INTRODUCTION
The United States and the then Soviet Socialist Republic, or USSR, had always had ideological differences underlining their relations. The US has always been the world’s champion of democratic ideals, while the USSR promoted the socialist ideology. In World War II, however, the two countries set aside their differences and formed an alliance with other countries to fight a common enemy: the Axis Powers that included Germany, Japan and Italy. The defeat of the Axis Powers resulted in power vacuums, which the two countries immediately tried to fill, thereby, resulting in a contest of superpowers. Suspicions of each other’s motives and actions fueled this global confrontation, which lasted for more than forty years (Thompson 24). The period of conflict between the two superpowers is known as the Cold War. The Cold War was characterized as an indirect conflict because it was fought largely through proxy wars or wars by substitution. More importantly, it was a period in which the superpowers were engaged in an arms race resulting in the development of very destructive weapons, such as nuclear bombs. Nonetheless, it was this aspect of the Cold War that prevented it from escalating into a global war as illustrated in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Both superpowers knew that the use of nuclear weapons will destroy both of them and this fear prevented the Cold War from turning into WWIII.
THE COLD WAR
The Cold War was fueled by a basic difference in ideology between the US and Russia and this triggered suspicions on the motives and actions by one of the other. According to Arnold and Wiener (xiii-xiv), after the defeat of Axis Powers in WWII, this basic difference immediately resurfaced causing a collapse of the temporary alliance between the two countries that was forged to defeat the Axis Powers. The first divide between the two sides began with the management of the European countries that were destroyed during the war, such as Germany and Poland. Russia immediately occupied Poland, Czechoslovakia and parts of Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. In Germany, the US occupied the west and Russia the east. Russia moved to strengthen the Communist element in Eastern Germany and eastern European countries, which came to be called the Soviet bloc. The Russian actions were in anticipation of the expansion of capitalism, which it believed the US and its allies would realize. Russia was suspicious of way the Americans handled its foreign relations, which it deemed too interventionist, as well as its arms buildup and nuclear capability, which it showcased during the war by dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Russian action in establishing presence in many Eastern European countries and Eastern Germany made Winston Churchill remarked “an iron curtain has descended across the continent” (qtd Morgan 25) in 1946 in his speech in Fulton, Missouri. On the other hand, the US and its allies were wary of the communist ideology and saw it as a threat to democratic goals. Like Russia, its goals was also to promote democracy and for that reason it saw Russia and its conduct immediately after the War as threats that must be countered. To counter the communist threat, the US adopted the policy of containment against the Soviets which entailed supporting countries against which the Soviets made a move to intrude or expand its ideology (Schmidt et al 639).
The Cold War was, thus, fought mainly by proxy wars and by a showcase of military might, arms buildup and even space exploration capabilities. The History.com website reported that the first of the so-called proxy wars or wars that were fought between other countries, but supported by the superpowers on each side, was in Korea. In 1950, North Korea with the support of the Soviets invaded South Korea. Fearing that the invasion signaled Soviet expansion to the non-communist part of Korea, the US threw its support to South Korea by sending its own troops to that country to fend off attacks by the South. This north-south ideological split with the Soviets and the American behind them was also mirrored in the Vietnam case where the US also supported South Vietnam in its war against the Soviet-backed North Vietnam in the 1960s. To strengthen its containment thrust, the US increased its defense budget mainly to build more arms, especially nuclear weapons. When the Soviets developed its own atomic bomb in 1949, for example, the US decided to develop a more destructive type of bombs called the hydrogen bomb. The Soviets was not far behind, however, as whatever weaponry the US developed it also came to develop. Thus, an arms race ensued. The contest between the two superpowers even extended beyond the planet as both countries began to develop advanced technologies for space exploration. The Soviets beat the US in this area by launching the first artificial satellite called Sputnik into the Earth’s orbit in 1957 showcasing the power of its R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile. The US did not take this sitting down as it soon launched its own satellite – the Explorer I – the following year. This space race also spurred the creation of the National Aeronautics Administration or NASA. Russia immediately countered by sending the first man to space in April 1961 beating the US by just month, which sent its own astronaut to space in May. Of course, the US was able eventually to make most spectacular space exploration by landing first on the moon through the team of Neil Armstrong (“Cold War History”).
WHY THE COLD WAR DID NOT ESCALATE TO WWIII
Despite the tension that resulted from the clash of the world’s two superpowers, the Cold War did not escalate into World War III simply because the two countries realized that such a scenario would result in what is called mutually assured destruction. As earlier stated the Cold War was largely a contest of power and might. Each superpower was trying to outdo each other to show to the world which one was the most powerful. The arms race was the biggest manifestation and the necessary result of that contest perhaps because in a conflict it is the entity with the most powerful and largest tranches of weapons that almost always win that conflict. And so this was what happened in the Cold War between the US and Russia – both sides tried to develop weapons that were as much as possible more destructive and potent than what the other had developed. In 1952, for example, the US tested the hydrogen bomb on an island in the South Pacific that created a three-mile wide ball of fire, which erased that island from the map forever (Arnold and Wiener 360). This was after it lost its atomic monopoly when Russia announced the development of its own atomic bomb. However, Russia was bent on equaling if not surpassing the US on this aspect. Graham (170) reported that the US had built 70,000 nuclear bombs during the Cold War while Russia built 55,000 and that at the height of the Cold War Russia had on its stock 45,000 weapons and the US 37,000. As Russia tried to keep up with the US in arms development and eventually achieved nuclear parity with the former, the Cold War entered into a more dangerous stage because no superpower was in control. This meant that it did not matter whether one takes the first or the second shot – both were vulnerable and were going to be destroyed eventually. The mutual vulnerability of the two powers ensured that Cold War did not escalate into WWIII as fear by the parties made them tread lightly so as not to prod the other into taking drastic actions and trigger it.
The need to strike a delicate balance to avoid WWIII had never been more underscored than in the Cuban Missile Crisis when the two superpowers had inadvertently brought the world to the edge of a nuclear war, according to Neal (82-83). In 1962, American intelligence reported sightings of Soviet medium range missiles in Cuba. The missiles were determined to have been armed with nuclear warheads although this was not yet evident at first. This meant that if those bombs were fired at the US, they would have hit all American cities and destroyed all of them. President Kennedy went on national television to announce the danger they were facing and to inform the world that he was imposing a blockade on Cuba to prevent anymore Soviet missiles from being brought to that country. Aside from the blockade, the US was also contemplating the invasion of Cuba and removing the missiles and conducting air bombing raids on the sites. To impose the blockade, the US fielded hundreds of ships and aircrafts to prevent Soviet ships from coming into Cuba. It was not only the public that was terrified with Kennedy’s announcement, but even the Soviets, too. The Soviets was secretly terrified of Kennedy’s announcement because they knew something that the US did not - that the missiles were armed with nuclear heads and if the US would bomb the sites where the missiles were kept the Soviets manning those sites would retaliate using those weapons with nuclear heads and this would start a nuclear war. There was widespread panic among many Americans. George (75) recounted that as many as 10 million Americans left the urban areas to remote areas that were unlikely targets, such as those farthest from military installations. There was also widespread panic-buying. The situation even became more tense when Soviet ships were sighted approaching Cuba. Fortunately, the Soviet ships did not pursue their course and backed out from the area. Eventually, Russia agreed to remove the missiles under certain conditions, which the US agreed to, ending the worst crisis in the Cold War history (Neal 83). The specter of a nuclear war – the mutual destruction of both parties - in the Cuban Missile Crisis prevented the escalation of the incident to WWIII as both the US and Soviets backed down from their respective positions and agreed to meet the conditions set by the other: the Soviets agreed to withdraw its missiles from Cuba, and the US agreed to withdraw its Jupiter missiles from Turkey although it did not make this publicly nor associate this with the Cuban Crisis (“The Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962”). In short, the fear of a nuclear catastrophe prevented the incident from turning it into WWWIII.
CONCLUSION
The fear of a nuclear war had prevented the Cold War from escalating into WWIII, in effect, acting as a deterrent for both sides to be more careful in the way they conducted the conflict lest they would escalate it into a nuclear war. A prominent element of the Cold War was the arms race in which the two conflicting nations had to show to the world and to each other that it is deadlier and armed with more destructive weapons than the other. However, although both the US and the Soviets engaged in an arms race developing and stockpiling deadly nuclear weapons, they knew that using them would mean also their mutual destruction. In a mutual assured destruction scenario, no one party is going to emerge victorious because as one party pushes the button to launch nuclear bombs the other party also immediately answer with another button push. Both the US and Russia will, thus, be destroyed no matter which one pushes the button first. The horrific prospect of a nuclear war and, thus, the need for a delicate balance in the conflict between the two superpowers, had never been more underscored in the history of the Cold War than in the Cuban Missile Crisis. In that incident, both parties backed down because they knew that if they pursued their respective positions, WWIII will ensue and both of them will be destroyed.
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