Overseas Interventions of The United States - Cold War

Cold War

The US helped form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949 to resist communist expansion. The United States supported resistance movements and dissidents in the communist regimes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. One example is the counterespionage operations following the discovery of the Farewell dossier which some argue contributed to the fall of the Soviet regime. After Joseph Stalin instituted the Berlin Blockade, the United States, Britain, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and several other countries began the massive "Berlin airlift", supplying West Berlin with up to 4,700 tons of daily necessities. US Air Force pilot Gail Halvorsen created "Operation Vittles", which supplied candy to German children. In May 1949, Stalin backed down and lifted the blockade. The US spent billions rebuilding Europe and aiding global development through programs such as the Marshall plan.

From 1950 to 1953, US and UN forces fought communist Chinese and North Korean troops in the Korean War, which saw South Korea successfully defended from invasion. US troops remain in South Korea to deter further conflict, as the war has not officially ended. President Harry Truman was unable to rollback the North Korean government due to Chinese intervention, but the goal of containment was achieved.

During the Cold War, the US frequently used the CIA for covert operations against left-wing movements around the world, starting under President Dwight Eisenhower. In 1953, the CIA helped Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran remove the democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadegh (although supporters of US policy claimed that Mossadegh had ended democracy through a rigged referendum). In 1954, the CIA armed anti-communist rebels that helped overthrow the Jacobo Arbenz government in Guatemala. Although Arbenz was elected without a secret ballot, received arms from the Soviet bloc, and killed hundreds of his political opponents; Guatemala subsequently plunged into a civil war that cost scores of thousands of lives and ended all democratic expression for decades. The CIA armed an indigenous insurgency in order to oppose the invasion of Tibet by Chinese forces and the subsequent control of Tibet by China, and sponsored a failed revolt against Indonesian President Sukarno in 1958. As part of the Eisenhower Doctrine, the US also sent troops to Lebanon in Operation Blue Bat.

Covert operations continued under President John F. Kennedy and his successors. In 1959, the CIA attempted to depose Cuban dictator Fidel Castro through the Bay of Pigs Invasion. In 1960, the CIA planned a coup against the government of Iraq headed by dictator Abd al-Karim Qasim. According to the Church Committee, the plan was to send Qasim a poisoned handkerchief, "which, while not likely to result in total disablement, would be certain to prevent the target from pursuing his usual activities for a minimum of three months." During the course of the Committee's investigation, the CIA stated that the handkerchief was "in fact never received (if, indeed, sent)." It added that the colonel: "Suffered a terminal illness before a firing squad in Baghdad (an event we had nothing to do with) after our handkerchief proposal was considered". The CIA (with Cuban exiles and South African mercenaries) fought Maoist "Simbas" and Afro-Cuban rebels (led by Che Guevarra) during the Congo Crisis. The CIA also considered assassinating Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba with poisoned toothpaste (although this plan was aborted). In 1961, the CIA supported the overthrow of Rafael Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic. After a period of instability, US troops invaded the Dominican Republic in Operation Power Pack, initially to evacuate US citizens on the island and ultimately to broker a cease-fire in the civil war.

From 1965 to 1973, US troops fought at the request of the governments of South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia during the Vietnam War against the military of North Vietnam and against Viet Cong, Pathet Lao, and Khmer Rouge insurgents. President Lyndon Johnson escalated US involvement following the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. North Vietnam invaded Laos in 1959, and used 30,000 men to build invasion routes through Laos and Cambodia. North Vietnam sent 10,000 troops to attack the south in 1964, and this figure increased to 100,000 in 1965. By early 1965, 7,559 South Vietnamese hamlets had been destroyed by the Viet Cong. The CIA organized Hmong tribes to fight against the Pathet Lao, and used Air America to "drop 46 million pounds of foodstuffs....transport tens of thousands of troops, conduct a highly successful photoreconnaissance program, and engage in numerous clandestine missions using night-vision glasses and state-of-the-art electronic equipment." After sponsoring a coup against Ngô Đình Diệm, the CIA was asked "to coax a genuine South Vietnamese government into being" by managing development and running the Phoenix Program that killed thousands of insurgents. North Vietnamese forces attempted to overrun Cambodia in 1970, to which the US and South Vietnam responded with a limited incursion. The US bombing of Cambodia, called Operation Menu, proved controversial. Although David Chandler argued that the bombing "had the effect the Americans wanted--it broke the communist encirclement of Phnom Penh," others have claimed it boosted recruitment for the Khmer Rouge. North Vietnam violated the Paris Peace Accords after the US withdrew, and all of Indochina had fallen to communist governments by late 1975.

In 1970 and at the request of President Richard Nixon, the CIA planned a "constitutional coup" to prevent the election of Marxist leader Salvador Allende in Chile, while secretly encouraging Chilean generals to act against him. The CIA changed its approach after the murder of Chilean general René Schneider, offering aid to democratic protestors and other Chilean dissidents. Allende was accused of supporting armed groups, torturing detainees, conducting illegal arrests, and muzzling the press; historian Mark Falcoff therefore credits the CIA with preserving democratic opposition to Allende and preventing the "consolidation" of his supposed "totalitarian project". However, Peter Kornbluh asserts that the CIA destabilized Chile and helped create the conditions for the 1973 Chilean coup d'état, which led to years of dictatorship under Augusto Pinochet. In 1973, Nixon authorized Operation Nickel Grass, an overt strategic airlift to deliver weapons and supplies to Israel during the Yom Kippur war, after the Soviet Union began sending arms to Syria and Egypt. From 1972-5, the CIA armed Kurdish rebels fighting the Ba'athist government of Iraq.

Months after the Saur Revolution brought a communist regime to power in Afghanistan, the US began offering limited financial aid to Afghan dissidents through Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, although the Carter administration rejected Pakistani requests to provide arms. After the Iranian Revolution, the United States sought rapprochement with the Afghan government—a prospect that the USSR found unacceptable due to the weakening Soviet leverage over the regime. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979 to depose Hafizullah Amin, and subsequently installed a puppet regime. Disgusted by the collapse of detente, President Jimmy Carter began covertly arming Afghan mujahideen in a program called Operation Cyclone.

This program was greatly expanded under President Ronald Reagan as part of the Reagan Doctrine. As part of this doctrine, the CIA also supported the UNITA movement in Angola, the Solidarity movement in Poland, the Contra revolt in Nicaragua, and the Khmer People's National Liberation Front in Cambodia. US and UN forces later supervised free elections in Cambodia. Under Reagan, the US sent troops to Lebanon during the Lebanese civil war as part of a peace-keeping mission. The US withdrew after 241 servicemen were killed in the Beirut barracks bombing. In Operation Earnest Will, US warships escorted reflagged Kuwaiti oil tankers to protect them from Iranian attacks during the Iran-Iraq war. The United States Navy launched Operation Praying Mantis in retaliation for the Iranian mining of the Persian Gulf during the war and the subsequent damage to an American warship. The attack helped pressure Iran to agree to a ceasefire with Iraq later that summer, ending the eight-year war. Under Carter and Reagan, the CIA repeatedly intervened to prevent right-wing coups in El Salvador and the US frequently threatened aid suspensions to curtail government atrocities in the Salvadoran civil war. As a result, the death squads made plans to kill the US Ambassador. In 1983, after an internal power struggle ended with the deposition and murder of revolutionary Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, the US invaded Grenada in Operation Urgent Fury and held free elections. In 1986, the US bombed Libya in response to Libyan involvement in international terrorism. President George H.W. Bush ordered the invasion of Panama (Operation Just Cause) in 1989 and deposed dictator Manuel Noreiga.