Cold War From Grolier's The New Book of Knowledge

The Nature of the Cold War. The Cold War, in one sense, was a power struggle between the two nuclear military giants of the age, the United States and the Soviet Union. But on a more basic level, the Cold War was a contest between two opposing ways of life. One was democratic capitalism, whose leading representatives were the United States and the nations of Western Europe. The other was totalitarian Communism, the system of the Soviet Union and its "satellite" nations in Eastern Europe.

Between 1945 and 1990, despite constant tensions and an alarming buildup of nuclear arms on both sides, the United States and the Soviet Union officially remained at peace—hence the name the "cold" war. Yet it was hardly a peaceful era.

The Cold War Begins. The Cold War started when the Soviet Union began imposing Communist regimes on weaker countries throughout Eastern Europe. The United States and its allies feared both this sudden increase in Soviet power and further Soviet expansion. Deep mistrust of the ruthless Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin only intensified Western fears.

To contain the spread of Communism, the United States under President Harry S. Truman introduced the Truman Doctrine (1947) and the Marshall Plan (1948). The Truman Doctrine provided military and economic aid to Greece and Turkey. The Marshall Plan provided economic assistance to all the war-torn countries of Western Europe. Although these programs weakened Communist influences throughout Western Europe, by 1948 the Soviets had firmly established Communist rule in Eastern Europe.

The Soviets countered the Marshall Plan with the Berlin Blockade. They hoped to force the United States, Great Britain, and France to abandon their postwar occupation of West Berlin, which was surrounded by Soviet-controlled territory in Germany that later became the Communist state of East Germany. But the allies defeated the blockade with the Berlin Airlift (1948-49). Meanwhile, in 1949, the United States, Britain, France, Canada, and eight other nations formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a common defense treaty to prevent Soviet aggression. In 1955, the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites formed the Warsaw Pact to counter NATO's military strength.

The Cold War intensified in 1949 when the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb. That same year in China, the Communists under Mao Zedong won a civil war that brought the world's most populous nation into the Communist camp.

The Cold War turned hot in Asia in 1950, when Communist North Korea, with Soviet approval, invaded non-Communist South Korea. The United States, under the banner of the United Nations, led the defense of South Korea during the Korean War (1950-53).

To the Brink of Nuclear War. Joseph Stalin's death in 1953 led to a brief improvement in Soviet-American relations. But in 1962, with John F. Kennedy in the White House and Nikita Khrushchev leading the Soviet Union, the Cold War reached its most dangerous moment. For two weeks during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the two superpowers stood at the brink of nuclear war before finally resolving their differences.

Vietnam and Détente. After the Cuban missile crisis, the United States became increasingly involved in an unsuccessful war to stop Communist expansion into South Vietnam. However, while the Vietnam War was at its height in the late 1960's and early 1970's, Soviet-American relations improved, despite the Soviets' aid to North Vietnam. This détente (relaxation of tensions) between the superpowers produced the first nuclear arms control agreement, in 1972. Another important event during this period was the deepening feud between the Soviet Union and Communist China, which divided the Communist world.

The End of the Cold War. Several crises, including a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, ended détente. But relations improved again in 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev, who wished to end Cold War tensions, became the Soviet leader. He found an enthusiastic partner in U.S. president Ronald Reagan, who earlier had called the Soviet Union an "evil empire." In 1987, the two leaders signed the first treaty to eliminate an entire class of nuclear weapons.

In 1989, popular discontent led to the collapse of the Soviet Union's Communist allies in Eastern Europe. The most dramatic event of that year took place when the disintegrating government of East Germany tore down the Berlin Wall, the most powerful symbol of the Cold War. By 1990, at a meeting in Paris, U.S. president George Bush was able to announce, "We have closed a chapter in history. The Cold War is over." The following year, the Soviet Union ceased to exist.