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Peaceful Coexistence

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East Germany. The lack of interference by the west was a tacit recognition of the Soviet bloc. This continued in 1956 when the Soviet union also crushed the Hungarian rising, the Soviet Union did the same when the United States sponsored and supported coups against the left-learning governments of Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954.

The U.S policy was under huge pressure over Indochina when the communist Vietminh were successful in besieging a French garrison at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954. The French made a request for U.S military assistance and Nathan Twining, the U.S Air force chief of staff, advised, ‘three small A-bombs placed properly… would have taught those Chinese a good lesson.’ Eisenhower managed to resist the call to ‘massive retaliation’ .conscious of the existence of the Soviet H-Bomb and France was therefore defeated.

The victory for the Vietminh sustained military force, and consequently Mao Zedong criticised peaceful coexistence and dismissed the U.S nuclear threat as a ‘paper tiger.’ The Geneva Peace conference happened in July 1954, at the conference Indochina was divided into Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Vietnam was divided again at the 17th Parallel between the communist north and the democratic south in an interim arrangement pending elections. The U.S support cancelled the elections with the leader of South Vietnam when polls proved that Vietminh would win 80 percent of the vote. With democracy being defended in Asia, the United States supported the corrupt dictatorships of Diem in Vietnam, Rhee in South Korea and Jiang Jieshi in Formasa.

However peaceful coexistence was boosted with the end of the war in Indochina and the ‘Spirit of Geneva’, but military threats faded the new battleground it became military and provided economic aid to the third world. Khrushchev decided that peaceful coexistence was not a realistic policy

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