BLOC POLITICS

There were two blocs- the western bloc and the eastern bloc.

WESTERN BLOC-

• The western bloc was formalized into an organization, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which came into existence in April 1949.

• It was an association of twelve states which declared that armed attack on any one of them in Europe or North America would be regarded as an attack on all of them.

• Each of these states would be obliged to help the other.

EASTERN BLOC-

• The eastern bloc, known as the Warsaw Pact, was led by the Soviet Union. It was created in 1955 and its principal function was to counter NATO’s forces in Europe.

• International alliances during the Cold War era were determined by the requirements of the superpowers and the calculations of the smaller states.

• Europe became the main arena of conflict between the superpowers.

• In some cases, the superpowers used their military power to bring countries into their respective alliances.

• Soviet intervention in east Europe provides an example.

The Soviet Union used its influence in eastern Europe, backed by the very large presence of its armies in the countries of the region, to ensure that the eastern half of Europe remained within its sphere of influence.

In East and Southeast Asia and in West Asia (Middle East), the United States built an alliance system called the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization and the Central Treaty Organization.

The Soviet Union and communist China responded by having close relations with regional countries such as North Vietnam, North Korea and Iraq.

The Cold War threatened to divide the world into two alliances.

• Under these circumstances, many of the newly independent countries, after gaining their independence from the colonial powers such as Britain and France, were worried that they would lose their freedom as soon as they gained formal independence.

• Cracks and splits within the alliances were quick to appear.

• Communist China quarreled with the USSR towards the late 1950s, and, in 1969, they fought a brief war over a territorial dispute.

• The other important development was the Non-Aligned Movement, which gave the newly independent countries a way of staying out of the alliances.

CUBAN CRISIS

In October 1962, an American U-2 spy plane secretly photographed nuclear missile sites being built by the Soviet Union on the island of Cuba.

PRESIDENT KENNEDY-

• President Kennedy did not want the Soviet Union and Cuba to know that he had discovered the missiles.

• He met in secret with his advisors for several days to discuss the problem.

• After many long and difficult meetings, Kennedy decided to place a naval blockade, or a ring of ships, around Cuba.

• The aim of this "quarantine," as he called it, was to prevent the Soviets from bringing in more military supplies.

• He demanded the removal of the missiles already there and the destruction of the sites. On October 22, President Kennedy spoke to the nation about the crisis in a televised address.

• No one was sure how Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev would respond to the naval blockade and US demands.

• But the leaders of both superpowers recognized the devastating possibility of a nuclear war and publicly agreed to a deal in which the Soviets would dismantle the weapon sites in exchange for a pledge from the United States not to invade Cuba.

• In a separate deal, which remained secret for more than twenty-five years, the United States also agreed to remove its nuclear missiles from Turkey.

• Although the Soviets removed their missiles from Cuba, they escalated the building of their military arsenal; the missile crisis was over, the arms race was not.

• In 1963, there were signs of a lessening of tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States.

• In his commencement address at American University, President Kennedy urged Americans to reexamine Cold War stereotypes and myths and called for a strategy of peace that would make the world safe for diversity.

• Two actions also signaled a warming in relations between the superpowers: the establishment of a teletype "Hotline" between the Kremlin and the White House and the signing of the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty on July 25, 1963.

  The Cuban Missile Crisis was a high point of what came to be known as the Cold War.

  The Cold War referred to the competition, the tensions and a series of confrontations between the United States and Soviet Union, backed by their respective allies.