Cold war

Causes:
The Cold War was basically a war of words and threats forged between the USA and Russia. This was right after the Second World War. It was caused by American fear of Communist attack, Harry Truman's dislike of Josef Stalin, Russia's fear of America's atomic bomb, Russia's dislike of capitalism, America's refusal to share nuclear secrets and Russia's aim of spreading world communism.

History:
The Cold War, often dated from 1947 to 1991, was a sustained state of political and military tension between powers in the Western Bloc, dominated by the United States with NATO among its allies, and powers in the Eastern Bloc, dominated by the Soviet Union along with the Warsaw Pact. This began after the success of their temporary wartime alliance against Nazi Germany, leaving the USSR and the US as two superpowers with profound economic and political differences. A neutral faction arose with the Non-Aligned Movement founded by Egypt, India, and Yugoslavia; this faction rejected association with either the US-led West or the Soviet-led East. The Cold War was so named because the two major powerseach possessing nuclear weapons and thereby threatened with mutual assured destructionnever met in direct military combat. Instead, in their struggle for global influence they engaged in ongoing psychological warfare and in regular indirect confrontations through proxy wars. Cycles of relative calm would be followed by high tension, which could have led to world war. The tensest times were during the Berlin Blockade (19481949), the Korean War (19501953), the Suez Crisis (1956), the Berlin Crisis of 1961, the Cuban missile crisis (1962), the Vietnam War (19591975), the Yom Kippur War (1973), the Soviet war in Afghanistan (19791989), the Soviet downing ofKorean Air Lines Flight 007 (1983), and the "Able Archer" NATO military exercises (1983). The conflict was expressed through military coalitions, strategic conventional force deployments, extensive aid to client states, espionage, massive propaganda campaigns, conventional and nuclear arms races, appeals to neutral nations, rivalry at sports events (in particular the Olympics), and technological competitions such as the Space Race. The US and USSR became involved in political and military conflicts in the Third World countries of Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. To alleviate the risk of a potential nuclear war, both sides sought relief of political tensions through dtente in the 1970s. In the 1980s, the United States increased diplomatic, military, and economic pressures on the Soviet Union, at a time when the communist state was already suffering from economic stagnation. In the mid-1980s, the new Soviet President Mikhail

Gorbachev introduced the liberalizing reforms of perestroika("reorganization", 1987) and glasnost ("openness", ca. 1985). Pressures for national independence grew stronger in Eastern Europe, especially Poland. They reached a breaking point when Gorbachev refused to use Soviet troops to support the faltering government of East Germany in late 1989. Within weeks all the satellite states broke free from Moscow in a peaceful wave of revolutions (there was some violence in Romania). The pressures escalated inside the Soviet Union, where Communism fell and the USSR was formally dissolved in late 1991. The United States remained as the world's only superpower. The Cold War and its events have left a significant legacy, and it is often referred to in popular culture, especially in media featuring themes of espionage and the threat of nuclear warfare.

Results:
Following the Cold War, Russia cut military spending dramatically, but the adjustment was wrenching, as the military-industrial sector had previously employed one of every five Soviet adults[1] and its dismantling left hundreds of millions throughout the former Soviet Union unemployed.[1] After Russia embarked on capitalist economic reforms in the 1990s, it suffered a financial crisis and a recession more severe than the United States and Germany had experienced during the Great Depression.[2] Russian living standards have worsened overall in the postCold War years, although the economy has resumed growth since 1999.[2] The legacy of the Cold War continues to influence world affairs.[3] After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the postCold War world is widely considered asunipolar, with the United States the sole remaining superpower.[4][5][6] The Cold War defined the political role of the United States in the post World War II world: by 1989 the United States held military alliances with 50 countries, and had 1.5 million troops posted abroad in 117 countries.[7] The Cold War also institutionalized a global commitment to huge, permanent peacetime militaryindustrial complexes and large-scale military funding of science.[7] Military expenditures by the US during the Cold War years were estimated to have been $8 trillion, while nearly 100,000 Americans lost their lives in the Korean War and Vietnam War.[8] Although the loss of life among Soviet soldiers is difficult to estimate, as a share of their gross national product the financial cost for the Soviet Union was far higher than that of the United States.[9] In addition to the loss of life by uniformed soldiers, millions died in the superpowers' proxy wars around the globe, most notably in Southeast Asia.[10] Most of the proxy wars and subsidies for local conflicts ended along with the Cold War; the incidence of interstate wars, ethnic wars, revolutionary wars, as well as refugee and displaced persons crises has declined sharply in the postCold War years.[11] The legacy of Cold War conflict, however, is not always easily erased, as many of the economic and social tensions that were exploited to fuel Cold War competition in parts of the Third World remain acute. [3] The breakdown of state control in a number of areas formerly ruled by Communist governments has produced new civil and ethnic conflicts, particularly in the former Yugoslavia.[3] In Eastern Europe, the end of the Cold War has ushered in an era of economic growth and a large increase in the number of liberal democracies, while in other parts of the world, such as Afghanistan, independence was accompanied by state failure.[3]