The cold war
The Cold War began as an ideological struggle between the two superpowers thatemerged in the aftermath of World War Two (WWII). The destruction of the formerWestern European balance of power post WWII allowed for new nations to emerge assuperpowers. The tensions that arose from the restructured bipolar balance of power sparked a global east/west rift that continues to exist today. From 1945 to 1991, the United States of America (USA) and the former Soviet Union (USSR) were engaged in an ideological war that resulted in a race to influence and thereby control as much of the world as possible. A costly race for better nuclear technology and more global influence ensued between the two superpowers, which created a global possibility of nuclear war. In 1945, the destructive capability of nuclear warfare was demonstrated when the USA dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan. The threat of nuclear warfare that arose seventeen years later in the Cold War thus evoked fear across the globe and heightened global tensions. The USSR and USA's respective endorsements of communism and capitalism throughout the world led them to directly implicate many countries in the Cold War and simultaneously made them susceptible to i
The USSR thus allied itself closely with Cuba and its socialist leader Fidel Castro, with whom they shared a common communist ideology. From the beginnings of the Cold War until its end in 1991, Eastern European countries revolted periodically against their communist oppressors. The USA and USSR's ultimate desire to end the balance of power stalemate between their respective world views of capitalism and communism caused the superpowers to pursue a race to impose their influence upon as many nations as possible, thus creating a global conflict that divided the world upon ideological lines and nearly resulted in the world's total nuclear destruction. A nuclear war has the potential of destroying the entire world, thus affecting all the people that live on it. This economic and political strengthening hastened Western European countries' autonomy and ensured that these states remained capitalist . The spread of the two superpowers' opposing ideologies to various parts of the world implicated many in the direct threat of nuclear war. Hungarians tore down their own "iron curtain" of barbed wire separating the Hungarian-German boarder, and the subsequent mass movement of East Germans into Hungary spurred the destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1990. The USA focused initially on rehabilitating the Western European powers that had suffered from WWII. The USA countered the spread of Communism by strengthening capitalist countries in Western Europe, North America, Latin America and East Asia . Though the war never resulted in military confrontation, the Cold War demonstrated that nuclear war was a very real possibility. The USSR lacked long range missiles that the USA already had, but if the Soviets put shorter range missiles on land closer to the USA, this technological problem would be circumvented. The USSR, who had less money and technology to develop nuclear weapons than the USA, developed a plan to "bridge the missile gap" . A global east/west rift emerged between their respective ideologies that continues to exist. Both countries were in possession of nuclear weapons duringthe Cold War, and a race to produce more than the other ensued.
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