The Cold War Part 5

Escalation & The Victory of Democracy

The End of Detente

De Gaulle’s Designs

Ostpolitik

The Helsinki Accords

The Arms Race Restarts

The Victory of Democracy

Changing of the Guard

Successes in Arms Control

Liberation of the Satellites

Germany Unites, Warsaw Pact Ends

The nations of Europe sought a solution to the endless political tension that has gripped the continent since the Second World War, while attempts at arms control didn't turn out exactly as planned. This era was largely shaped by the attempts of France and Germany to shape the situation in Europe in their own interest, and likewise by the failure to reach a comprehensive agreement on arms control.

When France's wartime leader Charles de Gaulle was called upon to resume power in 1958 amid the crisis in French Algeria, he began to plan for France's future prosperity in Europe.

Charles de Gaulle

He quickly divested the country of both its erstwhile province of Algeria as well as the remaining French colonial empire, then turned to strengthen the powers of the presidency.

President de Gaulle wished to restore France to its former place as the predominant power of Europe, and was deeply distrustful of the USSR and the U.S., believing they had carved up Europe for their own benefit.

After trying to negotiate a more powerful role for France inside NATO (which was rejected by the U.S.) he sought a more powerful role outside of it, developing France's own nuclear arsenal and using its clout to keep the U.K. from entering the EEC.

Negotiations with West Germany to create a security arrangement that would serve as the nucleus of a Western Europe powerful enough to manoeuvre on its own came to naught, as the Germans preferred the tried and true Americans as protectors.

Having failed in this, de Gaulle began the process of disengaging from NATO's integrated military command, ultimately announcing the withdrawal of French forces from NATO command and expelling NATO HQ and all American forces from France in March 1966.

These great plans came to nothing however, as in 1968 Student riots eroded de Gaulle's position, and economic troubles forced France to rely on emergency assistance from the U.S. and U.K.

French hopes for Soviet disengagement from Eastern Europe (to parallel hoped for American disengagement in the West) were dashed when the peaceful reforms in Czechoslovakia known as the Prague Spring were brutally crushed by a Warsaw Pact invasion in the summer of 1968.

Western Europe was forced to close ranks in the face of this aggression, and French hopes for a Western European community under their leadership subsided.

Under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer West Germany had taken a hard line with its eastern neighbour, as well as any state that dared recognize it (save the Soviet Union).

This particularly alarmed East Germany (whose legitimacy West Germany refused to recognize) and Poland (whose western border it refused to accept), but by the late 1960's this belligerence on West Germany's part began to change.

The West German politician Willy Brandt began the process of establishing relations with various countries of the communist bloc, and when elected chancellor in 1969 he both signed the NPT and vowed to accept the territorial boundaries of Europe as they existed.

Willy Brandt

These two gestures did much to assure Europe that its ultimate nightmare would not come to pass: a revanchist Germany armed with nuclear weapons.

One of the most symbolic moments of the Cold War came when Brandt, visiting the monument to the murdered Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, spontaneously fell to his knees before it. This event, translated as the 'Warsaw Genuflection', was seen as a symbol that West Germany had come to terms with its wartime legacy and was ready to move forward in its relations with the peoples of Eastern Europe.

In late 1972 East and West Germany signed a treaty establishing relations with one another, and in September of 1973 both states joined the United Nations. This served U.S. interests well, as it too was engaged in efforts to improve relations with the Soviet Bloc, as a part of the ongoing process of Detente.

Due to the rapid escalation in tensions between the Soviet and American led blocs at the end of the Second World War, there had never been a formal ratification of territorial changes resulting from that conflict.

By the early 1970's both sides sought a mutual reduction in the vast forces stationed in Europe (the Americans due to the excessive cost of the Vietnam War and high taxation, the Soviets to concentrate forces along their long and now unfriendly border with China).

After years of political manoeuvrings and discussions, the Helsinki Accords were signed in August 1975, bringing a formal end to the Second World War and finally acknowledging the political and territorial gains of the Soviets and their allies.

This political security combined with military parity led to a less tense relationship between the two Superpowers, and economic relations even began, as the USSR began to import food, goods, and technology from the capitalist West, while the U.S. profited handsomely from this, further encouraging pro-Detente groups.

The attempts to negotiate and eventually sign the proposed SALT II were extremely drawn out and complicated. To put it simply, both sides became endlessly hung up on the details of how many and of what kind of weapons systems they would be allowed to maintain.

To get an idea of just how long the discussions and debate on the issue of arms control after the signing of SALT I (eventually the SALT moniker was changed to START - Strategic Arms Reduction Talks) went on, they spanned the presidencies of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and went on into that of Ronald Reagan.

However even under the fresh start proved by the START negotiations (no pun intended) initiated under President Reagan, discussions again broke down over the issue of American deployments of INF (Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces) and amid the increasingly poor relations between the East and West Blocs in the early 1980's.

After the souring of relations between the two Superpower Blocs, new leadership in Moscow meant a change of policy, and a shift in world affairs so massive that it is unlikely we'll see it's like again... for some time at least. The crux of all this was the change of Soviet policy in the mid 1980's, the dissolution of its satellite empire, and the reunification of Germany.

The year 1982 saw the death of long time Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. During his nearly two decades of rule the Soviet Union had expanded greatly as a world power, yet had stagnated economically, and it was this latter issue that was threatening to undermine the USSR's entire position.

After the short lived reigns of Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, in 1985 a young reformer took charge: Mikhail Gorbachev.

He realized that without serious reform, the Soviet economy would collapse utterly. The mismanagement and incompetence of the Brezhnev era was not helped by the collapse of detente in the late 1970's and the incredibly huge military build-up of President Ronald Reagan (the largest in U.S. peacetime history).

Ronald Reagan

Reagan's 5-year, 1.5 trillion dollar defence program included everything from a 600 ship navy, new bombers, counterforce ICBMs, and the SDI (Strategic Defence Initiative: lasers...in space!).

Gorbachev knew the Soviet Union would either be left behind by American military power or bankrupt itself trying to keep up. He instead sought to bring about arms control, generating good will by seeking to end the myriad of global conflicts the Soviets were in some way involved with, which had contributed towards the end of detente.

He likewise introduced two new sets of policies to help the Soviet Union revive its moribund economy: the first of these was Perestroika, which sought to reorient the Soviet economy and address longstanding demands for consumer goods.

The second of these was Glasnost, which encouraged greater public participation in political life (and a way to circumvent the powerful elites opposition to his new economic policies). These two policies were seen as essential to ultimately saving the Soviet political & economic system.

While Gorbachev was intent on addressing the dangerous and expensive nuclear arms race, President Reagan, after campaigning to expand the military while also lowering taxes and subsequently running up a massive deficit, was likewise open to cutting back on this needless expense.

The signing of the INF Treaty eliminated both sides intermediate range weapons in Europe (which in fact was a major victory for the United States, relatively speaking).

In order to really kick-start things however, Gorbachev announced before the United Nations that he would commit to massive, unilateral cuts to Soviet conventional forces, particularly in Eastern Europe. This in turn led to the signing of the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE) in November 1990, which for the first time saw the two sides agree to reduce the size of their vast conventional arsenals.

The progress of conventional arms reduction paled in comparison to the political changes that were to come. Inspired by Gorbachev's support for the 'freedom of choice' in his speech to the U.N., dissident groups throughout Eastern Europe began to likewise demand reforms.

The first country to really test the bounds of Soviet tolerance was Poland. In 1980 the first free trade union in Poland was formed, named Solidarity and led by the charismatic Lech Walesa, and which shortly thereafter had been suppressed by Poland's reactionary communist government.

Lech Walesa

In early 1989 under Soviet pressure, the government of Poland lifted the ban of Solidarity, and in free elections that summer, a Solidarity led coalition took power as the first non-communist government in Eastern Europe since the Cold War began.

Hungary followed suit shortly thereafter, and in November Bulgaria saw reformers take power.

In December that year Czechoslovakia saw the dissident playwright Vaclav Havel elected President in the Velvet Revolution.

Vaclav Havel

In Romania the orders of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu to shoot demonstrators were refused by the military, and he himself was arrested and executed shortly thereafter.

This miraculous year of 1989 occurred with the blessing of the USSR, albeit Gorbachev did not expect reformist communism to so rapidly be swept away by the forces of anticommunism now prevalent in the region. Even so, the military and economic reasons for maintaining the satellite empire had long since ended, and so the Soviets acquiesced to the end of their Eastern European empire.

East Germany was not spared from the political tidal wave of 1989: after massive demonstrations, the Berlin Wall checkpoints were opened, and in March 1990 the first non-communist government in the nation's 41 years was voted into power.

Now it appeared that a German reunification was possible, but while the loss of Eastern Europe was one thing, a reunited Germany was another.

After negotiations with the four original occupying powers at the '2+4 Talks' (U.S., U.K., USSR, and France) the two Germany's were formally reunited on October 3, 1990.

With the recession of Soviet power in Eastern Europe and the reunification of Germany, the Cold War that had divided Europe for so long was effectively over.

In 1991 the Comecon and the Warsaw Pact were both dissolved.

Even before all this, the USSR had begun to withdraw from its foreign engagements: Nicaragua, Angola, Cambodia, Cuba, and Afghanistan: never before had a great power so rapidly and willingly sacrificed its global interests.

The same country that had become a Superpower under Stalin and a nuclear powerhouse with worldwide ambitions under Brezhnev was now, under Gorbachev, falling back on a global scale.