Cold War

Cold War (America vs Russia)

Meta description: This article talks about the Cold War between the two superpowers: Russia and America. Let's learn about the Cold War that had a global impact.

Introduction

After World War II, the Cold War was a period of tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western and Eastern Blocs, due to geopolitical disagreements. Historians disagree over when it began and ended, although most think it started with the Truman Doctrine (12 March 1947) and ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. (26 December 1991). Although both superpowers funded extensive regional skirmishes known as proxy wars, the phrase "Cold War" was coined since there was no large-scale confrontation directly between them. Following their short alliance and triumph over Nazi Germany in 1945, the war centred on these two countries' ideological and geopolitical goals for global hegemony. Apart from nuclear weapons development and traditional military deployment, psychological warfare, media operations, espionage, far-reaching embargoes, sports rivalry, and scientific rivalries such as the Space Race were used to battle for supremacy indirectly.

The United Governments, which comprised other First World countries that were generally liberal democratic but were linked to a network of authoritarian governments, most of which were former colonies, headed the Western Bloc. During WWII, the Soviet Union and its Communist Party governed the Eastern Bloc, linked to a network of totalitarian nations. During the Soviet government-backed left-wing parties and revolutions, there were anti-communist and right-wing governments and uprisings. Almost all colonial governments gained independence between 1945 and 1960, making them Third World battlegrounds.

The Cold War's first phase started soon after World War II ended in 1945. The United States and its allies formed the NATO military alliance in 1949 after a Soviet invasion, and containment was the term given to their worldwide strategy against Soviet domination. In reaction to NATO, the Soviet Union created the Warsaw Pact in 1955. The Berlin Blockade (1948–1949), the Chinese Civil War (1927–1949), the Korean War (1950–1953), the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, the 1956 Suez Crisis, the 1961 Berlin Crisis, and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis all occurred during this period. In Latin America, the Middle East, and the decolonising countries of Africa, Asia, and Oceania, the US and the USSR battled for influence.

Following the Cuban Missile Crisis, a new phase started in which the Sino-Soviet divide between China and the Soviet Union impeded Communist relations. At the same time, France, a member of the Western Bloc, wanted more action autonomy. In 1968, the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia to put down the Prague Spring, while in the United States, the civil rights movement and anti-Vietnam War opposition tore the nation apart. In the 1960s and 1970s, people from all around the globe organised a global peace movement. Large anti-war demonstrations, as well as anti-nuclear weapons testing and nuclear disarmament activities, took place. By the 1970s, both sides had started to make peace and security compromises, ushering in an era of détente defined by the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and diplomatic contacts between the US and the People's Republic of China as a strategic counterbalance to the Soviet Union. During the second half of the 1970s, many self-proclaimed Marxist regimes appeared in the Third World, including Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Afghanistan, and Nicaragua.

Conclusion

Following the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia cut military expenditures and restructured its economy, resulting in the loss of millions of jobs. In the early 1990s, developments in capitalism triggered a recession in the US and Germany that was worse than the Great Depression. Only five or six post-socialist governments have made progress toward joining the rich and capitalist world in the 25 years since the end of the Cold War, while the rest have fallen behind, some to the point that it will take decades to catch up to where they were before communism's demise.