AFCWA_cold_war

Introduction
The Cold War was the continuing state of conflict, tension, and competition that existed after World War
II. On one side were the Soviet Union and its satellites, and on the other were the powers of the Western
world under the leadership of the United States.

The Beginning of the Cold War - 1945
The Cold War began in the mid-1940s and lasted into the early 1990s. Throughout this period, the con-
flict was expressed through military coalitions, espionage, weapons development, invasions, propaganda,
and competitive technological development, which included the space race. The conflict included costly
defense spending, a massive conventional and nuclear arms race, and numerous proxy wars; the two
superpowers never fought one another directly.

Although the Soviet Union, the United States, Britain, and France were allied against the Axis powers
during the last four years of World War II, disagreements existed both during and after the conflict on
many topics, particularly over the shape of the post-war world. At the war's conclusion, most of Europe
was occupied by those four countries, while the United States and the Soviet Union possessed the two
most powerful military forces.

The Warsaw Pact
The Soviet Union created the Eastern Bloc of countries that it occupied, annexing some as Soviet So-
cialist Republics and maintaining others as satellite states that would later form the Warsaw Pact. The
United States and various western European countries began a policy of "containment" of communism
and forged myriad alliances to this end, including NATO. Several of these western countries also coor-
dinated efforts regarding the rebuilding of western Europe, including western Germany, which the Soviets
opposed. In other regions of the world, such as Latin America and Southeast Asia, the Soviet Union
fostered communist revolutionary movements, which the United States and many of its allies opposed
and, in some cases, attempted to "roll back". Many countries were prompted to align themselves with the nations that would later form either NATO or
the Warsaw Pact, though other movements would also emerge.

"The Hot Wars" during the Cold War
The Cold War saw periods of both heightened tension and relative calm. International crises arose, such as:

Berlin Blockade (1948–1949);
The French Indo-china War (1946-1954)
The Korean War (1950–1953);
The Berlin Crisis of 1961;
The Vietnam War (1959–1975);
The Cuban Missile Crisis (1962);
The Soviet war in Afghanistan (1979–1989) and NATO exercises in November 1983;
There were also periods of reduced tension as both sides sought détente. Direct military attacks on adversaries were deterred by the potential for
mutual assured destruction using deliverable nuclear weapons.

Winning the Cold War 1980-1991

The Cold War drew to a close in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. The United States under

President Ronald Reagan increased diplomatic, military, and economic pressure on

the Soviet Union,

which was already suffering from severe economic stagnation. In the second half of the 1980s, newly

appointed Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the

perestroika and glasnost reforms. The

Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, leaving the United States as the dominant military power, though

Russia retained much of the massive Soviet

nuclear arsenal.

The United States Congress passed

"Cold War Victory Day" in 1992 - and many congressionally sponsored Veteran Service

Organizations (VSO) recognize the

need for a Cold War Victory Medal to honor those who served.

Terminology

The first use of the term "Cold War" to describe post-World War II geopolitical tensions between

the Soviet Union and its western allies has been attributed to American financier

and US presidential

advisor Bernard Baruch. In South Carolina on April 16, 1947, Baruch delivered a speech

(composed by journalist Herbert Bayard Swope) in which he said,

"Let us not be deceived: we

are today in the midst of a cold war."

Columnist Walter Lippmann also gave the term wide currency, with the publication of his 1947

book titled Cold War. The term had previously been used by George Orwell in an essay entitled "You and the Atomic Bomb" which appeared in the
British newspaper Tribune on October 19, 1945.
However, while contemplating a world living in the shadow of nuclear war and warning of a "peace that is no peace", which he called a permanent "cold
war", Orwell did directly refer to that war as the ideological confrontation between the Soviet Union and the western powers. In a 1946 newspaper
column, Orwell also wrote that "[a]fter the Moscow conference last December, Russia began to make a 'cold war' on Britain and the British Empire."

"Checkpoint Charlie"

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Allied forces cold war association (AFCWA)

BRIEF HISTORY OF THE COLD WAR 1945-1991

Brief History of the Cold War 1945-1991 updated 06 December 2006.

Cold War-era, mobile
Soviet Nuclear launcher

PHOTO COURTESY JANE'S