28a: Introduction

This lecture could just as well be termed "The Age of Brinkmanship." Brinkmanship is a word for the practice of letting situations come as close to disaster as possible, hoping that one's own side would get the better of the other side. The United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies practiced brinkmanship throughout the Cold War. I think the term "flirting with disaster" is much more appropriate. Even though hindsight and historical research shows that the Western bloc had far more firepower than the Eastern bloc at the time, nobody knew that. A generation of kids grew up with the knowledge that the entire world could be destroyed in a matter of hours. There were times when it nearly happened.

Segment 28b: A Farewell To Empires, treats the postwar fall of the French and British empires, and the chaos which resulted. Both nations hoped to maintain at least part of their colonies, but they had been so battered by the war they could hardly hold their own at home. The British managed to let India and Palestine go their own way without a terrible amount of trouble, but the French had more trouble getting out of Indochina - especially Vietnam. In 1954 the French had left Vietnam for good, leaving the US to pick up the pieces against the Communist Viet Minh. The Suez Canal crisis of 1956 was prompted by an Anglo-French invasion of Egypt, but President Eisenhower forced his allies to offer Egypt a ceasefire. Great Britain and France were officially in the minor leagues.

In segment 28c: The Iron Curtain Descends, the spread of World Communism is revisited, this time from a Western perspective. The USSR felt the need to create Eastern European client states for two reasons: protection from Western invasions and a springboard for spreading Communism. The Western Allies, on the other hand, were a great deal fairer in their treatment of Japan and Germany. West Germany was controlled by the US, Britain, and France, and enjoyed a much quicker recovery than Communist East Germany did. Japan was ruled by the proconsular figure General MacArthur, and also benefitted from moderate peace terms. Yet the rise of Red China provoked a great deal of fear among Americans, and a conservative backlash against the Truman administration brought to power another American general, Dwight D. Eisenhower.

In segment 28d: Proxy Wars and the Arms Race, we cover several near-wars and proxy wars around the world. The Korean War of 1950-1953 pitted South Korea, the US, and various United Nations forces against North Korea and then Red Chinese forces. Despite General MacArthur's urgings, the Korean War didn't go nuclear. 1956 brought two crises: the Suez crisis, which pitted Britain, France, and Israel against Egypt, and the Hungarian Revolution. Fortunately, neither turned into a full-blown war, nor did President Kennedy's 1961 "Bay of Pigs" invasion of Castro's Cuba. Far more frightening was the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, in which the USSR was cajoled into removing its secret nuclear missile bases from Cuba. The arms race and the space race continued, at an exorbitant cost which would take its toll on both East and West.