the late 1950s until the dramatic departure of U.S. officials from the South Viet nam
ese capital, Saigon, in 1975, symbolized by U.S. he li cop ters leaving the U.S. embassy
roof while dozens of desperate Viet nam ese tried to grab on to the boarding ladders
and escape with them.
The U.S. effort to avert a communist takeover in South Vietnam failed, yet con
trary to expectations, the domino effect did not occur. Cold War alliances were shaken
on both sides: the friendship between the Soviet Union and China had long before
degenerated into a geostrategic fight and a strug gle over the proper form of communism,
especially in Third World countries. But the Soviet bloc was left relatively unscathed
by the Vietnam War. The U.S. led Western alliance was seriously jeopardized, as several
allies (including Canada) strongly opposed U.S. policy toward Vietnam. The bipolar
structure of the Cold War– era international system was coming apart. Confidence in
military alternatives was shaken in the United States, undermining for more than a
de cade the United States’ ability to commit itself militarily. The power of the United
States was supposed to be righ teous power, but in Vietnam, it was neither victorious in
its outcome nor righ teous in its effects.Was the cold War really cold?
It was not always the case that when one of the superpowers acted, the other side
responded. In some cases, the other side chose not to act, or at least not to respond in
kind, even though it might have escalated the conflict. Usually this was out of concern
for escalating a conflict to a major war. For example, the Soviet Union invaded Hungary
in 1956 and Czecho slo va kia in 1968, both sovereign states and allies in the Warsaw
Pact. Under other circumstances, the United States might have responded with coun
terforce, but while it verbally condemned these aggressive Soviet actions, the actions
themselves went unchecked. In 1956, the United States, preoccupied with the Suez
Canal crisis, kept quiet, aware that it was ill prepared to respond militarily. In 1968, the
United States was mired in Vietnam and beset by domestic turmoil and a presidential
election. The United States was also relatively complacent, although angry, when the
Soviets invaded Af ghan i stan in 1979. The Soviets likewise kept quiet when the United
States took aggressive action within the U.S. sphere of influence, invading Grenada
in 1983 and Panama in 1989. Thus, during the Cold War, even blatantly aggressive
actions by one of the superpowers did not always lead to a response by the other.
Many of the events of the Cold War involved the United States and the Soviet Union
only indirectly; proxies often fought in their place. Nowhere was this so true as in the
Middle East. For both the United States and the Soviet Union, the Middle East was a
region of vital importance because of its natu ral resources (including an estimated one
third of the world’s oil), its strategic position as a transportation hub between Asia and
Eu rope, and its cultural significance as the cradle of three of the world’s major reli54 CHAPTER TWo ■ Historical context of international relationsESSIR7_CH02_020_069_11P.indd 54 6/14/16 10:02 AM