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119-658: During the presidential campaign of 1948, as Cold War fears of communist global expansion mounted, critics of the Truman administration heatedly raised the question " Who Lost China? ." Criticism mounted after Truman's surprising victory in the election as the Chinese Communist Party led by Mao Zedong steadily defeated Chinese Nationalist armies of Chiang Kai-shek and was winning the Chinese Civil War. In November 1948 John Paton Davies proposed

238-804: A German rebuilding effort set forth by western European countries in 1948, the US, Britain and France spearheaded the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany from the three Western zones of occupation in April 1949. The Soviet Union proclaimed its zone of occupation in Germany the German Democratic Republic that October. Media in the Eastern Bloc was an organ of the state , completely reliant on and subservient to

357-767: A collection of documents to explain and defend American policy in China to the American public, an idea that Secretary of State Dean Acheson ordered his staff to prepare. The group was headed by the Director of the Far Eastern Division, Walton Butterworth but much of the work was done by Charles W. Yost , John F. Melby who had served for the State Department in the Soviet Union and China during

476-625: A column entitled "Very Ugly Stuff" that Mieczysław Maneli , the Polish Commissioner to the International Control Commission had twice met Ngô Đình Nhu , the younger brother and right-hand man of President Ngô Đình Diệm of South Vietnam . Maneli had come bearing an offer for South Vietnam to be neutral in the Cold War and for a federation with North Vietnam . Alsop had visited Saigon, where Nhu leaked

595-447: A drowning friend briskly in the face as he sank for the second and third times, you cannot later explain that he was doomed anyway because he was such a bad swimmer”. The white paper outraged Mao Zedong , who wrote a number of articles responding to the report. "Acheson is telling a bare-faced lie when he describes aggression as “friendship”. To the contrary, he wrote, all the “friendship” shown to China by U.S. imperialism since 1840 when

714-646: A general term, in his essay "You and the Atomic Bomb", published 19 October 1945 in the British newspaper Tribune . Contemplating a world living in the shadow of the threat of nuclear warfare , Orwell looked at James Burnham 's predictions of a polarized world, writing: Looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery... James Burnham's theory has been much discussed, but few people have yet considered its ideological implications—that is,

833-522: A major propaganda effort began in 1949 was Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty , dedicated to bringing about the peaceful demise of the communist system in the Eastern Bloc. Radio Free Europe attempted to achieve these goals by serving as a surrogate home radio station, an alternative to the controlled and party-dominated domestic press in the Soviet Bloc. Radio Free Europe was a product of some of

952-590: A neutral Germany to prevent West Germany's incorporation into NATO, but his attempts were cut short after he was executed several months later during a Soviet power struggle. The events led to the establishment of the Bundeswehr , the West German military, in 1955. In 1949, CCP Chairman Mao Zedong 's People's Liberation Army defeated Chiang Kai-shek 's United States-backed Kuomintang (KMT) Nationalist Government in China. The KMT-controlled territory

1071-675: A new war". On 6 September 1946, James F. Byrnes delivered a speech in Germany repudiating the Morgenthau Plan (a proposal to partition and de-industrialize post-war Germany) and warning the Soviets that the US intended to maintain a military presence in Europe indefinitely. As Byrnes stated a month later, "The nub of our program was to win the German people ... it was a battle between us and Russia over minds ..." In December,

1190-649: A plan envisioning an economically self-sufficient Germany, including a detailed accounting of the industrial plants, goods and infrastructure already taken by the Soviets. In June 1947, in accordance with the Truman Doctrine , the United States enacted the Marshall Plan , a pledge of economic assistance for all European countries willing to participate, including the Soviet Union. Under the plan, which President Harry S. Truman signed on 3 April 1948,

1309-560: A report that one of his lovers was Arthur H. Vandenberg Jr. , who had resigned as Dwight Eisenhower 's appointments secretary in 1953. His accounts, delivered to a friend in the CIA, quickly reached the FBI, allowing J. Edgar Hoover to spread the information through the Eisenhower administration, many of whose members had fought sharp battles with Alsop. Hoover told Lyndon B. Johnson about

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1428-629: A secret 1950 document, the National Security Council proposed reinforcing pro-Western alliance systems and quadrupling spending on defense. Truman, under the influence of advisor Paul Nitze , saw containment as implying complete rollback of Soviet influence in all its forms. United States officials moved to expand this version of containment into Asia , Africa , and Latin America , in order to counter revolutionary nationalist movements, often led by communist parties financed by

1547-480: A source of intelligence. During the late 1970s and 1980s, the KGB perfected its use of espionage to sway and distort diplomacy. Active measures were "clandestine operations designed to further Soviet foreign policy goals," consisting of disinformation, forgeries, leaks to foreign media, and the channeling of aid to militant groups. Retired KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin , former head of Foreign Counter Intelligence for

1666-566: A thrice-weekly piece, called "Matter of Fact", for the Herald Tribune . The use of the word "fact" reflected Alsop's pride in producing a column based on reporting, rather than the opinion pieces of many other columnists. The Alsop brothers operated on a fundamental rule that every column must always include at least one new piece of information. Stewart remained headquartered in Washington to cover domestic politics, and Joseph traveled

1785-555: A time. In 1979, the toppling of pro-US governments in Iran and Nicaragua and a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan again raised fears of war. In the 1980s, the US provided support for anti-communist forces in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and the leadership of the USSR changed with the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev , who expanded political freedoms in his country and the Eastern Bloc. This led to

1904-542: A unified and neutral Germany was undesirable, with Walter Bedell Smith telling General Eisenhower "in spite of our announced position, we really do not want nor intend to accept German unification on any terms that the Russians might agree to, even though they seem to meet most of our requirements." Shortly thereafter, Stalin instituted the Berlin Blockade (June 1948 – May 1949), one of the first major crises of

2023-634: A vocal supporter of America's involvement in the Vietnam War , and in his column, he strongly advocated for escalation. His journalistic purpose has often been described as "not to enlighten but to effect ." His insider access to the Washington elite granted him plenty of confidential information, revealed mostly at the dinner parties of the "Georgetown Set." Alsop was particularly skilled at playing on Johnson's political vulnerabilities to push him to deepen US commitment in Indochina. He wanted to provoke

2142-625: Is a man of high character, with great courage and integrity." Early in 1957, the KGB photographed him in a hotel room in Moscow while he was having sex with another man, an agent of the Soviet Union . He rebuffed Soviet attempts at blackmail , instead writing "a detailed account of the incident and a relevant narrative history of his sex life." It has been described as "brimming with revelations about Alsop's sex life on several continents," including

2261-566: Is buried at Indian Hill Cemetery , Middletown, Connecticut . The memoir was published posthumously as I've Seen the Best of It . Alsop kept his homosexuality a closely guarded secret all of his life. Richard Helms called him "a scrupulously closeted homosexual." During his service in World War II he informed Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall that he had contracted syphilis from his sexual encounters, but Marshall refused to pass

2380-531: Is the logic inherent in the “high order of culture” of the United States as represented by Dean Acheson. Cold War The Cold War was a period of global geopolitical tension and struggle for ideological and economic influence between the United States and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc , that started in 1947, two years after

2499-712: The New York Herald Tribune and fast established a substantial reputation as a journalist, particularly by his comprehensive reportage of the Bruno Hauptmann trial in 1934. Because of his family ties to the Roosevelts, Alsop soon became well-connected in Franklin Roosevelt 's Washington. By 1936, The Saturday Evening Post had awarded him a contract to write about politics with fellow journalist Turner Catledge . Two years later,

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2618-513: The Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic ". A week later, on 13 March, Stalin responded vigorously to the speech, saying Churchill could be compared to Adolf Hitler insofar as he advocated the racial superiority of English-speaking nations so that they could satisfy their hunger for world domination, and that such a declaration was "a call for war on the USSR." The Soviet leader also dismissed

2737-859: The Berlin Wall to prevent the citizens of East Berlin from fleeing to West Berlin , at the time part of United States-allied West Germany . Major crises of this phase included the Berlin Blockade of 1948–1949, the Chinese Communist Revolution of 1945–1949, the Korean War of 1950–1953, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the Suez Crisis of that same year, the Berlin Crisis of 1961 ,

2856-630: The Connecticut General Assembly , as did his younger brother John deKoven Alsop . Alsop graduated from the Groton School , a private boarding school in Groton, Massachusetts , in 1928, and from Harvard University in 1932. He wrote for The Harvard Crimson during his time at Harvard . After college, Alsop became a reporter, then an unusual career for someone with an Ivy League diploma. He began his career with

2975-643: The Cuban Missile Crisis began after deployments of U.S. missiles in Europe and Soviet missiles in Cuba; it is widely considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into full-scale nuclear war . Another major proxy conflict was the Vietnam War of 1955 to 1975; the Soviets solidified their domination of Eastern Europe with operations such as the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Both powers used economic aid in an attempt to win

3094-719: The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, and the Vietnam War of 1964–1975. Both superpowers competed for influence in Latin America and the Middle East , and the decolonising states of Africa , Asia , and Oceania . Following the Cuban Missile Crisis, this phase of the Cold War saw the Sino-Soviet split . Between China and the Soviet Union's complicated relations within the Communist sphere, leading to

3213-847: The Eastern Bloc . Cominform faced an embarrassing setback the following June, when the Tito–Stalin split obliged its members to expel Yugoslavia, which remained communist but adopted a non-aligned position and began accepting financial aid from the US. Besides Berlin, the status of the city of Trieste was at issue. Until the break between Tito and Stalin, the Western powers and the Eastern bloc faced each other uncompromisingly. In addition to capitalism and communism, Italians and Slovenes, monarchists and republicans as well as war winners and losers often faced each other irreconcilably. The neutral buffer state Free Territory of Trieste , founded in 1947 with

3332-463: The KGB and involved in its intelligence operations, adhered to Moscow's line, although dissent began to appear after 1956. Other critiques of the consensus policy came from anti-Vietnam War activists , the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament , and the anti-nuclear movement . In early 1947, France, Britain and the United States unsuccessfully attempted to reach an agreement with the Soviet Union for

3451-518: The Kingdom of Greece in its civil war against Communist-led insurgents. In the same month, Stalin conducted the rigged 1947 Polish legislative election which constituted an open breach of the Yalta Agreement . The US government responded to this announcement by adopting a policy of containment , with the goal of stopping the spread of communism . Truman delivered a speech calling for

3570-596: The Los Angeles Democratic Convention in July 1960 , where along with Phil Graham he convinced JFK to appoint Lyndon B. Johnson as his running mate. He became a close friend and influential adviser to Kennedy after his election, in November 1960. Additionally, "while Stewart was more liberal than Joseph, he nonetheless characterized both of them as ' New Deal liberals '". Joseph Alsop was

3689-626: The North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA) contracted Alsop and Robert E. Kintner to write a nationally syndicated column on a daily basis. His first book, The 168 Days (1938), covering Roosevelt's unsuccessful campaign to enlarge the Supreme Court , became a bestseller. In 1940, Alsop and Kintner moved from NANA to the New York Herald Tribune . In 1941, after it had become clear that

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3808-569: The Sino-Soviet border conflict , while France, a Western Bloc state, began to demand greater autonomy of action. The Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia occurred to suppress the Prague Spring of 1968, while the United States experienced internal turmoil from the civil rights movement and opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War . In the 1960s–1970s, an international peace movement took root among citizens around

3927-746: The Soviet boycott of the Allied Control Council and its incapacitation, an event marking the beginning of the full-blown Cold War and the end of its prelude, as well as ending any hopes at the time for a single German government and leading to formation in 1949 of the Federal Republic of Germany and German Democratic Republic . The twin policies of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan led to billions in economic and military aid for Western Europe, Greece, and Turkey. With

4046-608: The Space Race . The US and USSR were both part of the Allies of World War II , the military coalition which had defeated Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in 1945. After the war, the USSR installed satellite governments in the territories of Eastern and Central Europe it had occupied, and promoted the spread of communism to North Korea in 1948 and created an alliance with the People's Republic of China in 1949. The US declared

4165-568: The Truman Doctrine of " containment " in 1947, launched the Marshall Plan in 1948 to assist Western Europe's economic recovery, and founded the NATO military alliance in 1949 (which was matched by the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact in 1955). Germany's split occupation zones solidified into East and West Germany in 1949. The first major proxy war of the period was the Korean War from 1950 to 1953, which ended in stalemate. In 1962,

4284-438: The Turkish Straits crisis and Black Sea border disputes were also a major factor in increasing tensions. In September, the Soviet side produced the Novikov telegram, sent by the Soviet ambassador to the US but commissioned and "co-authored" by Vyacheslav Molotov ; it portrayed the US as being in the grip of monopoly capitalists who were building up military capability "to prepare the conditions for winning world supremacy in

4403-415: The United Nations Security Council Resolution 82 and 83 backed the defense of South Korea, although the Soviets were then boycotting meetings in protest of the fact that Taiwan (Republic of China), not the People's Republic of China , held a permanent seat on the council. A UN force of sixteen countries faced North Korea, although 40 percent of troops were South Korean, and about 50 percent were from

4522-471: The Alsop brothers lasted from 1945 until 1958. Joseph became the sole author of "Matter of Fact" and he moved to The Washington Post until his retirement in 1974. The Alsops once described themselves as "Republicans by inheritance and registration, and... conservatives by political conviction." Despite his identity as a conservative Republican , however, Alsop was an early supporter of the presidential ambitions of Democrat John F. Kennedy . Alsop attended

4641-519: The Ambassadorship of Major General Patrick J. Hurley , 1944-1945 and his efforts at mediation; the Yalta Agreement and the Sino-Soviet Treaty of 1945; the Mission of General George C. Marshall , 1945–47; including the development of the Civil War; the Ambassadorship of John Leighton Stuart , 1947–1949; including further developments in the Civil War; the military picture, 1945–49; American economic aid, 1947–49. A set of annexes includes 186 treaties, official statements, and other documents. The body of

4760-414: The Cold War was in its essence a war of ideas. The United States, acting through the CIA, funded a long list of projects to counter the communist appeal among intellectuals in Europe and the developing world. The CIA also covertly sponsored a domestic propaganda campaign called Crusade for Freedom . The rearmament of West Germany was achieved in the early 1950s. Its main promoter was Konrad Adenauer ,

4879-404: The Cold War, preventing Western food, materials and supplies from arriving in the West Germany's exclave of West Berlin . The United States (primarily), Britain, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and several other countries began the massive "Berlin airlift", supplying West Berlin with food and other provisions despite Soviet threats. The Soviets mounted a public relations campaign against

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4998-408: The Communist governments militarily. The fall of the Iron Curtain after the Pan-European Picnic and the Revolutions of 1989 , which represented a peaceful revolutionary wave with the exception of the Romanian revolution and the Afghan Civil War (1989–1992) , overthrew almost all of the Marxist–Leninist regimes of the Eastern Bloc. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union itself lost control in

5117-400: The KGB (1973–1979), described active measures as "the heart and soul of Soviet intelligence ." During the Sino-Soviet split , "spy wars" also occurred between the USSR and PRC. In September 1947, the Soviets created Cominform to impose orthodoxy within the international communist movement and tighten political control over Soviet satellites through coordination of communist parties in

5236-428: The Marshall Plan, seeing it as an effort by the US to impose its influence on Europe. In response, the Soviet Union established Comecon (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) to foster economic cooperation among communist states. The United States and its Western European allies sought to strengthen their bonds and used the policy of containment against Soviet influence; they accomplished this most notably through

5355-402: The Moscow incident in 1964, and Johnson told Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara about Alsop's FBI file. In 1965, Alsop complained to friends that Johnson was tapping his phone , a claim that infuriated Johnson, who believed that he had protected Alsop from McCarthy's attacks. Alsop told White House Press Secretary Bill Moyers that he believed the administration was tapping his phone and

5474-446: The Russian Civil War further complicated relations, and although the Soviet Union later allied with Western powers to defeat Nazi Germany , this cooperation was strained by mutual suspicions. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, disagreements about the future of Europe, particularly Eastern Europe , became central. The Soviet Union's establishment of communist regimes in the countries it had liberated from Nazi control—enforced by

5593-421: The Soviet Union and its communist party , which had an influence across the Second World and was also tied to a network of authoritarian states. The Soviet Union had a command economy and installed similarly communist regimes its in satellites. United States involvement in regime change during the Cold War included support for anti-communist and right-wing dictatorships , governments, and uprisings across

5712-408: The Soviet Union was used to monitor dissent from official Soviet politics and morals. Although to an extent disinformation had always existed, the term itself was invented, and the strategy formalized by a black propaganda department of the Soviet KGB. Based on the amount of top-secret Cold War archival information that has been released, historian Raymond L. Garthoff concludes there probably

5831-400: The Soviet Union, which at the time was undergoing the Era of Stagnation . This phase saw the new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introducing the liberalizing reforms of glasnost ("openness") and perestroika ("reorganization") and ending Soviet involvement in Afghanistan in 1989. Pressures for national sovereignty grew stronger in Eastern Europe, and Gorbachev refused to further support

5950-499: The Soviet Union. A number of self-proclaimed Marxist–Leninist governments were formed in the second half of the 1970s in developing countries , including Angola , Mozambique , Ethiopia , Cambodia , Afghanistan , and Nicaragua . Détente collapsed at the end of the decade with the beginning of the Soviet–Afghan War in 1979. Beginning in the 1980s, this phase was another period of elevated tension. The Reagan Doctrine led to increased diplomatic, military, and economic pressures on

6069-455: The Soviets accumulated after broken promises by Stalin and Molotov concerning Europe and Iran. Following the World War II Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran , the country was occupied by the Red Army in the far north and the British in the south. Iran was used by the United States and British to supply the Soviet Union, and the Allies agreed to withdraw from Iran within six months after the cessation of hostilities. However, when this deadline came,

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6188-425: The Soviets agreed to withdraw from Iran after persistent US pressure, an early success of containment policy. By 1947, US president Harry S. Truman was outraged by the perceived resistance of the Soviet Union to American demands in Iran, Turkey, and Greece, as well as Soviet rejection of the Baruch Plan on nuclear weapons. In February 1947, the British government announced that it could no longer afford to finance

6307-404: The Soviets had permitted to retain democratic structures. The public brutality of the coup shocked Western powers more than any event up to that point, set in motion a brief scare that war would occur, and swept away the last vestiges of opposition to the Marshall Plan in the United States Congress. In an immediate aftermath of the crisis, the London Six-Power Conference was held, resulting in

6426-426: The Soviets remained in Iran under the guise of the Azerbaijan People's Government and Kurdish Republic of Mahabad . Shortly thereafter, on 5 March, former British prime minister Winston Churchill delivered his famous " Iron Curtain " speech in Fulton, Missouri . The speech called for an Anglo-American alliance against the Soviets, whom he accused of establishing an "iron curtain" dividing Europe from " Stettin in

6545-455: The Truman Doctrine marked the beginning of a US bipartisan defense and foreign policy consensus between Republicans and Democrats focused on containment and deterrence that weakened during and after the Vietnam War , but ultimately persisted thereafter. Moderate and conservative parties in Europe, as well as social democrats, gave virtually unconditional support to the Western alliance, while European and American Communists , financed by

6664-434: The US assistance, the Greek military won its civil war . Under the leadership of Alcide De Gasperi the Italian Christian Democrats defeated the powerful Communist – Socialist alliance in the elections of 1948 . All major powers engaged in espionage, using a great variety of spies, double agents , moles , and new technologies such as the tapping of telephone cables. The Soviet KGB ("Committee for State Security"),

6783-476: The US government gave to Western European countries over $ 13 billion (equivalent to $ 189 billion in 2016) to rebuild the economy of Europe . Later, the program led to the creation of the OECD . The plan's aim was to rebuild the democratic and economic systems of Europe and to counter perceived threats to the European balance of power , such as communist parties seizing control through revolutions or elections. The plan also stated that European prosperity

6902-419: The US was trying to buy a pro-US re-alignment of Europe. Stalin therefore prevented Eastern Bloc nations from receiving Marshall Plan aid. The Soviet Union's alternative to the Marshall Plan, which was purported to involve Soviet subsidies and trade with central and eastern Europe, became known as the Molotov Plan (later institutionalized in January 1949 as the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance ). Stalin

7021-424: The USSR. In this way, this US would exercise " preponderant power ," oppose neutrality, and establish global hegemony . In the early 1950s (a period sometimes known as the " Pactomania "), the US formalized a series of alliances with Japan (a former WWII enemy), South Korea , Taiwan , Australia , New Zealand , Thailand and the Philippines (notably ANZUS in 1951 and SEATO in 1954), thereby guaranteeing

7140-412: The United Nations, was split up and dissolved in 1954 and 1975, also because of the détente between the West and Tito. The US and Britain merged their western German occupation zones into " Bizone " (1 January 1947, later "Trizone" with the addition of France's zone, April 1949). As part of the economic rebuilding of Germany, in early 1948, representatives of a number of Western European governments and

7259-445: The United States a number of long-term military bases. One of the more significant examples of the implementation of containment was the United Nations US-led intervention in the Korean War . In June 1950, after years of mutual hostilities, Kim Il Sung 's North Korean People's Army invaded South Korea at the 38th parallel . Stalin had been reluctant to support the invasion but ultimately sent advisers. To Stalin's surprise,

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7378-401: The United States announced an agreement for a merger of western German areas into a federal governmental system. In addition, in accordance with the Marshall Plan , they began to re-industrialize and rebuild the West German economy, including the introduction of a new Deutsche Mark currency to replace the old Reichsmark currency that the Soviets had debased. The US had secretly decided that

7497-436: The United States collaborated with Britain in the Opium War , and especially the great act of “friendship” in helping Chiang Kai-shek "slaughter" several million Chinese in the last few years..." Mao asked why Truman would provide so much support to Nationalist forces if he believed them to be so "demoralized and unpopular." Mao stated that since Truman's position of supporting a demoralized and unpopular Nationalist government

7616-420: The United States would soon enter World War II , Alsop and Kintner suspended their column and volunteered for the armed forces. Alsop entered the US Navy and used his political connections to be assigned as Staff Historian to Claire Lee Chennault 's American Volunteer Group , later famous as the Flying Tigers , while the group was training at Toungoo , Burma . While on a supply mission for Chennault late in

7735-439: The United States. Joseph Alsop Joseph Wright Alsop V (October 10, 1910 – August 28, 1989) was an American journalist and syndicated newspaper columnist from the 1930s through the 1970s. He was an influential journalist and top insider in Washington from 1945 to the late 1960s, often in conjunction with his brother Stewart Alsop . He also worked as a covert operative of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) . Alsop

7854-450: The Warsaw Pact's primary function was to safeguard Soviet hegemony over its Eastern European satellites, with the pact's only direct military actions having been the invasions of its own member states to keep them from breaking away; in the 1960s, the pact evolved into a multilateral alliance, in which the non-Soviet Warsaw Pact members gained significant scope to pursue their own interests. In 1961, Soviet-allied East Germany constructed

7973-423: The Western agencies paid special attention to debriefing Eastern Bloc defectors . Edward Jay Epstein describes that the CIA understood that the KGB used "provocations", or fake defections, as a trick to embarrass Western intelligence and establish Soviet double agents. As a result, from 1959 to 1973, the CIA required that East Bloc defectors went through a counterintelligence investigation before being recruited as

8092-402: The accusation that the USSR was exerting increasing control over the countries lying in its sphere. He argued that there was nothing surprising in "the fact that the Soviet Union, anxious for its future safety, [was] trying to see to it that governments loyal in their attitude to the Soviet Union should exist in these countries." Soviet territorial demands to Turkey regarding the Dardanelles in

8211-432: The allocation of $ 400 million to intervene in the war and unveiled the Truman Doctrine , which framed the conflict as a contest between free peoples and totalitarian regimes. American policymakers accused the Soviet Union of conspiring against the Greek royalists in an effort to expand Soviet influence even though Stalin had told the Communist Party to cooperate with the British-backed government. Enunciation of

8330-426: The bureau responsible for foreign espionage and internal surveillance, was famous for its effectiveness. The most famous Soviet operation involved its atomic spies that delivered crucial information from the United States' Manhattan Project , leading the USSR to detonate its first nuclear weapon in 1949, four years after the American detonation and much sooner than expected. A massive network of informants throughout

8449-483: The chancellor of West Germany, with France the main opponent. Washington had the decisive voice. It was strongly supported by the Pentagon (the US military leadership), and weakly opposed by President Truman; the State Department was ambivalent. The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 changed the calculations and Washington now gave full support. That also involved naming Dwight D. Eisenhower in charge of NATO forces and sending more American troops to West Germany. There

8568-499: The close of the war," and that the United States maintained the doctrine of the Open Door , such as respect for the administrative and territorial integrity of China, opposition to any foreign domination of China. The Letter advised that the “Chinese people should be given time to develop those political institutions which would best meet their needs in the modern world.” The “causes” of China's revolution were “unbearable pressure upon

8687-515: The communist party. Radio and television organizations were state-owned, while print media was usually owned by political organizations, mostly by the local communist party. Soviet radio broadcasts used Marxist rhetoric to attack capitalism, emphasizing themes of labor exploitation, imperialism and war-mongering. Along with the broadcasts of the BBC and the Voice of America to Central and Eastern Europe,

8806-497: The country and was banned following the 1991 Soviet coup attempt that August. This in turn led to the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991 and the collapse of Communist governments across much of Africa and Asia. The Russian Federation became the Soviet Union's successor state, while many of the other republics emerged from the Soviet Union's collapse as fully independent post-Soviet states . The United States

8925-564: The end of World War II , and lasted until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The term cold war is used because there was no direct fighting between the two superpowers , though each supported opposing sides in major regional conflicts known as proxy wars . Aside from the nuclear arms race starting in 1949 and conventional military deployment , the struggle for dominance was expressed indirectly via psychological warfare , propaganda campaigns , espionage , far-reaching embargoes , sports diplomacy , and technological competitions such as

9044-563: The fall of 1941, he found himself trapped in the Battle of Hong Kong on December 7. Unable to secure passage out of the city, Alsop was eventually taken into custody as an enemy alien and interned at Hong Kong by the Imperial Japanese Army . After six months, he was repatriated through a prisoner exchange as a journalist, but he had really been a combatant, a fact he managed to conceal by changing into civilian clothes and with

9163-463: The fall of the communist governments of Europe from 1989, which concluded with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Western Bloc included the US and a number of First World nations that were generally capitalist and liberal democratic but tied to a network of often authoritarian Third World states, most of which were the European powers' former colonies . The Eastern Bloc was led by

9282-401: The formation of NATO , which was essentially a defensive agreement in 1949. The Soviet Union countered with the Warsaw Pact in 1955, which had similar results with the Eastern Bloc. As by that time the Soviet Union already had an armed presence and political domination all over its eastern satellite states, the pact has been long considered superfluous. Although nominally a defensive alliance,

9401-461: The harassment but decided otherwise. In Gore Vidal 's novel Washington, D.C. (1967), the character of a gay journalist is loosely based on Alsop. Alsop's life was dramatized in David Auburn 's play The Columnist , which ran on Broadway from April 25 to July 8, 2012, and focused on the interplay of his politics, his journalism, and his sexuality. He was portrayed by John Lithgow in

9520-507: The help of friends. He traveled back to the United States on the neutral liner Gripsholm . He returned to China as a civilian Lend-lease administrator in the fall of 1942, assigned to the wartime capital of Free China , Chungking . He eventually rejoined Chennault in Kunming, China and served with him for the remaining months of the war. After the war, Alsop resumed his journalism career, now working with his brother Stewart to produce

9639-517: The information to President Franklin D. Roosevelt because of Alsop's relations to the Roosevelt family . Nevertheless, Senator Joseph McCarthy insinuated that Alsop was homosexual in the course of a dispute with The Saturday Evening Post about its coverage of his campaign to remove homosexuals from government employment. When McCarthy implied that Alsop was not "healthy and normal," a Post editor vouched for him: "I know Alsop well, and I know he

9758-529: The kind of world-view, the kind of beliefs, and the social structure that would probably prevail in a state which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of "cold war" with its neighbours. In The Observer of 10 March 1946, Orwell wrote, "...after the Moscow conference last December, Russia began to make a 'cold war' on Britain and the British Empire." The first use of the term to describe

9877-720: The land” and the “impact of the West.” Acheson wrote that the Chiang's Nationalist government had lost the confidence of its own troops and the Chinese people, and that as a result its defeat in the Chinese Civil War was therefore something that the United States could not have prevented. The letter continued that the Communists had “foresworn their Chinese heritage” and “publicly announced their subservience” to Russia (the Soviet Union ). This rhetoric may well have been calculated to shame

9996-402: The loyalty of non-aligned countries , such as India . By the 1970s, Japan and Western Europe rebuilt their economies, allowing them more diplomatic independence. After the Sino-Soviet split between the USSR and China in 1961, the U.S. initiated contacts with China in 1972 . In the same year, the US and USSR signed a series of treaties limiting their nuclear arsenals, which eased tensions for

10115-680: The meeting to him. Alsop wrote "the facts all too clearly point to a French intrigue...to defeat American policy [in South Vietnam]." Alsop's fixation on Vietnam resulted in his writing being out of touch with contemporaneous affairs. Joseph Alsop failed to report on the Women's Liberation Movement and the proceedings of the Civil Rights movement , in particular the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. By 1966, Alsop

10234-414: The most prominent architects of America's early Cold War strategy, especially those who believed that the Cold War would eventually be fought by political rather than military means, such as George F. Kennan. Soviet and Eastern Bloc authorities used various methods to suppress Western broadcasts, including radio jamming . American policymakers, including Kennan and John Foster Dulles , acknowledged that

10353-405: The new leadership into relating, as behind the scenes Acheson realistically expected that the United States would “wait for the dust to settle,” then extend diplomatic recognition to the new government. Congressional Republicans responded by criticizing the State Department as having been misleading regarding the nature of Mao and the communist movement. John Melby later recalled that the "purpose

10472-671: The policy change. Once again, the East Berlin communists attempted to disrupt the Berlin municipal elections , which were held on 5 December 1948 and produced a turnout of 86% and an overwhelming victory for the non-communist parties. The results effectively divided the city into East and West, the latter comprising US, British and French sectors. 300,000 Berliners demonstrated and urged the international airlift to continue, and US Air Force pilot Gail Halvorsen created " Operation Vittles ", which supplied candy to German children. The Airlift

10591-441: The political decision-making level on either side. Similarly, there is no evidence, on either side, of any major political or military decision that was prematurely discovered through espionage and thwarted by the other side. There also is no evidence of any major political or military decision that was crucially influenced (much less generated) by an agent of the other side. According to historian Robert L. Benson, "Washington's forte

10710-479: The presence of the Red Army —alarmed the US and UK. Western leaders saw this as a clear instance of Soviet expansionism, clashing with their vision of a democratic Europe. Economically, the divide was sharpened with the introduction of the Marshall Plan in 1947, a US initiative to provide financial aid to rebuild Europe and prevent the spread of communism by stabilizing capitalist economies. The Soviet Union rejected

10829-479: The president into action as he warned about the impact a defeat would have on American credibility, attacked Johnson's manhood by accusing him of weakness and compared him to Kennedy. Convinced Alsop's writing limited his manoeuvrability in Vietnam, Johnson came to resent Alsop's constant demands for war and critiques of his policy.   In 1963, he became the first to make public the "Maneli affair", revealing in

10948-584: The religious, philanthropic and cultural ties which have united the two peoples... The letter went on that "the religious, philanthropic and cultural ties which have united the two peoples, and has been attested by many acts of good will over a period of many years, including the use of the Boxer indemnity for the education of Chinese students, the abolition of extraterritoriality during the Second World War, and our extensive aid to China during and since

11067-537: The revolution: Quite unaccountably, the Chinese fought among themselves for power and money, suspecting and hating each other. An inexplicable change took place in the relative moral strength of the two contending parties, the Kuomintang and the Communist Party; the morale of one party dropped sharply to below zero, while that of the other rose sharply to white heat. What was the reason? Nobody knows. Such

11186-469: The source of the term, Lippmann traced it to a French term from the 1930s, la guerre froide . The roots of the Cold War can be traced back to diplomatic and military tensions preceding World War II. The 1917 Russian Revolution and the subsequent Treaty of Brest-Litovsk , where Soviet Russia ceded vast territories to Germany, deepened distrust among the Western Allies. Allied intervention in

11305-463: The specific post-war geopolitical confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States came in a speech by Bernard Baruch , an influential advisor to Democratic presidents, on 16 April 1947. The speech, written by journalist Herbert Bayard Swope , proclaimed, "Let us not be deceived: we are today in the midst of a cold war." Newspaper columnist Walter Lippmann gave the term wide currency with his book The Cold War . When asked in 1947 about

11424-468: The volume was preceded by a "Letter of Transmittal," signed though not written by Secretary of State Dean Acheson. The letter described origin and nature of the White Paper and defended American policy, 1944–1949. The Letter opens by saying Despite the distance and broad differences in background which separate China and the United States, our friendship for that country has always been intensified by

11543-425: The war, and by Philip Jessup . The 1054 page volume was published August 1949, as Mao and his retinue were about to enter Beijing . The document consisted of 412 pages of narrative covering relations from 1944 to 1949, and 642 pages of documents as an appendix. It was based entirely on documents from the State Department files. Chapters covered American policy, 1844–1943; Nationalist-Communist relations, 1921–1944;

11662-538: The world, covering foreign affairs. In late 1955, their column reached a readership of 25 million in two hundred newspapers across the country. Alsop also helped the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in its intelligence-gathering activities, using his status as a foreign correspondent as cover. In 1953, Alsop covered the Philippine general election at the CIA's request. The partnership of

11781-411: The world, while Soviet involvement in regime change included the funding of left-wing parties , wars of independence , revolutions and dictatorships. As nearly all the colonial states underwent decolonization and achieved independence in the period from 1945 to 1960, many became Third World battlefields in the Cold War. At the end of World War II, English writer George Orwell used cold war , as

11900-486: The world. Movements against nuclear weapons testing and for nuclear disarmament took place, with large anti-war protests . By the 1970s, both sides had started making allowances for peace and security, ushering in a period of détente that saw the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and the 1972 visit by Richard Nixon to China that opened relations with China as a strategic counterweight to

12019-505: Was 'signals' intelligence - the procurement and analysis of coded foreign messages." leading to the Venona project or Venona intercepts, which monitored the communications of Soviet intelligence agents. Moynihan wrote that the Venona project contained "overwhelming proof of the activities of Soviet spy networks in America, complete with names, dates, places, and deeds." The Venona project

12138-412: Was a strong promise that West Germany would not develop nuclear weapons. Widespread fears of another rise of German militarism necessitated the new military to operate within an alliance framework under NATO command. In 1955, Washington secured full German membership of NATO. In May 1953, Lavrentiy Beria , by then in a government post, had made an unsuccessful proposal to allow the reunification of

12257-567: Was also fearful of a reconstituted Germany; his vision of a post-war Germany did not include the ability to rearm or pose any kind of threat to the Soviet Union. In early 1948, following reports of strengthening "reactionary elements", Czech Communists executed a coup d'état in Czechoslovakia (resulting in the formation of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (9 May 1948)), the only Eastern Bloc state that

12376-497: Was as much a logistical as a political and psychological success for the West; it firmly linked West Berlin to the United States. In May 1949, Stalin backed down and lifted the blockade. In 1952, Stalin repeatedly proposed a plan to unify East and West Germany under a single government chosen in elections supervised by the United Nations, if the new Germany were to stay out of Western military alliances, but this proposal

12495-639: Was born on October 10, 1910, in Avon, Connecticut , to Joseph Wright Alsop IV (1876–1953) and Corinne Douglas Robinson (1886–1971). Through his mother, he was related to Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and James Monroe . Both of Alsop's parents were active in Republican politics. His father unsuccessfully sought the governorship of Connecticut several times, his mother founded the Connecticut League of Republican Women in 1917, and both served in

12614-599: Was contingent upon German economic recovery. One month later, Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947 , creating a unified Department of Defense , the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the National Security Council (NSC). These would become the main bureaucracies for US defense policy in the Cold War. Stalin believed economic integration with the West would allow Eastern Bloc countries to escape Soviet control, and that

12733-434: Was isolated from the Washington press corps as the American public turned against the war. Even as the popularity of his column declined and he lost close friendships, Alsop's hawkish attitude remained unwavering until the end of the Vietnam War .   In 1961, he married Susan Mary Jay Patten , daughter of diplomat Peter Augustus Jay , a descendant of John Jay , and the widow of William Patten, an American diplomat who

12852-472: Was kept highly secret even from policymakers until the Moynihan Commission in 1995. Despite this, the decryption project had already been betrayed and dispatched to the USSR by Kim Philby and Bill Weisband in 1946, as was discovered by the US by 1950. Nonetheless, the Soviets had to keep their discovery of the program secret, too, and continued leaking their own information, some of which

12971-454: Was left as the world's sole superpower. In February 1946, George F. Kennan 's " Long Telegram " from Moscow to Washington helped to articulate the US government's increasingly hard line against the Soviets, which would become the basis for US strategy toward the Soviet Union for the duration of the Cold War. The telegram galvanized a policy debate that would eventually shape the Truman administration 's Soviet policy. Washington's opposition to

13090-545: Was now restricted to the island of Taiwan , the nationalist government of which exists to this day. The Kremlin promptly created an alliance with the newly formed People's Republic of China. According to Norwegian historian Odd Arne Westad , the communists won the Civil War because they made fewer military mistakes than Chiang Kai-Shek made, and because in his search for a powerful centralized government, Chiang antagonized too many interest groups in China. Moreover, his party

13209-546: Was one of Alsop's friends. By this marriage he had two stepchildren, William and Anne. The couple divorced in 1978. A noted art connoisseur and collector, Alsop delivered six lectures at the National Gallery of Art in Washington on The History of Art Collecting in the summer of 1978. He was at work on a memoir when he died at his home in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C. , on August 28, 1989. He

13328-532: Was otherwise irrational, Truman must have been acting out of imperialist ambitions "to slaughter the Chinese people" by needlessly prolonging the war. Mao spurned the White Paper' s explanation of the revolution in terms of over-population and the stimulus of Western ideas, since in later passages "even this bit of tedious and phoney theory of causation disappears, and one finds only a mass of inexplicable events." Mao's sarcasm accuses Acheson of not understanding

13447-403: Was parity in the quantity and quality of secret information obtained by each side. However, the Soviets probably had an advantage in terms of HUMINT (human intelligence or interpersonal espionage) and "sometimes in its reach into high policy circles." In terms of decisive impact, however, he concludes: We also can now have high confidence in the judgment that there were no successful "moles" at

13566-515: Was spreading gossip about his personal life, all in an attempt to stop leaks. When Moyers reported the charges, Johnson ordered Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach to be certain no such wiretap was in place and protested that he never ordered one: "I'm as innocent of it as I am of murdering your wife," he told Katzenbach. In the 1970s, the Soviets sent the aforementioned photos to several prominent American journalists without adverse consequences. Alsop considered making his homosexuality public to end

13685-494: Was still useful to the American program. According to Moynihan, even President Truman may not have been fully informed of Venona, which may have left him unaware of the extent of Soviet espionage. Clandestine atomic spies from the Soviet Union, who infiltrated the Manhattan Project at various points during WWII, played a major role in increasing tensions that led to the Cold War. In addition to usual espionage,

13804-476: Was that it ran against the grain of the “rhetorical climate,” which was “simply not hospitable to an argument that challenged America’s virile self-image." Many in the American public objected to the White Paper for placing blame on Chiang and the Nationalist government. The nationally syndicated Washington, D.C. columnist Joseph Alsop , who had served in China during the war, wrote that “If you have kicked

13923-468: Was to call off the dogs from the China Lobby . It didn't work... it just accrued more fuel for the fire." He found it remarkable that "intelligent and experienced men in the department, people like Dean Acheson and so on, had so little realization of what a hot topic China was". Scholars generally agree. Hannah Gurman called the White Paper “disastrous” and Robert Newman explains that its “fatal flaw”

14042-655: Was turned down by the Western powers. Some sources dispute the sincerity of the proposal. Britain, France, the United States, Canada and eight other western European countries signed the North Atlantic Treaty of April 1949, establishing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). That August, the first Soviet atomic device was detonated in Semipalatinsk , Kazakh SSR . Following Soviet refusals to participate in

14161-487: Was weakened during the war against Japan . Meanwhile, the communists told different groups, such as the peasants, exactly what they wanted to hear, and they cloaked themselves under the cover of Chinese nationalism . Confronted with the communist revolution in China and the end of the American atomic monopoly in 1949, the Truman administration quickly moved to escalate and expand its containment doctrine. In NSC 68 ,

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