The Cold War (US perspective)
The US conduct of the Cold War, 1945-1991: containment doctrine, hot proxy wars, the nuclear standoff, and the diplomatic architecture the FSOT tests.
From Alliance to Antagonism
The Cold War was the geopolitical and ideological contest between the United States and the Soviet Union from the end of World War II to the collapse of the USSR in December 1991. The wartime Grand Alliance dissolved over the political fate of Eastern Europe. At Yalta (February 1945) and Potsdam (July-August 1945), Stalin secured Soviet primacy in territories the Red Army occupied; Winston Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech at Fulton, Missouri (5 March 1946) named the division.
The intellectual foundation of US policy was containment, articulated by George F. Kennan in the "Long Telegram" (February 1946) and the pseudonymous "X" article, The Sources of Soviet Conduct, in Foreign Affairs (July 1947). Kennan argued for the "patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies."
The Doctrine Becomes Policy
Containment was operationalized in rapid succession. The Truman Doctrine (12 March 1947) pledged support to Greece and Turkey against communist pressure, committing the US to aid "free peoples" resisting subjugation. The Marshall Plan (European Recovery Program, signed 3 April 1948) channeled roughly $13 billion to rebuild Western Europe and inoculate it against communism. When the Soviets blockaded West Berlin (June 1948-May 1949), the US and Britain answered with the Berlin Airlift.
The institutional capstone was the North Atlantic Treaty (4 April 1949), whose Article 5 made an attack on one member an attack on all. Domestically, the National Security Act of 1947 created the CIA, the National Security Council, and the Department of Defense. In 1950, the NSC's classified study NSC-68 recommended a massive military buildup and framed the conflict as global and existential. The fall of China to Mao Zedong (October 1949) and the Soviet atomic test (August 1949) intensified the alarm, helping fuel the domestic anticommunism associated with Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Hot Wars in a Cold Conflict
Containment turned kinetic in Asia. The Korean War (1950-1953) began when North Korea crossed the 38th parallel on 25 June 1950; Truman intervened under UN Security Council authorization (made possible by the Soviet boycott) without a congressional declaration of war, establishing a precedent for executive war-making. The armistice of 27 July 1953 restored the prewar division.
Vietnam became containment's costliest test. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (7 August 1964) gave President Johnson broad authority; US troop strength peaked near 540,000 in 1968. The Tet Offensive (January 1968) shattered public confidence, and the war's collapse culminated in the fall of Saigon (30 April 1975). The trauma produced the War Powers Resolution of 1973, passed over Nixon's veto, requiring presidential reporting and congressional authorization for sustained deployments.