MR SPENCE HISTORY
How effectively did the United States contain the spread of communism
This key question will be explored through case studies of the following:
• The United States and events in Korea, 1950–53
• The United States and events in Cuba, 1959–62
• American involvement in Vietnam, 1955–75
The war in Korea and its effects were perhaps the biggest calamities of the Cold War. Known as the 'Forgotten War' in the West, Korea has been overshadowed by the Second World War and the Vietnam War. Nevertheless, accounted for the deaths of at least 1.5 million soldiers and civilians including 33,000 Americans and 114,000 Chinese. The war devastated a country and enchained the people of the North. The direct consequences are with us today and will last long into the future. And, worst of all, this was an entirely avoidable war, created by the intensity of ideological conflict among Koreans and a Cold War framework that enabled Superpower interventions. The Korean War symbolized the Cold War conflict at its most frightening. Extreme, barbaric, and seemingly inexhaustible, it reduced Korea to a wasteland and made people all over the world wonder if their country might be next for such a disaster. It therefore intensified and militarized the Cold War on a global scale.
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The new IGCSE syllabus seems to have condensed the areas they want examined to the American reactions to North Korea’s invasion of South Korea, the involvement of the UN, the course of the war to 1953. However, we will also examine the causes and consequences of the war, along with explaining why the US commander, Douglas MacArthur was fired.
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We will also study the subsequent Cold War crises during the Eisenhower presidency. You will not be asked about them in the exam, but it will be useful in understanding how tensions significantly increased in the 1950s and to provide the background to the events in Cuba during the Kennedy years. In 1953 Eisenhower came to power as a moderate Republican, and by 1955, Nikita Khrushchev had risen to the top in the Soviet Union. Eisenhower was determined to further US interests without prompting outright conflict with the Soviet Union or China, but was unwilling to make any concessions. Khrushchev had a pronounced inferiority complex about himself and the Soviet Union, and his rustic approach to foreign affairs provoked a number of confrontations.
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The Cuban Revolution was one that few predicted. Fidel Castro and his small band of unruly followers
overthrew the experienced Fulgencio Batista who had the backing of the US government and considerable business interests. The Soviet leadership were exhilarated but Castro's coup, but not without reason they feared for his regimes survival. The Eisenhower administration had broken diplomatic relations with Cuba, imposed economic sanctions, and begun plotting Castro’s overthrow. Kennedy allowed these plans to go forward with the disastrous Bay of Pigs landing of anti-Castro Cuban exiles. You will need to understand why Kennedy pushed forward with such an ill conceived invasion, why it failed, and how it emboldened Khrushchev to put further pressure on the inexperienced president.
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Fears of further US action in Cuba, along with an unfavourable strategic situation in Europe saw the Soviet leader decide to place nuclear missiles on the Caribbean island. Just what Khrushchev intended to do with his Cuban missiles is, even now, unclear: it was characteristic of him not to think things through. He could hardly have expected Americans not to respond, since he had sent the missiles secretly while lying to Kennedy about his intentions to do so. The American discovery of the missiles led to a tense thirteen day standoff; possibly the closest the world came to a nuclear war.
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You will need to understand:
1. Why Khrushchev placed missiles on Cuba and why this was intolerable to Kennedy.
2. The options Kennedy had in dealing with the crisis.
3. How the crisis was solved.
4. Who was the victor in the crisis?
5. How close was nuclear war and was it a success of the containment policy?
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HW Questions:
(a) Describe relations between the USA and Cuba between 1959 and the end of March 1961. [4]
(b) Why was Kennedy humiliated by the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961? [6]
(c) ‘The Cuban Missile Crisis was a success for the USA’s policy of containment.’ How far do you agree with this statement? Explain your answer. [10]
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America and Cuba
Aside from a handful of small interruptions, the Vietnam War engulfed the Indo-China region for three decades between 1945 and 1975. What begun as a struggle between France and the anti-colonial forces of Ho Chi Minh's Vietn Minh became a war that devastated Vietnam. Two million civilians were killed, with a further four million injured or exposed to dangerous chemicals. The North reported 1.4 million killed or missing and 600,000 injured.
The scale of the war became so dramatic because after the French defeat the USA moved from supporting its European ally to facilitating and then arming a capitalist state in the South of the country. President Eisenhower and Kennedy poured finances and advisors into the nascent nation, but it lacked a credible government that could meet the challenge from the Northern sponsored Vietcong. In 1964 President Johnson decided that South Vietnam could only survive with direct American support.
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General Walt Boomer said: "The Vietnam war did more to change this country than anything in our recent history. It created a suspicion and mistrust we’ve never been able to redeem.”
The war cost the US 58,000 deaths and $150 billion. The three million who served were never afforded recognition of their sacrifices. It shattered the belief in American invincibility that stemmed from the victory in the Second World War and the subsequent economic boom of the 1950s and 1960s.
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