Many of us know the 'Cold War' as a period of geopolitical tension. What states were involved in the cold war? What are the factors that lead to cold wars? Let’s dig in and find out more.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
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The Cold War refers to a period of geopolitical tension between the Soviet Union with its satellite states, and the United States with its allies after World War 2. According to history, the conflict started between 1946 and 1947. The cold war is said to have started de-escalating after the revolutions of 1989. The end of the cold war came after the collapse of the USSR. The reason why the term cold is used is that there wasn’t any large scale direct fighting between the two sides. However, the members of a cold war supported major regional conflicts called proxy wars. The conflict split the temporary wartime alliance against Nazi Germany and its allies. This left the USSR and the US as the two superpowers having profound political and economic differences.
The initial phase of the Cold War started in the first two years after the Second World War in the year 1945. The Soviet Union consolidated its control over the states of the Eastern Bloc. The United States, on the other hand, started a strategy of global containment in order to challenge Soviet power, extending military and financial aid to the countries of Western Europe, creating the NATO alliance and supporting the anti-communist side in the Civil War of Greece. The first major crisis of the Cold War was the Berlin Blockade (1948-1949). Some of the factors that promoted the expansion of the Cold War conflict include the victory of the Communist side in the Chinese Civil War as well as the outbreak of the Korean War (1950-1953). Both the US and the USSR competed for the influence of the decolonizing states of Asia and Africa, and in Latin America. The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was suppressed by the Soviets. The expansion and escalation led to more crises like the Suez Crisis (1956), the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962); this was the closest that the two sides came to a nuclear war and the Berlin Crisis of 1961. Meanwhile, an international peace movement took root, especially the anti-nuclear movement, gained popularity from the late 1950s and early 1960s. These movements continued to grow through the 1970s and 1980s with large demonstrations, various non-parliamentary activism and protest marches.
By the 1970s, both sides had become interested in making allowances in order to create a more stable and predictable international system. This ushered in a period of détente which saw the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and the US opening relations with the PRC as a strategic counterweight to the USSR. Détente collapsed at the end of the decade after the start of the Soviet-Afghan War in 1979. On 12 June, a million protesters gathered in Central Park, New York to call for an end to the Cold War arms race and nuclear weapons. Pressure for national sovereignty grew stronger in Eastern Europe, mainly Poland. Following an abortive coup attempt by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in August 1991, the Soviet Union lost control. This led to the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991 as well as the collapse of communist regimes in other countries like South Yemen, Cambodia and Mongolia. The United States remained the only superpower in the World.
