Events in the other new arena of the post-Sputnik era—the Third World—likewise antagonized relations among the U.S.S.R., the United States, and China. All three assumed that the new nations would naturally opt for the democratic institutions of their mother countries or, on the other hand, would gravitate toward the “anti-imperialist” Soviet or Maoist camps. The United States had urged Britain and France to dismantle their empires in the aftermath of World War II, but, once those countries became Washington’s most potent allies in the Cold War, the United States offered grudging support for Anglo-French resistance to nationalist and Communist forces in their colonies. President Truman’s Point Four Program mandated U.S. foreign aid and loans to new nations lest they “drift toward poverty, despair, fear, and the other miseries of mankind which breed unending wars.” When the Eisenhower administration cut back on foreign aid, a great debate about its efficacy ensued among American experts. Critics insisted that the Marshall Plan was not a valid analogy for Third World aid because the former had been a case of helping industrial populations rebuild their societies, while the latter was a case of sparking industrial or even merely agricultural development in primitive economies. Foreign aid did not necessarily serve U.S. interests, since many Third World rulers chose neutralism or Socialism, nor did it promote economic growth, since most new nations lacked the necessary social and physical infrastructure for a modern economy. Proponents of aid replied that U.S. capital and technology were needed precisely to build infrastructure, to assist “nation building,” and to fortify recipients against Communists and others who might subvert the development process in its early stages. In the late 1950s, U.S. economic aid averaged about $1,600,000,000 per year, compared with about $2,100,000,000 in military aid to friendly regimes. The Soviet line, by contrast, held that new nations would not be truly independent until they freed themselves from economic dependence on their former masters, but the Soviets invariably expected a political return for their own assistance. The claim of the People’s Republic of China to be the natural leader of Third World revolt also obliged Khrushchev to make bolder endorsements of wars of national liberation. By 1960 it was already clear, however, that local politics and culture made every Third World situation unique.

The Middle East had reached an unstable deadlock based precariously on the UN-administered cease-fire of 1956. The eclipse of British and French influence after the Suez debacle made the United States fearful of growing Soviet influence in the region, symbolized by the Soviet offer to take over construction of the Aswān High Dam in Egypt. In January 1957 the U.S. Congress authorized the President to deploy U.S. troops in the region if necessary and to dispense $500,000,000 in aid to friendly states. This Eisenhower Doctrine appeared to polarize the region, with Middle East Treaty Organization members in support and Egypt, Syria, and Yemen in opposition. When, in July 1958, nationalist generals backed by a variety of factions, prominent among which were Communists, overthrew the pro-Western Hāshimite monarchy in Iraq, and unrest spread to Jordan and Lebanon, Eisenhower responded at once. The 14,000 U.S. troops that landed in Beirut allowed the Lebanese president to restore order on the basis of a delicate compromise among radical, Muslim, and Christian factions. Khrushchev denounced the intervention, demanded that the U.S.S.R. be consulted, and tried without success to convene an international conference on the Middle East. His extension of an invitation to India, but not China, needlessly alienated Peking and signaled a new Soviet interest in relations with New Delhi.

The climactic year of African decolonization was 1960, and the first Cold War crisis on that continent occurred when, in that year, Belgium hastily pulled out of the vast Belgian Congo (now Congo [Kinshasa]). Tribal antagonisms and rival personalities made even the independence ceremonies a catastrophe, as the Congolese nationalist leader and first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, supported an insurrection by Congolese army units that involved the murder of whites and Blacks alike. No sooner had Belgian troops returned to restore order than Moise Tshombe declared the secession of the iron-rich Katanga province. UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld intervened against the Belgians and Katangese (thereby setting an ominous precedent of UN toleration for Black violence against Blacks or other races), while the Soviets accused Tshombe of being a dupe for imperialist mining interests and threatened to send arms and Soviet “volunteers” to the leftist Lumumba. Hammarskjöld then organized a UN armed force to subdue Katanga and save the Congo—and Africa—from Cold War involvement. The clumsy UN efforts did not prevent, and may have incited, the spread of civil war. Lumumba tried to establish his own secessionist state, but he then fell into the hands of the Congolese army headed by Joseph Mobutu (later Mobutu Sese Seko), a former sergeant, and was murdered by the Katangese in January 1961. Hammarskjöld himself died in a plane crash in the Congo in September 1961. UN troops remained until 1964, but as soon as they were withdrawn rebellion returned, and Mobutu seized control in a military coup d’état in 1965. The Katangan revolt was not quelled until 1967.

In Southeast Asia the Geneva Accords disintegrated rapidly after 1954. The planned elections to reunify Vietnam were never held, since South Vietnam’s leader, Ngo Dinh Diem, both feared the results and denied the possibility of free elections in the Communist north. Ho Chi Minh’s regime in Hanoi then trained 100,000 native southerners for guerrilla war and launched a campaign of assassination and kidnapping of South Vietnamese officials. In December 1960 the Viet Cong (as Diem dubbed them) proclaimed the formation of a National Liberation Front (NLF), with the avowed aim of reuniting the two Vietnams under a Hanoi regime. American advisers tried vainly to arrest the disintegration of South Vietnam with advice on counterinsurgency and state-building techniques.

In neighbouring Laos the Communist Pathet Lao took control of the two northernmost provinces of the country in defiance of the neutral government under Prince Souvanna Phouma agreed upon after Geneva. Those provinces sheltered the Ho Chi Minh Trail supply route bypassing the demilitarized zone between the two Vietnams. When a new, assertive Laotian government sent troops to enforce its authority over the provinces in 1958–59, civil war appeared inevitable. A military coup d’état led by Kong Le briefly returned Souvanna to power, but when Kong Le was in turn driven out in December 1960, he joined forces with the Pathet Lao in their strategic stronghold in the Plain of Jarres. Having secured the Laotian territory needed for infiltration and assault on South Vietnam, North Vietnam persuaded China and the U.S.S.R. in December 1960 to approve Ho’s plan for a “nonpeaceful transition to socialism” in Vietnam.