Chapter 25 American Yawp

Long Telegram

Telegram written to the US State department from George Kennan who worked at the US Embassy in Moscow. He alarmed them that the Soviet Union had to be contained because the Soviet Union had plans for expansionism of their communism ideology

Churchill's curtain

Former Prime Minister of Britain spoke about the "Iron Curtain" that split Europe, West mostly democratic and East communist.

Cold War

grew out of a failure to achieve a durable settlement among leaders from the "Big Three" Allies—the US, Britain, and the Soviet Union to shape the postwar order

"long roots" of it all

An alliance of convenience during World War II to bring down Hitler's Germany was not enough to erase decades of mutual suspicions.

-The two powers (US and Soviet Union) were brought together only by their common enemy, and, without that common enemy, there was little hope for cooperation

Security Council

An important division of the United Nations that contains five permanent members — the United States, Britain, China, France, and Russia — and ten rotating members. It is often called into session to respond quickly to international crises.

Mr. X

George Kennan warned that Americans should "continue to regard the Soviet Union as a rival, not a partner," since Stalin harbored "no real faith in the possibility of a permanent happy coexistence of the Socialist and capitalist worlds."

Truman Doctrine

--"Europe's impoverished masses"

the principle that the US should give support to countries or peoples threatened by Soviet forces or communist insurrection. First expressed in 1947 by US President Truman in a speech to Congress seeking aid for Greece and Turkey, the doctrine was seen by the communists as an open declaration of the Cold War.

- Blizzards and freezing cold halted coal production. Factories closed. Unemployment spiked

- American officials worried that Europe's impoverished masses were increasingly vulnerable to Soviet propaganda

Marshall Plan (part of "containment"?)

pumped enormous sums into Western Europe. From 1948-1952 the US invested $13 billion toward reconstruction while simultaneously loosening trade barriers

- designed to rebuild Western Europe, open markets, and win European support for capitalist democracies

"Allied airlift"

the Soviet Union initiated a ground blockade, cutting off rail and road access to West Berlin (landlocked within the Soviet occupation zone) to gain control over the entire city. The United States organized and coordinated a massive airlift that flew essential supplies into the beleaguered city for eleven months, until the Soviets lifted the blockade on May 12, 1949

NATO v. Warsaw Pact

American officials launched the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance (NATO), a mutual defense pact in which the US and Canada were joined by England, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland. The Soviet Union would formalize its own collective defensive agreement in 1955, the Warsaw Pact, which included Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and East Germany.

1949 escalated the Cold War

--Mao & "loss of China"

--Soviet bomb

when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) led by Mao Tse-tung declared victory against "Kuomintang" Nationalists led by the Western-backed Chiang Kai-shek.

-Coming so soon after the Soviet Union's successful test of an atomic bomb

NSC-68

National Security Memorandum 68:urged a "rapid build-up of political, economic, and military strength" in order to "roll back the Kremlin's (Russia)drive for world domination

Korean War

--hot war?

--Big Mac v. Truman

fighting erupted in Korea between communists in the north and American-backed anti-communists in the south

- North Koreans launched a successful surprise attack and Seoul, the capital of South Korea, fell to the communists on June 28

-General MacArthur, growing impatient and wanting to eliminate the communist threats, requested authorization to use nuclear weapons against North Korea and China. Denied, MacArthur publicly denounced Truman. Truman, unwilling to threaten World War III and refusing to tolerate MacArthur's public insubordination, dismissed the General in April.

MAD

Both sides, then, would theoretically be deterred from starting a war, through the logic of "mutually-assured destruction," (MAD). Oppenheimer likened the state of "nuclear deterrence" between the US and the USSR to "two scorpions in a bottle, each capable of killing the other," but only by risking their own lives

"atomic culture"

Anti-nuclear protests in the United States and abroad warned against the perils of nuclear testing and highlighted the likelihood that a thermonuclear war would unleash a global environmental catastrophe

ICBM

After the end of the war, American and Soviet rocket engineering teams worked to adapt German technology in order to create an intercontinental ballistic missile

Sputnik

They even used the same launch vehicle on October 4, 1957, to send Sputnik 1, the world's first human-made satellite, into orbit. It was a decisive Soviet propaganda victory

"space race"

John Kennedy would use America's losses in the "space race" to bolster funding for a moon landing.

"duck and cover"

In the early 1950s, the Federal Civil Defense Administration (FDCA) began preparing citizens for the worst. Schoolchildren were instructed, via a film featuring Bert the Turtle, to "duck and cover" beneath their desks in the event of a thermonuclear war.25

DARPA

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

As a secretive military research and development operation, ARPA was tasked with funding and otherwise overseeing the production of sensitive new technologies

- develop the world's first system of "network packing switches" and computer networks would begin connecting to one another.

McCarthy and his hunt

"McCarthyism" was only a symptom of a massive and widespread anti-communist hysteria that engulfed Cold War America

Rosenburgs & Hiss (convicted?)

Rosenburgs were accused of passing secret bomb-related documents onto Soviet officials and were indicted and later executed

-Hiss was convicted on two counts of perjury

HUAC

The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having Communist ties.

EO9835 ("loyalty"?)

The order established the first general loyalty program in the United States, designed to root out communist influence in the U.S. federal government.

McCarran and Comm. Control Acts

mandated all "communist organizations" to register with the government, gave the government greater powers to investigate sedition, and made it possible to prevent suspected individuals from gaining or keeping their citizenship

"Popular Front"

many communists joined the "Popular Front," an effort to make communism mainstream by adapting it to American history and American culture

J.E. Hoover

was the longtime director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

-took an active role in the domestic battle against communism

"Are you now or..."

HUAC made repeated visits to Hollywood during the 1950s, and their interrogation of celebrities often began with the same intimidating refrain: "Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?

"age of anxiety"

second red scare

"godless communism"

--pledge; motto; monuments

American religion was facing a battle of godless communism vs God-fearing Americanism

-Politicians infused government w/religious symbols, The Pledge of Allegiance was altered to include 'one nation under God"

-The official national motto was "In God We Trust"

- Monuments of the Ten Commandments went to court houses and city halls across the country

"'Judeo-Christian' heritage" now?

many Americans began to believe that just believing in almost any religion was better than being an atheist

"McCarthy soldiered on . . .

--Murrow

--"red-baiting"

McCarthy charged that Gen. George Marshall had fallen to conspiracy against the US

-CBS anchor Edward Marrow said that McCarthys actions had caused alarm and dismay

-McCarthyism tactics he perfected continued to be practiced long after his death. "Red-baiting," the act of smearing a political opponent by linking them to communism or some other demonized ideology, persevered.

"movements for social justice"

from civil rights to gay rights to feminism, were all suppressed under Cold War conformity.

Dominoes theory?

Unless Soviet power in Asia was halted, Chinese influence would ripple across the continent, and one country after another would "fall" to communism. Easily transposed onto any region of the world

-became a standard basis for the justification of US interventions abroad

"military industrial complex"

the Cold War facilitated a new permanent defense establishment

- informal alliance between a nation's military and the arms industry which supplies it

- both sides benefit--one side from obtaining war weapons, and the other from being paid to supply them

"proxy wars" (so, not always a "cold" war?"

the US and the USSR engaged in numerous proxy wars in the "Third World."

Smith-Mundt

to "promote a better understanding of the United States in other countries."

- in order to showcase American values through its artists and entertainers

"prominent American black radicals"

arguing that the United States had inherited the racist European imperial tradition

-Soviet Union pointed to injustices of the American South as an example of American hypocrisy: how could the United States claim to fight for global freedom when it refused to guarantee freedoms for its own citizenry?