Backdrop on the Cold War

         The Cold War dated from about 1947 to 1991, it was a state of political and military tension between the Western Bloc, which was dominated by the United States with NATO among its allies, and the powers in the Eastern Bloc, which was dominated by the Soviet Union along with the Warsaw Pact. This all started after the success of the wartime alliance with the Nazi Germany, which left the USSR and the US as two powers with economic and political differenced. A neutral cause came up with the Non-Aligned Movement founded by Egypt, India, and Yugoslavia.
         The Cold War was named because both sides, who had nuclear weapons and threatened mutual assured destruction, never came close to direct contact with each other. Instead they straggled for global influence which engaged in ongoing warfare and in indirect confrontations through proxy war. Relative calm would be followed by a lot of tension, which most likely could have led to a world war. The tensest times were the Berlin Blockade, the Korean War, the Sues Crisis, Berlin crisis of 1961, Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam War, Soviet war in Afghanistan, Yom Kippur war, downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007, and the NATO military exercises. These conflicts were expressed not by fighting but by military coalitions, strategic conventional force deployment, aids to client states, espionage, propaganda campaigns, arm races, appeals to neutral nations, rivalry at sports events, and the Space Race. The USSR and United States got involved in political and military conflicts in the third world countries of Latin America, Middle East, Africa, and the Southeast Asia. To stop the risk of a nuclear war, both sides of the disagreement decided to stop the political tensions through détente in the 1970s, which had worked really well for both countries.
         In the 1980s, the United States gained diplomatic, military, and economic pressures on the Soviet Union, when the communist state was already suffering from economic stagnation. The Soviet Union’s president Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the reforms of perestroika and glasnost. Pressures for national independence grew more in Eastern Europe, but especially grew in Poland. They had reaches a snapping point when Gorbachev had refused to use the Soviet troops to support the government of East Germany in late 1989. Within weeks, all the satellite states broke free from Moscow in a peaceful revolution. The pressures escalated inside the Soviet Union, where communism as the world’s only super power from then on. The Cold War and its events have left a significant legacy, and are often referred to a popular culture in media
featuring themes of espionage and the threat of nuclear warfare. Also another reason why the Cold War had begun was that the United States had refused to share they information about our atomic bombs to the Soviet Union. Also, Truman’s determination not to look soft on communism’s look at the Soviets and think of a threat was another reason that the Cold War began. And the last reason that is began was that the Soviets are determined to secure their borders, make sure they are safe and that no one that isn’t supposed to be in the country will not get through. The Cold War was a war between the United States and the Soviet Union, but they never actually fought each other, never fought directly but behind other countries.

Other Element of Interest related to the Content:
http://www.besthistorysites.net/index.php/american-history/1900/cold-war-era