Cold+War

__//** The Cold War **//__ The Cold War (1947–1991) was the continuing state of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition existing after World War II (1939–1945) between the Communist World – primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies – and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States and its allies. Although the primary participants' military force never officially clashed directly, they expressed the conflict through military coalitions, strategic conventional force deployments, extensive aid to states deemed vulnerable, proxy wars, espionage, propaganda, conventional and nuclear arms races, appeals to neutral nations, rivalry at sports events, and technological competitions such as the Space Race. Despite being allies against theAxis powers, the USSR and the US disagreed about political philosophy and the configuration of the post-war world while occupying most of Europe. The Soviet Union created the Eastern Bloc with the eastern European countries it occupied, annexing some and maintaining others as satellite states, some of which were later consolidated as the Warsaw Pact (1955–1991). The US and its allies used containment of communismas a main strategy, establishing alliances such as NATO to that end. The US funded the Marshall Plan to effectuate a more rapid post-War recovery of Europe, while the Soviet Union would not let most Eastern Bloc members participate. Elsewhere, inLatin America and Southeast Asia, the USSR assisted and helped foster communist revolutions, opposed by several Western countries and their regional allies; some they attempted to roll back, with mixed results. Some countries aligned with NATO and the Warsaw Pact, and others formed the Non-Aligned Movement. The Cold War featured periods of relative calm and of international high tension – theBerlin Blockade (1948–1949), the Korean War(1950–1953), theBerlin Crisis of 1961, the Vietnam War(1959–1975), theCuban Missile Crisis(1962), theSoviet war in Afghanistan (1979–1989), and the Able Archer 83NATO exercises in November 1983. Both sides sought détenteto relieve political tensions and deter direct military attack, which would probably guarantee their mutual assured destructionwith nuclear weapons. In the 1980s, under the Reagan Doctrine, the United States increased diplomatic, military, and economic pressures on the Soviet Union, at a time when the nation was already sufferingeconomic stagnation. In the late 1980s, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the liberalizing reforms of perestroika("reconstruction", "reorganization", 1987) and glasnost("openness", ca. 1985). The Cold War ended after the Soviet Union collapsedin 1991, leaving the United States as the dominant military power, and Russiapossessing most of the Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal. The Cold War and its events have had a significant impact on the world today, and it is commonly referred to in popular culture.