Answer:
(a) Definition: The Cold War was the state of tension and rivalry between the two superpowers, the USA and the USSR, and their allies after the Second World War (1945–1991), in which they did not fight each other directly but competed through propaganda, military alliances, the arms race and proxy wars. The term was used by Bernard Baruch and made popular by Walter Lippmann.
(b) Background:
- After the Second World War the USA (capitalism, democracy) and the USSR (communism) emerged as superpowers with opposite ideologies.
- The USSR set up communist governments in East European countries; Winston Churchill described this as an ‘Iron Curtain’ across Europe (1946).
- America’s monopoly of the atom bomb and mutual suspicion over the future of Germany increased the distrust.
(c) Progression:
- The Truman Doctrine (1947) and the Marshall Plan were US policies to contain communism; Germany was divided and the USSR blockaded Berlin (1948–49).
- Military alliances were formed: NATO (1949), SEATO, CENTO and ANZUS by the US side, and the Warsaw Pact (1955) by the Soviet side.
- Proxy wars and crises followed: the Korean War (1950–53), the Berlin Wall (1961), the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), the Vietnam War and the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan (1979). An arms and space race also went on.
- Tension eased in the period of détente in the 1970s. The Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989), the reunification of Germany (1990) and the break-up of the USSR in 1991.
