HIST103: World History (1600–Present)

The Cold War was the protracted ideological, geopolitical, and economic struggle that emerged after World War II between the global superpowers of the Soviet Union and the United States, supported by their military alliance partners. It lasted from the end of World War II until the period preceding the demise of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991.

The global confrontation between the West and communism was popularly termed The Cold War because direct hostilities never occurred between the United States and the Soviet Union. Instead, the "war" took the form of an arms race involving nuclear and conventional weapons, military alliances, economic warfare and targeted trade embargos, propaganda and disinformation, espionage and counterespionage, proxy wars in the developing world that garnered superpower support for opposing sides within civil wars.

The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 was the most important direct confrontation, together with a series of confrontations over the Berlin Blockade and the Berlin Wall. The major civil wars polarized along Cold War lines were the Greek Civil War, the Korean War, Vietnam War, the war in Afghanistan, as well as the conflicts in Angola, El Salvador, and Nicaragua.

During the Cold War, there was concern that it would escalate into a full nuclear exchange with hundreds of millions killed. Both sides developed a deterrence policy that prevented problems from escalating beyond limited localities. Nuclear weapons were never used in the Cold War.

The Cold War cycled through a series of high and low-tension years (the latter called detente). It ended in the period between 1988 and 1991 with the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the emergence of Solidarity, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, and the demise of the Soviet Union itself.

Historians continue to debate the reasons for the Soviet collapse in the 1980s. Some fear that as one superpower emerges without the limitations imposed by a rival, the world may become a less secure place. Many people, however, see the end of the Cold War as representing the triumph of democracy and freedom over totalitarian rule, state-mandated atheism, and a repressive communist system that claimed the lives of millions.

While equal blame for Cold War tensions is often attributed both to the United States and the Soviet Union, it is evident that the Soviet Union had an ideological focus that found the Western democratic and free market systems inherently oppressive and espoused their overthrow, beginning with the Communist Manifesto of 1848.

Source: New World Encyclopedia, https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Cold_War
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