chapter 22

military Conflict and the Cold War
 1.  Europe was the cold war’s first arena
  a.  Soviet concern for security and control in Eastern Europe 
  b.  American and British desire for open societies linked to the capitalist world economy 
 2.  creation of rival military alliances (NATO and the Warsaw Pact)
  a.  American sphere of influence ( Western Europe ) was largely voluntary
  b.  Soviet sphere ( Eastern Europe ) was imposed
  c.  the “Iron Curtain” divided the two spheres
 3.  communism spread into Asia ( China , Korea , Vietnam ), caused conflict
  a.  North Korea ’s invasion of South Korea in 1950 led to a bitter three-year war and resulted in a still-divided Korea 
  b.  Vietnam : massive U.S. intervention in the 1960s, but Vietnamese communists successfully united the country by 1975
 4.  major cold war–era conflict in Afghanistan 
  a.  a Marxist party took power in 1978 but soon alienated much of the population
  b.  Soviet military intervention (1979–1989) met with little success
  c.  USSR withdrew in 1989 under international pressure; communist rule of Afghanistan collapsed
 5.  the battle that never happened: Cuba 
  a.  Fidel Castro came to power in 1959
  b.  nationalization of U.S. assets provoked U.S. hostility
  c.  Castro gradually aligned himself with the USSR 
  d.  Cuban missile crisis (October 1962

the United States : Superpower of the West, 1945–1975
 1.  the United States became leader of the West against communism
  a.  led to the creation of an “imperial” presidency in the United States 
  b.  power was given to defense and intelligence agencies, creating a “national security state”
  c.  fear that democracy was being undermined
  d.  anticommunist witch-hunts (1950s) narrowed the range of political debate
  e.  strengthened the influence of the “military-industrial complex”
 2.  U.S. military effort was sustained by a flourishing economy and an increasingly middle-class society
  a.  U.S. industry hadn’t been harmed by WWII, unlike every other major industrial society
  b.  Americans were a “people of plenty”
  c.  growing pace of U.S. investment abroad

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