The Post-War World: Victory of Democracy

1. The Cold War Part 5
Escalation & The Victory of Democracy

2.  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

3. 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.

4. 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

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. 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).

14. 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.

15. 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

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

17. 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.

18. 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.

19. 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.

20. 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).

21. 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.

22. 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.

23. 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.

24. 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.

25. 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.

26. 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.

27. 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.

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

29. 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

30. 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!).

31. 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.

32. 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.

33. 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.

34. 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.

35. 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).

36. 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.

37. 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.

38. 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

39. 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.

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

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

42. 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.

43. 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.

44. 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.

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

46. 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.

47. 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.

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

49. 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.

50. 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.