AMSCO 8.3 Effects of the Cold War Notes

Overview

AMSCO Topic 8.3, Effects of the Cold War (AMSCO p.167 - p.176), covers how the US-Soviet rivalry reshaped the world after 1945: the division of Germany and Berlin, the creation of military alliances like NATO and the Warsaw Pact, proxy wars in Korea, Vietnam, Angola, and Nicaragua, the near-miss of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the antinuclear weapons movement that pushed back against the arms race. The big idea for AP World is that the superpowers never fought each other directly. Instead, they competed through alliances, nuclear buildup, and wars fought by stand-in armies in postcolonial states across Latin America, Africa, and Asia. This chapter follows AMSCO 8.2 The Cold War and sets up the spread of communism in AMSCO 8.4.

Timeline of events following effects of the Cold War. Image Courtesy of Julia.

Allied Occupation of Germany

After World War II, the Allies partitioned Germany among France, Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union, and the disagreement over what to do next became the first major Cold War flashpoint in Europe. The three Western Allies wanted to merge their zones into one democratic state. The Soviets did not.

Berlin Blockade and Airlift

• Berlin, the capital, sat deep inside the Soviet zone but was itself divided into four zones. The three Western zones were supposed to become a free city.
• The Soviets blockaded all land routes into West Berlin to force the Western Allies out.
• Rather than risk a shooting war, the Allies ran the Berlin Airlift, flying supplies into the Western zones from February 1948 until May 1949, when the Soviets gave up and lifted the blockade.

Two Germanys and the Berlin Wall

• After the blockade, Germany split into two states. West Germany became the Federal Republic of Germany; East Germany became the German Democratic Republic. The East-West division of Europe was now complete.
• Between 1949 and 1961, about 2.5 million East Germans fled west, drawn by West Germany's prosperity. This embarrassed the communist system and drained East Germany's economy.
• In August 1961, the East German and Soviet governments replaced barbed-wire fences in Berlin with the Berlin Wall. Between 1961 and the wall's fall in 1989, soldiers killed about 150 people trying to escape over it.

NATO, the Warsaw Pact, and Other Alliances

The Cold War produced rival military alliances on each side of the Iron Curtain, plus regional pacts designed to contain communism elsewhere. This is the heart of the AP World comparison: both superpowers maintained influence by binding smaller states into defense networks.

• NATO (1949). Western nations created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in April 1949, pledging mutual support against attack. Original members: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and the United States. The Brussels-based alliance expanded considerably afterward.
• Warsaw Pact (1955). The Soviet answer to NATO. Original members: Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the USSR. Member armies were combined and commanded from Moscow. Together these nations formed the communist bloc.
• Resisting Soviet control. Two communist countries stayed out of Moscow's orbit. Albania withdrew from the Warsaw Pact in 1968 and aligned with China. Yugoslavia, under Marshall Josip Broz Tito, never joined at all (it later broke apart along ethnic lines in the 1990s into countries including Slovenia, Serbia, and Croatia).
• SEATO (1954). Australia, France, Great Britain, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, and the US formed the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization to block communism in Southeast Asia.
• CENTO. Great Britain, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, and Turkey formed the Central Treaty Organization to prevent the spread of communism in the Middle East. The US was not a full member but joined its military committee.

The United States ultimately formed alliances with more than 40 states. Working through these smaller alliances was often easier than negotiating through the United Nations.

Proxy Wars in Korea, Vietnam, Angola, and Nicaragua

A proxy war is a conflict where the superpowers back opposing sides without (usually) fighting each other directly. These "hot" wars erupted across Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean, blending local issues like anticolonialism and land reform with the global communism-vs-democracy struggle. Small countries, enormous death tolls.

Korean War (1950-1953)

• Like Germany, Korea was divided after WWII: Soviets in the north, the US and its allies in the south.
• North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950 to reunify the peninsula under communism. The UN voted to defend the South. The USSR could have vetoed the resolution but was boycotting Security Council meetings over a dispute about China's seat.
• 16 UN member countries sent forces; the US supplied the most troops and the overall commander, General Douglas MacArthur. The Soviets sent money and weapons to the North but no troops.
• When UN forces pushed toward the Chinese border, China entered the war on North Korea's side, fearing an invasion.
• After three years and roughly four million civilian and military casualties, the war ended in stalemate. Korea stayed divided, separated by a demilitarized zone.

Vietnam War

• President Eisenhower, following Truman's containment policy, sent military advisers to train South Vietnam's army against a communist takeover by the North. Kennedy raised the adviser count from 1,000 to 16,000.
• The US backed an undemocratic, unpopular South Vietnamese ruler, Ngo Dinh Diem. In 1963, Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc set himself on fire in Saigon to protest Diem's favoring of Catholics over Buddhists. A US-supported military coup soon overthrew Diem.
• In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson escalated with more troops. He believed in the domino theory, the idea that if one country in a region went communist, its neighbors would fall next. The war ultimately ended with Vietnam reunified under communist rule.

Angolan Civil War

• Angola won independence from Portugal in 1975 after 14 years of armed struggle. But colonial borders had lumped three distinct cultural groups into one country, each wanting control of Angola's lucrative diamond mines.
• The USSR and Cuba backed the Mbundu; South Africa backed the Ovimbundu; the United States backed the Bankongo.
• Civil war broke out at independence and lasted 27 years until a 2002 cease-fire.

Contra War in Nicaragua

• In 1979, the socialist Sandinista rebels ended the Somoza family's 43-year dictatorship.
• From 1981 to 1988, conservative opponents called Contras fought to overthrow the Sandinistas, with heavy covert backing from the United States.
• Tens of thousands of Nicaraguans died. The war ended with the 1989 Tela Accord and the demobilization of both armies.

Cold War in Cuba

Cuba brought the superpower standoff within 100 miles of Florida and produced the closest the world ever came to nuclear war. Fidel Castro and fellow communist revolutionaries overthrew dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959.

Bay of Pigs (1961)

• Starting August 6, 1960, Castro's government nationalized foreign-owned industries, including US oil companies (Texaco, Esso, Sinclair), the telephone and electric companies, and 36 US-owned sugar mills.
• The US responded by cutting trade and diplomatic ties. Castro turned to Soviet aid and aligned Cuba's foreign policy with Moscow.
• In 1961, President Kennedy backed an invasion by anti-Castro Cuban exiles. The Bay of Pigs invasion failed completely and cemented the Cuba-Soviet alliance, the opposite of what the US wanted.

Cuban Missile Crisis (1962)

• Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev shipped nuclear missiles to Cuba in 1962, arguing the US had already placed nuclear missiles in Turkey, on the USSR's border, in 1961.
• When US intelligence learned more missiles were on the way, Kennedy ordered the Navy to stop them. He called it a "quarantine" because a blockade was technically an act of war.
• Both leaders pulled back from the brink. Khrushchev recalled the ships and removed the missiles already in Cuba; the US pledged to quietly remove its missiles from Turkey.
• In 1963, the two countries set up a Hot Line, a direct telegraph/teleprinter link between the leaders' offices, so a future crisis wouldn't spiral from poor communication.

Antinuclear Weapons Movement

The nuclear arms race triggered a global protest movement and the first treaties limiting nuclear weapons. The movement began in Japan in 1954 in opposition to US nuclear testing in the Pacific. By 1955, more than one-third of Japan's population had signed a petition against nuclear weapons. The movement spread to the US and Western Europe in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and on June 6, 1982, about one million people demonstrated in New York City against nuclear weapons.

Two key agreements:

• Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty (1963). Signed by the USSR, the US, and more than 100 other states (France and China refused). It outlawed nuclear testing above ground, underwater, and in space to cut radiation exposure. Underground testing stayed legal.
• Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (1968). Called on nuclear powers to prevent the spread of military nuclear technology and materials to non-nuclear countries.

Key Terms to Know

Practice and Next Steps

Pair these notes with the Fiveable 8.3 Effects of the Cold War course-topic study guide for the College Board framing of the topic, then continue to AMSCO 8.4 Spread of Communism. Browse the full chapter list on the AP World AMSCO notes page.

To check yourself, run Unit 8 multiple-choice sets in guided practice, try a Cold War prompt with FRQ practice and instant scoring, or quiz definitions in the key terms glossary. A reliable comparison move for this topic: explain how BOTH superpowers used alliances, aid, and proxy forces (NATO/Warsaw Pact, Korea, Angola, Nicaragua) rather than direct war.