Proxy Wars, Non-Alignment and the End of the Cold War, 1955–1991

A war fought on other people's land

In Europe, the Cold War was a tense standoff. In much of Asia, Africa and Latin America it was something else: real wars in which millions died. Newly independent states and revolutionary movements became arenas where the superpowers competed for influence, often by arming local allies. At the same time, many leaders tried to stay out of the contest altogether.

The Non-Aligned Movement and the "Third World"

In April 1955, leaders of 29 Asian and African countries met at Bandung, Indonesia. Hosted by Indonesia's Sukarno, with India's Jawaharlal Nehru, Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser and China's Zhou Enlai, they condemned colonialism and called for cooperation among newly independent nations.

In 1961 the Non-Aligned Movement was founded in Belgrade, led by Yugoslavia's Tito, Nehru, Nasser, Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah and Sukarno. Its members refused to join either bloc. The French demographer Alfred Sauvy had coined the term "Third World" in 1952 for countries outside both the Western ("First") and Soviet ("Second") worlds. Today historians usually prefer the term Global South. In practice, non-aligned states often took aid from both sides, and many were drawn into the rivalry anyway.

Vietnam

After Vietnam defeated France in 1954 (you will see this in Decolonization in Asia), the country was divided. The communist North, led by Ho Chi Minh, aimed to reunify the country; in the South, a U.S.-backed government faced a communist-led insurgency (the Viet Cong).

• The U.S. sent advisers, then, from 1965, combat troops; at the peak in 1968–1969 there were more than 500 000 American troops in Vietnam.
• The U.S. bombed North Vietnam heavily and used chemical defoliants such as Agent Orange.
• The Tet Offensive (January 1968) failed militarily for the North but convinced many Americans that the war could not be won quickly. Huge antiwar protests spread, and some Americans who refused to serve moved to Canada.
• The U.S. withdrew after the Paris Peace Accords (January 1973). North Vietnamese forces took Saigon on April 30, 1975, and Vietnam was reunified under communist rule.

About 58 000 Americans died. Vietnamese deaths, soldiers and civilians, were in the millions. Fighting and bombing spread into Laos and Cambodia, where the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975. After 1975, hundreds of thousands of refugees, many escaping by sea ("boat people"), fled Vietnam. About 60 000 came to Canada in 1979–1980, many sponsored by private Canadian groups.

Africa, Latin America and Afghanistan

• Congo (1960–1965): soon after independence from Belgium, the Congo's first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, asked for Soviet help against a secession backed by Belgian interests. He was overthrown and killed in January 1961, with Belgian involvement and U.S. support for his opponents. Army chief Mobutu Sese Seko later took power and ruled until 1997 with Western backing.
• Angola (from 1975): after independence from Portugal, rival movements fought a long civil war. Cuba sent tens of thousands of troops to support the government; South Africa and the U.S. backed its opponents.
• Latin America: the U.S. backed a coup in Guatemala (1954) and supported or tolerated military regimes it saw as anti-communist, including after the 1973 coup in Chile. These are covered in Latin America since 1900.
• Afghanistan: in December 1979, the USSR invaded to support a communist government. The U.S., Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and others armed Afghan resistance fighters (mujahideen). Estimates of Afghan deaths range from about 500 000 to 2 million (about one million is often cited), and millions became refugees. Soviet troops left in 1989. Some foreign fighters from that war later formed al-Qaeda.

Détente, science and the space race (E1.2)

The space race began when the USSR launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, on October 4, 1957. The Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space on April 12, 1961. The U.S. answered with the Apollo program; on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon. Rockets built for nuclear missiles also launched communications and weather satellites.

In the 1970s the superpowers entered a period of détente (easing of tension): the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I, 1972), U.S. President Richard Nixon's visit to China (1972), and the Helsinki Accords (1975). But the USSR also crushed the Prague Spring reform movement in Czechoslovakia (1968), and détente collapsed after the invasion of Afghanistan.

The end of the Cold War

Mikhail Gorbachev became Soviet leader in 1985. He introduced glasnost (openness) and perestroika (economic restructuring), and signed the INF Treaty with U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1987, eliminating a whole class of nuclear missiles. Crucially, he told Eastern European governments that the USSR would no longer use force to keep them in power.

• 1989: Poland held partly free elections on June 4, and Solidarity won almost every seat it could contest. On the same day in Beijing, China's army crushed the pro-democracy protests in and around Tiananmen Square, killing hundreds or more; China's Communist Party kept power.
• On November 9, 1989, East Germany opened the Berlin Wall. Communist governments fell across Eastern Europe, peacefully in most countries (Czechoslovakia's "Velvet Revolution") and violently in Romania.
• Germany reunified on October 3, 1990.
• Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia declared independence; after a failed coup by hard-liners in August 1991, the USSR dissolved on December 26, 1991, into 15 independent states.