Cold War: A History From Beginning to End (The Cold War)

by Hourly History

Cold War was an ideological clash between two different economic systems, which were championed by two world superpowers.

Cold War is called the Cold War because it was technically “cold.” There was no direct fighting between the two major opponents. However, that did not mean that the war was bloodless or without victims. Fighting erupted in many corners of the globe - most famously, the United States involved itself in wars in Korea and Vietnam, and the Soviet Union was involved in fighting in China and Afghanistan.

The United States and the Soviet Union did not (and perhaps could not) fight each other directly. Instead, they fought for control and for allies everywhere else.

Communist governments were created in much of Eastern Europe. The Soviet-aligned countries came to be known as the Eastern Bloc and included the U.S.S.R., Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia (until the 1960s).

Switzerland and Finland managed to remain neutral; Europe was truly divided.

the Marshall Plan, the United States offered aid to any country needing it, provided that they were not affiliated with Communism.

The goal of covert operations was often regime change. This meant overthrowing the current government and replacing it with one that leaders at the time think will be more friendly to their interests. One such incident has now become famous—the overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran in 1953.

embarrassing moment later on, Soviet Premier Khrushchev ordered the infamous Berlin Wall built between East and West Berlin.

the Bay of Pigs set the stage for the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In a tense few days of negotiations, Kennedy finally agreed to remove U.S. nuclear weapons in Turkey, and the Soviets turned back. In response to the very real danger the world faced during these thirteen days in 1962, disarmament took center stage.

The Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, or SALT I, limited the kinds of and numbers of weapons both countries could possess and develop.

Economically, a phenomenon known as “stagnation” hit the United States as well as the Soviet Union.

“You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness.” —Ronald Reagan, 1964

America was not content to sit idly by and allow matters in Afghanistan to run their course. Rather, they began secretly smuggling valuable, destructive weapons to the group fighting the Soviets: the Mujahedeen. The irony is that the Mujahedeen would in the future provide the historical roots of the Taliban and Al Qaeda; one of their leaders was Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the U.S.