The term “Second Cold War” is little known in Greece. It has been widely used in international literature and international public debate to indicate the unusually high level of international tension that characterized the late 1970s and the first half of the 1980s.

The beginning of the period of international recession (détente) can be attributed to different time points: immediately after the Caribbean crisis of 1962, in the German Ostpolitik of 1969, at the time of the signing of the SALT Treaty on Strategic Nuclear Arms Control. in 1972. In the 1970s, consultations were held between the two blocs at various levels: on a new agreement on strategic nuclear weapons (SALT-2), on the reduction of conventional armed forces in Europe, on the political coexistence of the two coalitions (Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (DASE).West Germany concluded non-aggression pacts with Poland and the USSR, the two Germanys came to mutual recognition in 1972, and shortly thereafter, the rules for communication between West Berlin and West Germany were agreed.In 1975, DASE reached the Helsinki Accords, which established some general principles for coexistence in the Old Continent.

If the start of a recession is controversial, then its end is definitely dated. In 1979, this was marked by two very important developments: the prospect of new Soviet medium-range missiles being deployed in Europe, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. But trends have already emerged in the Western world that have largely questioned and undermined the recession.

Factors that suggested the course of the international recession

The oil crisis of 1973 and the new one that began in 1979, for the first time since the implementation of the Marshall Plan in 1948-1952. plunged the West into an economic crisis. The economy was the Western world’s greatest strength during the Cold War, and these difficulties fueled Western uncertainty about the Soviet Union, which profited heavily from rising oil prices. Westerners viewed their economic crisis with great anxiety, remembering the dire consequences for European democracy and the world itself of the previous great economic shock, namely the Great Depression of 1929. The sense of economic hardship has seriously undermined the self-confidence of the Western world.

At the same time, since the mid-1970s, many Western analysts have expressed serious concerns about an international recession. This was seen as a strategic success for the Soviet Union and a strategic mistake for the West. They pointed out that with the international recession, the Soviet Union legitimized its own occupation of Eastern Europe and secured calm from the West, while at the same time it won big victories in the third world: Vietnam and Southeast Asia, the Horn of Africa, Angola, Mozambique and even Latin America. (the alleged “backyard” of the United States) with the coming to power of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Even where the Kremlin did not win, the US lost crushingly; in Iran. For these analysts, America’s post-Vietnam fears and the international depression left the field open to aggressive Soviet world politics. They especially questioned the legacy of the Great Depression’s chief architect, Henry Kissinger. In other words, by the late 1970s, these analysts were saying (and it seemed to many that they were right) that the West was losing the Cold War.

The apparent weakening of the Carter administration also played a role. Carter’s policy, based on promoting the issue of human rights, was full of contradictions and yet did not bring results. Conversely, the fall of the Shah of Iran resulted in the loss of a strategic ally, and the assault on the US embassy in Tehran, along with the hostage-taking of US diplomats, was a humiliating experience that undermined the president’s prestige par excellence. Thus, criticism of the recession seemed justified on several levels.

New missiles in Europe change the balance of power

Western uncertainty peaked in late 1979, initially with the development of the new SS-20 medium-range missiles by the Soviet Union: the new missiles were mobile, so they were not easy to detect, and they had three nuclear warheads, each of which could hit different targets. . They changed the balance of power in Europe and brought to the fore the old and deep-seated insecurities of Western Europeans, creating an existential problem for NATO. If the Soviet Union with its new missiles could destroy Western Europe, would the Americans sacrifice New York or Washington for a Frankfurt that no longer exists? NATO has always had this serious geopolitical problem: in Europe, the Western alliance represented a relatively small (economically strong, but still small in area) foothold on the vast Eurasian landmass; its strongest ally, the US, was shared by an ocean of smaller, more open partners. And Western Europeans, precisely because of their weakness and vulnerability, have always suffered from the fear of being abandoned by the Americans.

The SS-20 thus led to the December 1979 NATO “two-way decision” which invited the Soviets to negotiate a suspension of new missile installations, but also stipulated that if those negotiations failed, NATO members would deploy American medium-range missiles in Europe. (“Pershing” and “Kruiz”) to counterbalance Soviet superiority. Thus, the Americans assured the anxious Western Europeans that they would indeed sacrifice New York for Frankfurt and restore the cohesion of the alliance. The “double solution” did not deviate from NATO’s line of détente, which called for simultaneous negotiations with the Soviets and increased Western deterrence (“defense and détente”). However, its capture for the first time in many years signaled the start of an arms race in Europe that set the international climate.
Afghanistan came a few days later to finalize climate change. There, the Soviets clashed with the Islamists (who clashed with the US everywhere), but the involvement of the Red Army, the most powerful military force on the planet that has always sent shivers down the West’s spine, was feared. of a different kind. For the first time, the mighty Red Army crossed the operational borders of the Warsaw Pact (in 1956 in Hungary and in 1968 in Czechoslovakia, it operated within the borders of the Soviet coalition). Now he was approaching the Persian Gulf, which was a key point for oil supplies to the West during the oil crisis. Was the Kremlin’s goal to control this western artery?

Thus, an insecure West (and an insecure and weakened American leadership) felt compelled to react decisively. The Kremlin’s initiatives on the SS-20 and in Afghanistan provoked a reaction: the old Soviet leaders of the late Brezhnev era were probably not willing to provoke such tensions, but were careless and did not properly assess the consequences of their actions. .

The Carter Doctrine, the grain embargo and the boycott of the Moscow Olympics

In late 1979 – early 1980s, the US and Western countries began a policy of confrontation with the Soviet Union. This was not just a condemnation of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. As early as January 1980, the US played an important role at the UN by condemning the invasion. At the same time, American assistance began to the forces in Afghanistan that resisted the Soviet occupation, that is, the Mujahideen. Carter promulgated his own “doctrine” that the West could not tolerate another power’s domination of the Persian Gulf, and American planning for a Rapid Deployment Force tasked with armed intervention there accelerated. Carter announced that his administration would not ratify the new Strategic Nuclear Arms Control Treaty (SALT II) that had just been negotiated with the Soviets. The US placed a grain embargo on the Soviet Union (which, due to the constant failure of its agricultural sector, was forced to look elsewhere for grain to feed its population). In the early spring of 1980, Western countries announced that they would refrain from participating in the Moscow Olympic Games in the summer of that year – with the exception of the official participation of Greece, which, by the decision of the Karamanlis and Ralli governments, decided that it would not allow, claiming to be the father of the Olympic ideal, to politicize them.
In other words, a period of great tension between the two coalitions began not with the election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency of the United States, but already under the Carter administration. New fields of confrontation will soon open up in Latin America, in Poland, which has entered the phase of labor unrest, in the sphere of nuclear technology competition, and the main point of confrontation will be the arrival of American missiles in Europe (the European Missile Crisis). The first half of the 1980s was a difficult time.

Mr. Evantis Hatzivasiliou is Professor of History and Archeology at the University of Athens, Secretary General of the Parliamentary Foundation for Parliamentarism and Democracy.