in Europe and America shall be considered an attack against them all.” To ward off aggressors, American forces and nuclear weapons were to be kept in Western Europe. In response to NATO, the Soviet Union formed a similar pact between seven Eastern European countries called the Warsaw Treaty Organization, or Warsaw Pact. The countries involved along with the Soviet Union were Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. While these pacts were forming, the United States and the Soviet Union were in an arms race. They were building lots of nuclear weapons, trying to outproduce each other so that neither dare attack. This policy is called deterrence. By 1952, the United States tested a hydrogen bomb, a bomb more powerful than an atomic bomb. A year later, the Soviet Union also tested a hydrogen bomb. Both countries developed rockets that had nuclear warheads. By 1957, the Soviet Union had developed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM’s). ICBM’s could reach targets all over the world. While arms were building up, the Soviet Union went through a major change in power. In 1953, Joseph Stalin, leader of the Communist Party, died. After Stalin’s death, Nikita Khrushchev took over the Communist Party. Khrushchev made things different. He said that the Soviet Union would follow a policy of “peaceful coexistence” with the West. This “peace” was to continue until the early sixties, when new conflicts surfaced. In the early 1960’s, new tensions arose between the United States and the USSR when Fidel Castro openly embraced communism and allied with the Soviet Union. Anastas Mikoyan, the Soviet First Deputy Prime Minister, negotiated this alliance. Increasing friction between the United States and the Soviet Union caused President Dwight D. Eisenhower to sever diplomatic ties with Cuba. This was the unofficial beginning of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Before...
