The Cold War period is one of the most defining episodes in world history. The Cold War shaped geopolitical and geo-statistics alignment between most of the world’s nations. The world was commenced at the end of Second World War 1945 and lasted to the disintegration of the USSR in 1991.
Origin of term
The origin of termCold War is disputed. However, most historians believe that the term was first coined by George Orwell in his essay titled you and the Atomic Bomb, which he published in 1945. However, the term was popularized by Bernard Baruch, an adviser to US Pres. Harry Truman.
What was it?
The term Cold War referred to a serious ideologically, politically, and military conflict between the democratic world lit by the United States of America and the communist world led by the union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR).
The reader should keep in mind that the whole world was not split into these two rival blocs. There were a large number of countries including India, which did not align with either block. Most of these countries where the newly independent states in Asia and Africa. These countries came together to form a new organization, the aptly-titled non-aligned movement (NAM).
War of nerves
The Cold War was more of a “war of nerves” than a real full scale conflict between the two locks. The Cold War in emanated from the hostilities between the rival blogs and was characterized by the battle of ideologically supremacy, mutual antagonism and suspicious and large-scale espionage.
Soon after the end of second world war, the USSR, led by Joesf Stalin, invaded and occupied East European countries and blockaded Berlin, capital of German. The USSR changed the political structure of these countries by installing puppet regimes, increase communalist propaganda, and quelled any dissent.
To halt the expansion of the Soviet ‘sphere of influence’ and the spread of communism, the United States unleashed a ‘Policy of Containment. This policy of containment led to the creation of the North Atlantic treaty organization (NATO) in 1949 and several other military organization, bringing together all the states which cleared and opposed the USSR. The major aim of this militant organization, including NATO, was to provide security to member states against the USSR. To counter this, the USSR enacted the Warsaw Pact (1955).
To wean away European countries from the USSR, the United States, under the Marshall line, extended Monetary help to the West European countries to help them rebuild their shattered economies and to ramp up a large military.
The most important weapons in the Cold were intelligence agencies and technology, especially defense.
Some of the most active, and often the most feared, spy agencies during the Cold War were the central intelligence agency (U.S), the M16 ( military intelligence, UK), and the KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, USSR).
The 1970s saw a lull in Cold War hostilities as the Rival super powers entered into a détente, as a part of which they signed several arms reduction treaties like the SALT-ONE and TWO, and the notable anti-ballistic missile treaty.
While the two rival bloc had large quantities of nuclear weapons, they never (expect, maybe, in the 1962 Cuban missile crisis) used them. What stopped them from using these destructive weapons? The answer could be found in one simple theory: MAD, which stands for mutually assured destruction. The failure of and annihilation deterred the rival blocs from using nuclear weapons.
With the disintegration of the USSR in 1991, the Cold War came to an end. The bipolar world of the Cold War era has given way to the emergence of a unipolar world, one that is dominated by the lone super power, the United States of America.
The cold war was unique in one critical aspect:
Except from the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the two superpowers never faced each other in a direct confrontation. They made their presence felt through their satellite and proxy states. The Korean War (1950-53), Vietnam War (1950s to through early 1970s), the Afghan War (1979-89) where some major theaters for the battle for supremacy between the two superpowers.
