The Cold War

Introduction

The « cold war » is the name of the tensed period between the two greatest powers in

the world between the end of the Second World War and the end the 1980s.

In diplomatic terms there are three types of war:

· Cold War: it’s especially use to describe the relationship between the USA and

the USSR: they never directly fought each other, but they fight by the

intermediary of poorer countries under their influence.

· Warm War : The countries negotiate, there is still a chance that war doesn’t

occur, but armies, navies etc are mobilised and war plans are already

prepared.

· Hot War: This is the warfare, the armies are fighting.

Those two powers were the USA and its allies against USSR (Union of Soviet

Socialist Republics) and its allies. It caused the division of the World with those two axes,

and during half the 20th century, many wars occurred in the Third World countries: USSR

and the USA did not want to fight because it would be a nuclear war and they feared the

consequences of such a war. However the Cold War is called the Third World War: it’s a

word play because it can be understood as the War in the Third World because of the several

wars like the Korean War, the Vietnamese War, Hungary, and even the one in Afghanistan.

It created too many crisis which nearly brought up a real war like the Cuban Missile Crisis

or the Berlin Wall. It can be understood too like the third of the World Wars: if all the

victims of the wars between the states influenced by one of the two axes are counted, it’s the

second war that caused the most casualties.

Map 1: A divided world

2

It was characterised by an ideological confrontation between the bolshevism and the

capitalism, which are completely antagonist. The USSR and the USA were allied during the

Second World War against the Nazism and Germany under Hitler, that explains why there

were confronted to territories problems: where the USSR had win against the Nazis, it could

be occupied by it and the USSR could have an influence, but it annoyed the USA: they

considered the communism as the evil.

They feared each other: in one side the Soviets had an enormous military force and

lots of territories and allies, moreover they had to a considerable political prestige; in the

other side the USA had showed in the end of the Second World War they had the nuclear

bomb and how destructive it was, and they were the richest state in the world.

The first offensive act of the Cold War was initiated by Stalin. During the Yalta

Conference (February 1945), he agreed that the countries under the soviet influence could

have free elections at the end of the war. However, he took advantage of his important

military forces and converted them by force to communist government. The USA felt

threatened: if the USSR could convert the East Europe countries to communism, they could

do the same in the West. The USA needed the West Europe to be “safe”, because it was their

main source of trade. The USSR had been much weakened during the war, so it looked to

reinforce itself by using the power of its neighbours. It’s how the iron curtain appeared

trough the Europe.