"Two Nations Live on the Edge" - Notes

Terms and names from Chapter 24-4:

• The hydrogen bomb was developed as a more destructive super-weapon than the atom bomb, because the Soviet Union had acquired their own functioning atomic bomb (the Americans needed to have a more destructive bomb to demonstrate superiority). (It was estimated that the bomb would be 67 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima)
• The Americans won the race with the Soviets to develop such a bomb, but the USSR soon caught up less than a year after the first successful American H-bomb.
• Dwight D. Eisenhower was the president of the USA during this time.
• John Foster Dulles was his secretary of state. 
• Dulles believed in brinkmanship, the willingness of the US to go to the edge of all-out war.
• With the new developments and focus on the nuclear race and stalemate, the US came to rely on the CIA very heavily. The CIA used their spies to gather information from foreign nations, such as the USSR.
• The CIA also gave several million dollars to anti-Mossadegh supporters to have him removed from office, in order to keep that nation pro-American and anti-Soviet.
• The CIA raised an army and invaded Guatemala. When the president of Guatemala "resigned" from office, the army's pro-American leader took power as dictator of the country.
• The Warsaw Pact, signed by the Soviet Union and several other countries, linked the nations together. The USSR passed this Pact as it grew fearful of West Germany (which it had recognized when Stalin died and a new dictator took office).
• In Geneva, Eisenhower proposed an "open skies" policy in which the two superpowers would allow flights over each other's territory to prevent surprise nuclear attacks on one another. Though it was turned down, it was seen as a step towards peace.
• A war almost broke out over the Suez Canal, with England, France and Israel on one side, and Egypt on the other. However, the UN stepped in and stopped it before it began, leaving control of the canal to Egypt, the one that illegally seized it in the first place.
• Congress approved the Eisenhower Doctrine, which stated that the US would defend the Middle East against any attack by a communist country.
• Nikita Khrushchev became dictator of the Soviet Union after Stalin. He also believed that communism was best for the world, but he believed that it could spread peacefully.
• The USSR came back by being the first to launch a man-made satellite into the Earth's orbit, named Sputnik. The US, after some failures, managed to catch up and launch their own satellite.
• On the final U-2 American spy-flight over the USSR, the plane was shot down and the pilot was sent to prison in the Soviet Union for 10 years. This was after Eisenhower had been convinced to allow one more flight.
• The Soviet Union demanded an end to the flights and a formal apology. Eisenhower agreed to stop the flights, but did not apologize. This incident sparked more tension between the two nations as the world entered the 1960s.