinese Sphere: 1980-1989: China remains communist

Middle East Sphere: Reescalation of Cold War

1979-1989: US influence in Middle East is threatened and reasserted

• Anti-American Sentiment rises

• 1979: Iranian Revolution

• The Soviet-Afghan War

• 1979: Iran-Iraq War

• 1980: The Carter Doctrine

Anti-American Sentiment rises

• Following the US support for the Shah in 1953, a group of Iranians began to build a deeper distrust for the United States and the Shah

Iranian Revolution

1979: Iranian Revolutionaries (revolution breaks out):

• Anti-American, Anti-Shah Iranians

• Generally young, college-age students

• Embraced traditional Islam and Iranian = enraged by Hjab ban

Ayatollah Khomeini: leader taking Shahs place in1979

(Shah leaves to US for cancer treatment (PANICS US)

• Iran rebirth: very conservative theocracy → laws based on his interpretation of Islam

Significance for US: Region no longer feels managed

• Iran (religious state = hostility) vs Israel (Jewish)

• Lost key ally, Shah =

  • could respark other nationalist revolutions

  • Fear of Soviet helping Khomeini

  • Fear for oil supply

    • = lean into relationship with Saudi Arabia

US diplomatic response to Iran Revolution

suspended diplomatic relations with Iran and began to impose sanctions (hope is w/ isolating them economically they might collapse)

• still in place today (can’t just hop on a plane to Iran who is still theocracy/same regime little due process) 

Background on Afghanistan

(lots of parallels w/ Iran but also diff)

• The Democratic Republic of Afghanistan was formed in 1978, = communist puppet gov for soviet union

• socialist agenda: government began a process of modernization getting rid of traditional Muslim practices to try to Sovietize/secularization country (like Iran who tried to Americanize)

The Soviet-Afghan War

• Opposition group, Mujahideen, began to rise up in war against the Afghan communist gov

• The communist gov soon called on support from the Soviet Union = sending $, weapons, soldiers to prop them up

• Unable to control Mujahideen → ends up being like Vietnam, where rag-tag farmers have greater stamina, ideological strength than expected

US Significance: one of the first time seeing organic uprising against communist (tho not for democracy but still anti-communist) could this spread…? :)

• US saw as opportunity to destabilize soviet Union

• Decide to back Mujahideen with $ and weapons

  • Key figure: Osama Bin Laden (terrorist) in Mujahideen (former of Al-Qaeda and Sept 11) who is getting training, $, weapons from US

• War ends Mujahideen splits: Al-Qaeda + remaining members govern via Taliban

• Regime = repressive, gender, farming (poppy → sell to ppl who process heroin)

Iran-Iraq War

Saddam Hussein is dictator of Iraq (1979) and he wants to grow the Iraqi empire → want to take over weak Khomeini Iran

• US sends money and weapons to assist Hussein in taking out Khomeini (anti-American)

  • This, like with Bin Laden, will come back to haunt us down the road

• Revolutionaries took Americans at the embassy hostage and tried to use that to negotiate with the US

  • Carter sent a mission to liberate them and it failed

The Carter Doctrine

1980:

• US will use any means necessary to resist anyone who tries to take control of the Persian Gulf (backing away from Detente, no negotiating, assessing, talking; we are just getting involved in any way we see fit) (persian gulf is oil rich, US cares because it needs oil)

  • Basically we intervene if we see things that aren’t in our vital interests (if our access to oil is being hindered - oil is vital to the US)

The Soviet Sphere: Reescalation and ending the Cold War

1980-1989

• Reagan

• Strategic Defense Initiative

• Gorbachev + Reagan negotiations

  • 1987 INF Treaty

Reagan

• Republican, 1980-1988

• Strongly opposed detente for pragmatic and ideological reasons (also opposed new deal/great society)

  • Pragmatic: Believed that the USSR posed a bigger threat than Nixon and Carter had perceived–we were miscalculating our risk

  • Ideological: Believed that in negotiating with the USSR and China we were ceding the moral high ground in the Cold War

• Wanted to scale-back gov + “firm up” America’s anti-Communist stance through a re-envisioning of containment and Mutually Assured Destruction 

Strategic Defense Initiative

Space based defense system to cover the US and shoot down their missiles with lasers (bullet proof vest)

• Containment + MAD 2.0

Gorbachev + Reagan negotiations

Same goal for peace but dont agree on arms control issue but different means

• Chenobyl: nuclear power plan issue reveals Gorbachev is diff from other soviet leaders → ppl r suffering and doesn’t have economic means to pull of SDI

Gorbachev cannot get Reagan to relinquish SDI so he folds and ends Cold War

• 1987 INF Treaty:

  • eliminate class of weapons (reducing not eliminating arms)

  • Perestroika → introduces elements of capitalism into Soviet economy

  • Glasnost → introduces elements of democracy into the Soviets

  • USSR withdraw from Afghanistan: let Mushahedied win bc communism was no longer affordable

Result of Cold War

Eastern Block (soviet sphere)

• Reforms/Revolutions in:

  • Afghanistan

  • Poland

  • East Germany

  • Bulgaria

  • Czechoslovakia

  • Soviet Union 

• Soviet Response:

  • Try to preserve communism through reforms

  • When reforms give way to demands for full scale democracy/capitalism then they give in.

• Communism ends from the inside, not the outside
  

China

• Rebellion

  • Tiananmen Square: the government murders the people, news blackout (no US pushback besides sanctions)

• Chinese Response

  • Communism is preserved