Editing Cold War (section)

== The Struggle Between Superpowers ==
The Cold War reached its peak in 1948–53. In this period the Soviets unsuccessfully blockaded the Western-held sectors of West Berlin (1948–49); the United States and its European allies formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a unified military command to resist the Soviet presence in Europe (1949); the Soviets exploded their first atomic warhead (1949), thus ending the American monopoly on the atomic bomb; the [[Communist Party of China|Chinese communists]] came to power in mainland China (1949); and the Soviet-supported communist government of North Korea (lead by [[Kim Il-sung]]) invaded U.S.-supported South Korea (lead by [[Syngman Rhee]]) in 1950, setting off an indecisive [[Korean War]] that lasted until 1953. From 1953 to 1957 Cold War tensions relaxed somewhat, largely owing to the death of the longtime Soviet dictator [[Joseph Stalin]] in 1953; nevertheless, the standoff remained.

A unified military organization among the Soviet-bloc countries, the Warsaw Pact, was formed in 1955; and West Germany was admitted into NATO that same year. Another intense stage of the Cold War was in 1958–62. The United States and the Soviet Union began developing intercontinental ballistic missiles, and in 1962 the Soviets, under the direction of new premier [[Nikita Khrushchev]], began secretly installing missiles in Cuba (who became allied with the Soviet Union after [[Fidel Castro]]'s takeover of the country) that could be used to launch nuclear attacks on U.S. cities. This sparked the [[Cuban Missile Crisis|Cuban missile crisis]], a confrontation that brought the two superpowers to the brink of war before an agreement was reached to withdraw the missiles. 

The Cuban missile crisis showed that neither the United States nor the Soviet Union was ready to use nuclear weapons for fear of the other’s retaliation (and thus of mutual atomic annihilation). The two superpowers soon signed the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty of 1963, which banned aboveground nuclear weapons testing. But the crisis also hardened the Soviets’ determination never again to be humiliated by their military inferiority, and they began a buildup of both conventional and strategic forces that the United States was forced to match for the next 25 years.

Throughout the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union avoided direct military confrontation in Europe and engaged in actual combat operations only to keep allies from defecting to the other side or to overthrow them after they had done so. Thus, the Soviet Union sent troops to preserve communist rule in East Germany (1953), Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968), and Afghanistan (1979). For its part, the United States helped overthrow a left-wing government in Guatemala (1954), supported an unsuccessful invasion of Cuba (1961), invaded the Dominican Republic (1965) and Grenada (1983), and undertook a long (1964–75) and unsuccessful effort to prevent communist North Vietnam from bringing South Vietnam under its rule. It was the [[Vietnam War]]. 

In 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson stationed 22,000 troops in South Vietnam to prop up the faltering anti-communist regime. The South Vietnamese government had long been allied with the United States. The North Vietnamese under [[Ho Chi Minh]] was backed by the Soviet Union and [[Mao Zedong]]'s China. The [[Communist Party of Vietnam]], in turn, supported the [[Viet Cong|National Liberation Front]], which drew its ranks from the South Vietnamese working class and peasantry via use of the [[People's War]] strategy. Seeking to contain Communist expansion, Johnson increased the number of troops to 575,000 in 1968. However, this would be all for naught, as North Vietnamese forces would secure a major victory following the [[Tet Offensive]]. [[Richard Nixon]] would withdraw the demoralized U.S. forces from  Vietnam in 1973, and North Vietnam would ultimately emerge victorious two years later, reuniting Vietnam as a communist state. 

This triggered a domino effect that would also end the [[Civil War|civil wars]] in neighbouring Cambodia and Laos the same year, allowing the communist movements in both countries (the [[Pathet Lao]] in Laos and [[Pol Pot]]'s [[Khmer Rouge]] in Cambodia) to take power.