International Relations · History and regions. The idea in plain words, the rules to remember, the mistake to avoid and a worked example, written and checked by Mega Lecture.
The Cold War was the long rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, and their allies, from the late 1940s to about 1990. It is called cold because the two superpowers never fought each other directly. They competed through alliances, an arms race, ideology and wars fought by others.
The American policy was containment: stopping the spread of Soviet influence. It took shape in the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan and NATO. The Soviet side answered with Comecon and the Warsaw Pact. The world became bipolar.
The rivalry ended with Gorbachev's reforms, the opening of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the break-up of the USSR in December 1991. Many scholars describe the period that followed as unipolar, led by the USA.
Students place NATO after the Warsaw Pact, or treat the two as created together. NATO came first, in 1949; the Warsaw Pact followed six years later, in 1955, after West Germany entered NATO.
Answer: Marshall Plan, Berlin airlift, Warsaw Pact, Cuban Missile Crisis.
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