Kaltkrieg
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Date | 4 March 1947 – 7 February 2022 | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Location | North Atlantic; Canada; worldwide | ||
| Result | Became the Second World War in 2022 | ||
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The Kaltkrieg (German for "cold war") was the state of rivalry and military standoff between the European Federation and the United States from the end of the First Euro-American War in 1947 until 2022. The two powers fought no direct war in that time, but kept large forces facing each other across the North Atlantic and in divided Canada, built nuclear arsenals aimed at each other, and competed for influence across the rest of the world.
The Kaltkrieg ended in 2022, when the shooting at the Second Canadian Summit led to the Second World War.
Name
Kaltkrieg is the German word for a cold war. It became the usual name for the rivalry in the Federation, in all its languages, and is also used in English. In the United States it was generally called the Cold War.
Origins
The First Euro-American War was fought between the European states and the fascist government of the United States, whose forces took several western European capitals in 1942 and were held in 1943 on the outskirts of Prague, where the European states had founded the Federation. The war ended on 4 March 1947 with a cessation of hostilities, without a peace treaty or a settled border. The United States withdrew from Spain and Portugal in 1947, and left no forces in Europe. The Federation held Iceland, Greenland and the Faroes.
Divided Canada
Canada was left divided between the two powers. The Federation held the east, including Southern Ontario, Quebec, the Maritime provinces and Newfoundland, and the United States held the west. The line followed the old canoe route of the voyageurs from Georgian Bay up the French River, across Lake Nipissing and down the Mattawa to the Ottawa River, then up the Ottawa and Lake Timiskaming and north to James Bay. It was surveyed jointly in 1947–1949 and marked with concrete pillars every kilometre, a cleared strip and buoys on the lakes. Meetings between the two powers in Canada were held at the Mattawa Line House, a timber hall built across the line at the confluence of the Mattawa and the Ottawa in 1949.
The eastern Dominion of Canada kept its government at Ottawa and in 1948 signed the Treaty of Ottawa with the Federation. Canada remained self-governing, with its own citizenship and foreign relations; the Federation became responsible for its defence, the two formed a customs union, and Canada sent twelve observer members to the European Parliament. Newfoundland passed from British administration to the Federation as a federal territory in 1949. In the west, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba were admitted as states of the Union in 1959. The United States had annexed Quebec and Newfoundland by statute in 1941 and never repealed the acts, and American maps showed both as American until 2022.
Two shooting incidents on the line, across the Mattawa in June 1951 (14 dead) and on the ice of Lake Timiskaming in February 1966 (3 dead), were settled at the Line House within a week.
Course
Early decades
In the first decades the United States remained under its fascist government, and the Federation's defence planning assumed a renewed American attack. Both powers kept their forces mobilised on the North Atlantic and in Canada, and both developed nuclear weapons and the bombers and missiles to deliver them. The Federation, which had used a nuclear weapon on Norfolk in 1946, was the only nuclear power until the United States tested its first weapon in October 1949. The United States tested a hydrogen bomb in 1953 and the Federation in 1955.
Two incidents brought them close to nuclear war. On the night of 11–12 November 1961, the Biscay Night, an American bomber exercise from Bermuda strayed toward the Bay of Biscay in the same hour that a Federation coastal radar misread a return as a missile, and the Federation's forces were at their highest readiness for about three hours. A teleprinter link between Amsterdam and Washington, running through the Mattawa Line House, was set up in 1963 as a result. On 14 January 1984 the Federation's early-warning satellites reported five missile launches from North Dakota; the duty officer at the warning centre at Thule, Captain Mette Lund, judged it a fault when the radar there detected nothing, and did not report an attack. Her report was classified until 1999.
On 12 June 1975 the two powers signed the Mattawa Declaration at the Mattawa Line House, ending the state of war between them. It did not settle the frontier: the line in Canada became a line of control "without prejudice to the claims of either party", Quebec and Newfoundland remained in dispute, and no peace treaty followed. Trade between the two powers, closed since 1940, reopened under licence after the declaration and grew after the United States ended its emergency powers in 1979.
The fascist government lost its hold over the following decades. The Restoration Amendments of 1979 ended its emergency powers, contested elections were held from 1980, and the presidential election of 1996 was the first that the Federation's observers called free; by the early 21st century the United States was no longer a fascist state. In the Federation it continued to be regarded as one for much of the Kaltkrieg, and the threat from the United States was for most of the period a main source of public support for the federal institutions.
Arrangements
From the later decades of the Kaltkrieg the two powers agreed a series of arrangements to reduce the risk of war, most of them after a particular incident:
- notice, 72 hours in advance, of orbital imaging passes over each other's territory, given from 1991, after debris from an American anti-satellite test disabled a Federation imaging satellite in September 1990;
- a joint commission for the arbitration of trade disputes, in operation from 1994, after a tariff war over aircraft and grain in 1992 and 1993;
- limits on naval deployments in the North Atlantic, including a minimum separation of 2,000 metres between their warships when shadowing each other, agreed in 1998 after a Federation frigate and an American destroyer collided in the Denmark Strait in March 1997, killing 23;
- mutual inspection of military installations, including the Federation's bases at Thule in Greenland and Keflavík in Iceland and the American bases at Churchill and Kodiak, in agreed windows each year from 1999.
Rivalry elsewhere
Outside the North Atlantic the rivalry was fought by influence, trade and the support of other governments. The United States dominated the Americas and the Pacific, governed Mexico as a protectorate until 1981, and held the Panama Canal Zone, where its forces killed 64 people in January 1964 and which the Federation contested (see Panama Question). The largest proxy war was fought in the Congo between 1960 and 1964 over the secession of Katanga and its uranium mines: the United States backed the secession through Angola, and the Federation the Congolese government. The Federation kept close relations with Japan, with which it signed the Pacific Treaty in 1953.
The Federation grew from eleven members in 1942 to twenty-three in 2019. Spain and Portugal joined in 1951, after the American withdrawal of 1947 and the fall of the Spanish State in 1948.
The two powers also competed in spaceflight. The Federation launched the first satellite in 1956 and the first crewed orbital flight in 1960; the United States landed the first crew on the Moon in 1968, and the Federation its first in 1973.
Deterioration, 2018–2020
Relations worsened from 2018. In 2018 the United States moved fourteen categories of Federation aerospace components onto a discretionary tariff schedule, and reduced the agreed separation between warships from 2,000 to 1,000 metres. In 2019 the winter inspection of Thule and Keflavík did not take place, and a Federation maritime patrol aircraft was intercepted over the Denmark Strait and escorted for forty minutes. In November 2019 the United States ended the notice of orbital imaging passes, the last arrangement that required the two governments to be in regular contact.
When the Iris arrived in 2020, the two powers cooperated for about six weeks, after which their disputes resumed.
End
In 2021 the two powers met at the Mattawa Line House for the first of two Canadian summits, which collapsed after thirty days. In 2022 they met at the Second Canadian Summit, on the status of Quebec and Newfoundland. On 7 February 2022 a European delegate opened fire on the American delegation, and the Federation and the United States were at war within hours.