essay over the cold war

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Cold War History

By: History.com Editors

Updated: June 26, 2023 | Original: October 27, 2009

The Cold War was a period of geopolitical tension marked by competition and confrontation between communist nations led by the Soviet Union and Western democracies including the United States. During World War II , the United States and the Soviets fought together as allies against Nazi Germany . However, U.S./Soviet relations were never truly friendly: Americans had long been wary of Soviet communism and Russian leader Joseph Stalin ’s tyrannical rule. The Soviets resented Americans’ refusal to give them a leading role in the international community, as well as America’s delayed entry into World War II, in which millions of Russians died.

These grievances ripened into an overwhelming sense of mutual distrust and enmity that never developed into open warfare (thus the term “cold war”). Soviet expansionism into Eastern Europe fueled many Americans’ fears of a Russian plan to control the world. Meanwhile, the USSR came to resent what they perceived as U.S. officials’ bellicose rhetoric, arms buildup and strident approach to international relations. In such a hostile atmosphere, no single party was entirely to blame for the Cold War; in fact, some historians believe it was inevitable.

Containment

By the time World War II ended, most American officials agreed that the best defense against the Soviet threat was a strategy called “containment.” In his famous “Long Telegram,” the diplomat George Kennan (1904-2005) explained the policy: The Soviet Union, he wrote, was “a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with the U.S. there can be no permanent modus vivendi [agreement between parties that disagree].” As a result, America’s only choice was the “long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.”

“It must be the policy of the United States,” he declared before Congress in 1947, “to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation…by outside pressures.” This way of thinking would shape American foreign policy for the next four decades.

Did you know? The term 'cold war' first appeared in a 1945 essay by the English writer George Orwell called 'You and the Atomic Bomb.'

The Cold War: The Atomic Age

The containment strategy also provided the rationale for an unprecedented arms buildup in the United States. In 1950, a National Security Council Report known as NSC–68 had echoed Truman’s recommendation that the country use military force to contain communist expansionism anywhere it seemed to be occurring. To that end, the report called for a four-fold increase in defense spending.

In particular, American officials encouraged the development of atomic weapons like the ones that had ended World War II. Thus began a deadly “ arms race .” In 1949, the Soviets tested an atom bomb of their own. In response, President Truman announced that the United States would build an even more destructive atomic weapon: the hydrogen bomb, or “superbomb.” Stalin followed suit.

As a result, the stakes of the Cold War were perilously high. The first H-bomb test, in the Eniwetok atoll in the Marshall Islands, showed just how fearsome the nuclear age could be. It created a 25-square-mile fireball that vaporized an island, blew a huge hole in the ocean floor and had the power to destroy half of Manhattan. Subsequent American and Soviet tests spewed radioactive waste into the atmosphere.

The ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation had a great impact on American domestic life as well. People built bomb shelters in their backyards. They practiced attack drills in schools and other public places. The 1950s and 1960s saw an epidemic of popular films that horrified moviegoers with depictions of nuclear devastation and mutant creatures. In these and other ways, the Cold War was a constant presence in Americans’ everyday lives.

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The Cold War and the Space Race

Space exploration served as another dramatic arena for Cold War competition. On October 4, 1957, a Soviet R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile launched Sputnik (Russian for “traveling companion”), the world’s first artificial satellite and the first man-made object to be placed into the Earth’s orbit. Sputnik’s launch came as a surprise, and not a pleasant one, to most Americans.

In the United States, space was seen as the next frontier, a logical extension of the grand American tradition of exploration, and it was crucial not to lose too much ground to the Soviets. In addition, this demonstration of the overwhelming power of the R-7 missile–seemingly capable of delivering a nuclear warhead into U.S. air space–made gathering intelligence about Soviet military activities particularly urgent.

In 1958, the U.S. launched its own satellite, Explorer I, designed by the U.S. Army under the direction of rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, and what came to be known as the Space Race was underway. That same year, President Dwight Eisenhower signed a public order creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a federal agency dedicated to space exploration, as well as several programs seeking to exploit the military potential of space. Still, the Soviets were one step ahead, launching the first man into space in April 1961.

That May, after Alan Shepard become the first American man in space, President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) made the bold public claim that the U.S. would land a man on the moon by the end of the decade. His prediction came true on July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong of NASA’s Apollo 11 mission , became the first man to set foot on the moon, effectively winning the Space Race for the Americans. 

U.S. astronauts came to be seen as the ultimate American heroes. Soviets, in turn, were pictured as the ultimate villains, with their massive, relentless efforts to surpass America and prove the power of the communist system.

The Cold War and the Red Scare

Meanwhile, beginning in 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee ( HUAC ) brought the Cold War home in another way. The committee began a series of hearings designed to show that communist subversion in the United States was alive and well.

In Hollywood , HUAC forced hundreds of people who worked in the movie industry to renounce left-wing political beliefs and testify against one another. More than 500 people lost their jobs. Many of these “blacklisted” writers, directors, actors and others were unable to work again for more than a decade. HUAC also accused State Department workers of engaging in subversive activities. Soon, other anticommunist politicians, most notably Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908-1957), expanded this probe to include anyone who worked in the federal government. 

Thousands of federal employees were investigated, fired and even prosecuted. As this anticommunist hysteria spread throughout the 1950s, liberal college professors lost their jobs, people were asked to testify against colleagues and “loyalty oaths” became commonplace.

The Cold War Abroad

The fight against subversion at home mirrored a growing concern with the Soviet threat abroad. In June 1950, the first military action of the Cold War began when the Soviet-backed North Korean People’s Army invaded its pro-Western neighbor to the south. Many American officials feared this was the first step in a communist campaign to take over the world and deemed that nonintervention was not an option. Truman sent the American military into Korea, but the Korean War dragged to a stalemate and ended in 1953.

In 1955, the United States and other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) made West Germany a member of NATO and permitted it to remilitarize. The Soviets responded with the Warsaw Pact , a mutual defense organization between the Soviet Union, Albania, Poland, Romania, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria that set up a unified military command under Marshal Ivan S. Konev of the Soviet Union.

Other international disputes followed. In the early 1960s, President Kennedy faced a number of troubling situations in his own hemisphere. The Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and the Cuban missile crisis the following year seemed to prove that the real communist threat now lay in the unstable, postcolonial “Third World.” 

Nowhere was this more apparent than in Vietnam , where the collapse of the French colonial regime had led to a struggle between the American-backed nationalist Ngo Dinh Diem in the south and the communist nationalist Ho Chi Minh in the north. Since the 1950s, the United States had been committed to the survival of an anticommunist government in the region, and by the early 1960s it seemed clear to American leaders that if they were to successfully “contain” communist expansionism there, they would have to intervene more actively on Diem’s behalf. However, what was intended to be a brief military action spiraled into a 10-year conflict .

The End of the Cold War and Effects

Almost as soon as he took office, President Richard Nixon (1913-1994) began to implement a new approach to international relations. Instead of viewing the world as a hostile, “bi-polar” place, he suggested, why not use diplomacy instead of military action to create more poles? To that end, he encouraged the United Nations to recognize the communist Chinese government and, after a trip there in 1972, began to establish diplomatic relations with Beijing.

At the same time, he adopted a policy of “détente”—”relaxation”—toward the Soviet Union. In 1972, he and Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev (1906-1982) signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I), which prohibited the manufacture of nuclear missiles by both sides and took a step toward reducing the decades-old threat of nuclear war.

Despite Nixon’s efforts, the Cold War heated up again under President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004). Like many leaders of his generation, Reagan believed that the spread of communism anywhere threatened freedom everywhere. As a result, he worked to provide financial and military aid to anticommunist governments and insurgencies around the world. This policy, particularly as it was applied in the developing world in places like Grenada and El Salvador, was known as the Reagan Doctrine .

Even as Reagan fought communism in Central America, however, the Soviet Union was disintegrating. In response to severe economic problems and growing political ferment in the USSR, Premier Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022) took office in 1985 and introduced two policies that redefined Russia’s relationship to the rest of the world: “glasnost,” or political openness, and “ perestroika ,” or economic reform. 

Soviet influence in Eastern Europe waned. In 1989, every other communist state in the region replaced its government with a noncommunist one. In November of that year, the Berlin Wall –the most visible symbol of the decades-long Cold War–was finally destroyed, just over two years after Reagan had challenged the Soviet premier in a speech at Brandenburg Gate in Berlin: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” By 1991, the Soviet Union itself had fallen apart. The Cold War was over.

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The Cold War (1945-1989) essay

The Cold War is considered to be a significant event in Modern World History. The Cold War dominated a rather long time period: between 1945, or the end of the World War II, and 1990, the collapse of the USSR. This period involved the relationships between two superpowers: the United States and the USSR. The Cold War began in Eastern Europe and Germany, according to the researchers of the Institute of Contemporary British History (Warner 15).  Researchers state that “the USSR and the United States of America held the trump cards, nuclear bombs and missiles” (Daniel 489). In other words, during the Cold War, two nations took the fate of the world under their control. The progression of the Cold War influenced the development of society, which became aware of the threat of nuclear war. After the World War II, the world experienced technological progress, which provided “the Space Race, computer development, superhighway construction, jet airliner development, the creation of international phone system, the advent of television, enormous progress in medicine, and the creation of mass consumerism, and many other achievements” (Daniel 489). Although the larger part of the world lived in poverty and lacked technological progress, the United States and other countries of Western world succeeded in economic development. The Cold War, which began in 1945, reflected the increased role of technological progress in the establishment of economic relationships between two superpowers.   The Cold War involved internal and external conflicts between two superpowers, the United States and the USSR, leading to eventual breakdown of the USSR.

• The Cold War: background information

The Cold War consisted of several confrontations between the United States and the USSR, supported by their allies. According to researchers, the Cold War was marked by a number of events, including “the escalating arms race, a competition to conquer space, a dangerously belligerent for of diplomacy known as brinkmanship, and a series of small wars, sometimes called “police actions” by the United States and sometimes excused as defense measures by the Soviets” (Gottfried 9). The Cold War had different influences on the United States and the USSR. For the USSR, the Cold War provided massive opportunities for the spread of communism across the world, Moscow’s control over the development of other nations and the increased role of the Soviet Communist party.

In fact, the Cold War could split the wartime alliance formed to oppose the plans of Nazi Germany, leaving the USSR and the United States as two superpowers with considerable economic and political differences. The USSR was based on a single-party Marxist–Leninist system, while the United States was a capitalist state with democratic governance based on free elections.

The key figure in the Cold War was the Soviet leader Gorbachev, who was elected in 1985. He managed to change the direction of the USSR, making the economies of communist ruled states independent. The major reasons for changing in the course were poor technological development of the USSR (Gottfried 115). Gorbachev believed that radical changes in political power could improve the Communist system. At the same time, he wanted to stop the Cold War and tensions with the United States. The cost of nuclear arms race had negative impact on the economy of the USSR. The leaders of the United States accepted the proposed relationships, based on cooperation and mutual trust. The end of the Cold War was marked by signing the INF treaty in 1987 (Gottfried 115).

• The origins of the Cold War

Many American historians state that the Cold War began in 1945. However, according to Russian researchers, historians and analysts “the Cold War began with the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, for this was when the capitalist world began its systematic opposition to and effort to undermine the world’s first socialist state and society” (Warner13). For Russians, the Cold War was hot in 1918-1922, when the Allied Intervention policy implemented in Russia during the Russian Civil War. According to John W. Long, “the U.S. intervention in North Russia was a policy formulated by President Wilson during the first half of 1918 at the urgent insistence of Britain, France and Italy, the chief World War I allies” (380).

Nevertheless, there are some other opinions regarding the origins of the Cold War. For example, Geoffrey Barraclough, an outstanding English historian, states that the events in the Far East at the end of the century contributed to the origins of the Cold War. He argues that “during the previous hundred years, Russia and the United States has tended to support each other against England; but now, as England’s power passed its zenith, they came face to face across the Pacific” (Warner 13). According to Barraclough, the Cold War is associated with the conflict of interests, which involved European countries, the Middle East and South East Asia. Finally, this conflict divided the world into two camps. Thus, the Cold War origins are connected with the spread of ideological conflict caused by the emergence of the new power in the early 20-th century (Warner 14). The Cold War outbreak was associated with the spread of propaganda on the United States by the USSR. The propagandistic attacks involved the criticism of the U.S. leaders and their policies. These attacked were harmful to the interests of American nation (Whitton 151).

• The major causes of the Cold War

The United States and the USSR were regarded as two superpowers during the Cold War, each having its own sphere of influence, its power and forces. The Cold War had been the continuing conflict, caused by tensions, misunderstandings and competitions that existed between the United States and the USSR, as well as their allies from 1945 to the early 1990s (Gottfried 10). Throughout this long period, there was the so-called rivalry between the United States and the USSR, which was expressed through various transformations, including military buildup, the spread of propaganda, the growth of espionage, weapons development, considerable industrial advances, and competitive technological developments in different spheres of human activity, such as medicine, education, space exploration, etc.

There four major causes of the Cold War, which include:

• Ideological differences (communism v. capitalism);
• Mutual distrust and misperception;
• The fear of the United State regarding the spread of communism;
• The nuclear arms race (Gottfried 10).

The major causes of the Cold War point out to the fact that the USSR was focused on the spread of communist ideas worldwide. The United States followed democratic ideas and opposed the spread of communism. At the same time, the acquisition of atomic weapons by the United States caused fear in the USSR. The use of atomic weapons could become the major reason of fear of both the United States and the USSR. In other words, both countries were anxious about possible attacks from each other; therefore, they were following the production of mass destruction weapons. In addition, the USSR was focused on taking control over Eastern Europe and Central Asia. According to researchers, the USSR used various strategies to gain control over Eastern Europe and Central Asia in the years 1945-1980. Some of these strategies included “encouraging the communist takeover of governments in Eastern Europe, the setting up of Comecon, the Warsaw Pact, the presence of the Red Army in Eastern Europe, and the Brezhnev Doctrine” (Phillips 118). These actions were the major factors for the suspicions and concerns of the United States. In addition, the U.S. President had a personal dislike of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and his policies. In general, the United States was concerned by the Soviet Union’s actions regarding the occupied territory of Germany, while the USSR feared that the United States would use Western Europe as the major tool for attack.

• The consequences of the Cold War

The consequences of the Cold War include both positive and negative effects for both the United States and the USSR.

• Both the United States and the USSR managed to build up huge arsenals of atomic weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles.
• The Cold War provided opportunities for the establishment of the military blocs, NATO and the Warsaw Pact.
• The Cold War led to the emergence of the destructive military conflicts, like the Vietnam War and the Korean War, which took the lives of millions of people (Gottfried13).
• The USSR collapsed because of considerable economic, political and social challenges.
• The Cold War led to the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the unification of the two German nations.
• The Cold War led to the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact (Gottfried 136).
• The Cold war provided the opportunities for achieving independence of the Baltic States and some former Soviet Republics.
• The Cold War made the United States the sole superpower of the world because of the collapse of the USSR in 1990.
• The Cold War led to the collapse of Communism and the rise of globalization worldwide (Phillips 119).

The impact of the Cold War on the development of many countries was enormous. The consequences of the Cold War were derived from numerous internal problems of the countries, which were connected with the USSR, especially developing countries (India, Africa, etc.). This fact means that foreign policies of many states were transformed (Gottfried 115).

The Cold War (1945-1989) essay part 2

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The cold war as a historical period: an interpretive essay *.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 October 2011

As a historical period, the Cold War may be seen as a rivalry between two nuclear superpowers that threatened global destruction. The rivalry took place within a common frame of reference, in which a new historical relationship between imperialism and nationalism worked in remarkably parallel ways across the superpower divide. The new imperial–national relationship between superpowers and the client states also accommodated developments such as decolonization, multiculturalism, and new ideologies, thus producing a hegemonic configuration characterizing the period. The models of development, structures of clientage, unprecedented militarization of societies, designs of imperial enlightenment, and even many gender and racial/cultural relationships followed similar tracks within, and often between, the two camps. Finally, counter-hegemonic forces emerged in regions of the non-Western world, namely China and some Islamic societies. Did this portend the beginning of the end of a long period of Western hegemony?

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1 Paul Ricoeur, Time and narrative , 3 vols, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984–88. See also his ‘Narrative time’, Critical Inquiry 7, 1, 1980, pp. 169–90. For my arguments, see Prasenjit Duara, ‘Transnationalism and the challenge to national histories’, in Bender , Thomas , ed. Rethinking American history in a global age , Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA : University of California Press , 2002 , pp. 25–46 CrossRef Google Scholar . See also Duara , Prasenjit , Rescuing history from the nation: questioning narratives of modern China , Chicago, IL : University of Chicago Press , 1995 . CrossRef Google Scholar

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5 Arendt, Origins of totalitarianism , pp. 152–3.

6 As quoted in Marshall , D. Bruce , The French colonial myth and constitution-making in the Fourth Republic , New Haven, CT : Yale University Press , 1973 , p. 44 Google Scholar . See also Prasenjit Duara, ‘The imperialism of “free nations”: Japan, Manchukuo, and the history of the present’, in Stoler , Ann , McGranahan , Carole , and Perdue , Peter , eds. Imperial formations and their discontents , Santa Fe, NM : School of American Research Press , 2007 . Google Scholar

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14 Carl Parrini, ‘The age of ultraimperialism’, Radical History Review , 57, 1993, pp. 7–9.

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17 Louis and Robinson, ‘Empire preserv’d’, esp. p. 157 for the nuclear sabre-rattling exchange.

18 Johnson Sorrows of empire , pp. 23–37.

19 Linda Carty, ‘Imperialism: historical periodization or present-day phenomenon?’ Radical History Review , 57, 1993, p. 43; Moon , Katherine H. S. , Sex among allies: military prostitution in U.S.–Korea relations , New York : Columbia University Press , 1997 , pp. 17–18. Google Scholar

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22 J.V. Stalin, ‘Marxism and the national question’, Prosveshcheniye , 3–5, March–May 1913, transcribed by Carl Kavanagh.

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30 See for instance Nkrumah , Kwame , Neo-colonialism: the last stage of imperialism , London : Thomas Nelson & Sons, Ltd. , 1965 . Google Scholar

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35 Tilly , Charles , Coercion, capital and European states, ad 990–1992 , Cambridge, MA, and Oxford : Blackwell , 1992 , pp. 209, 221 Google Scholar . For some examples from Southeast Asia, see Reid , Anthony , Imperial alchemy: nationalism and political identity in Southeast Asia , Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 2009 . CrossRef Google Scholar

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37 Jian , Chen , Mao’s China and the Cold War , Chapel Hill, NC : University of North Carolina Press , 2001 , p. 229. Google Scholar

38 Szonyi , Michael , Cold War island: Quemoy on the front line , Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 2008 . Google Scholar

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43 Grandin, ‘Off the beach’, pp. 434, 441.

44 Hamza Alavi, ‘The origins and significance of the Pakistan–US military alliance’, http://hamzaalavi.com/?p=102 (consulted 21 July 2011).

45 Hanhimäki and Westad, The Cold War , p. 167.

46 Westad , Odd Arne , The global Cold War: Third World interventions and the making of our times , Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 2007 , chs. 7 and 8 Google Scholar .

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49 Richard Madsen, ‘Secularism, religious renaissance, and social conflict in Asia’, Martin Marty Center Web Forum, September 2008, http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/webforum/092008/index.shtml (consulted 21 July 2011).

50 For the development state, see Ziya Oni, ‘The logic of the development state’, Comparative Politics , 24, 1, 1991, pp. 109–26. For its historical legacy, see Duara, ‘Imperialism of “free nations”’.

51 Berger , Mark , The battle for Asia: from decolonization to globalization , London : Routledge , 2004 , pp. 225–9 CrossRef Google Scholar .

52 T. Y. Kwak, ‘The legacies of Korean participation in the Vietnam War: the rise of formal dictatorship’, unpublished paper for annual meeting of the American Studies Association, 24 May 2009, http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p113675_index.html (consulted 21 July 2011).

53 Cited in Tilly, Coercion, capital and European states , 213.

54 Curtis Anderson Gayle, ‘Progressive representations of the nation: early post-war Japan and beyond’, Social Science Japan Journal , 4, 1, 2001, p. 9.

55 Victor Koschman, ‘Modernization and democratic values: the “Japanese model” in the 1960s’, in Engerman et al., Staging growth , p. 242.

56 Quoted in Gilman, ‘Modernization theory’, p. 64.

57 Chen Jian, Mao’s China , p. 6; Yang Kuisong, ‘The Sino-Soviet alliance and nationalism: a contradiction’, in Parallel History Project on NATO and the Warsaw Pact, The Cold War History of Sino-Soviet Relations , June 2005, http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/publications/areastudies/documents/sinosov/Kuisong.pdf (consulted 21 July 2011); Shen Zhihua, ‘Guanyu Zhong-Su tiaoyue tanpan yanjiuzhongde jige zhengyi wenti … (Several controversial questions in the study of the Sino-Soviet treaty negotiations …)’, Shixue yuekan , 8, 2004, pp. 64–6. See also Heinzig , Dieter , The Soviet Union and communist China 1945–1950: the arduous road to the alliance , Armonk, NY : M.E. Sharpe , 2004 . Google Scholar

58 Ross , Robert S. and Changbin , Jiang , eds. Re-examining the Cold War: U.S.–China diplomacy, 1953–1973 , Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press , 2002 , pp. 300–1 Google Scholar .

59 This was the view in the CIA and State Department in 1969: see Komine , Yukinori , Secrecy in US foreign policy: Nixon, Kissinger and the rapprochement with China , Aldershot : Ashgate , 2008 , pp. 118, 130 Google Scholar . See also Ross and Jiang, Re-examining the Cold War , pp. 16, 67–9.

60 Ross and Jiang, Re-examining the Cold War , pp. 70, 67–9.

61 Shirley Kan, U.S.–China military contacts: issues for Congress , CRS Report for Congress, Order Code RL32496, updated 10 May 2005, http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/48835.pdf (consulted 21 July 2011). For the effects of the arms race and SDI on the Soviet Union, see Eric Ringmar, ‘The recognition game: Soviet Russia against the West’, Cooperation and Conflict , 37, 2, 2002, p. 130; also Hanhimäki and Westad, The Cold War , pp. 274–5.

62 Coll , Steve , Ghost wars: the secret history of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet invasion to September 10, 2001 , New York : Penguin Press , 2004 . Google Scholar

63 Jalal Al-i Ahmad, ‘Diagnosing an illness’, in Duara, Decolonization , pp. 56–63, quotation on p. 62.

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• Volume 6, Issue 3
• Prasenjit Duara (a1)
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1740022811000416

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World History

Cold war introduction.

The uneasy alliance between the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union that defeated Nazi Germany began to unravel after World War II, giving rise to an ongoing political rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies that became known as the Cold War, a name coined separately by English writer George Orwell  and American presidential adviser Bernard Baruch . The United States and the Soviet Union had emerged from the World War II as the planet’s only superpowers, and, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, while the U.S. was employing  the Marshall Plan to help resurrect the economies and democracies of western Europe, the U.S.S.R. was establishing communist regimes in eastern Europe and keeping them on a tight leash. By the mid-1950s the two camps had formed competing military alliances, the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. With the triumph of the communists in the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the Soviet bloc had gained another formidable ally in the People’s Republic of China.

Over the next four plus decades the two sides engaged in ideological battle for the hearts and minds of the rest of the world, especially the decolonized nations of the so-called Third World. Sometimes that competition heated up in wars fought indirectly through surrogates or by one side facing forces supported by the other (most notably the Korean and Vietnam wars). In 1962, with both sides in possession of arsenals of nuclear weapons, the world was poised on the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis. Thereafter the Soviet Union and United States threatened Earth with massive annihilation as they raced each other in the accumulation of thermonuclear weapons even as they sought to negotiate disarmament. Seeking to persuade the world of the superiority of their respective ideologies—Soviet communism, American democratic capitalism—the U.S.S.R and U.S., each convinced of their opponent’s unquenchable desire to dominate the world, competed on every field imaginable, from the race to space to the dash for Olympic finish lines. Their tools also included persuasion, propaganda, and lots of military and financial aid. By the early 1990s, the Cold War came to end with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its bloc, though why that came about is still debated.

Iron Curtain

Berlin wall, third world, video: berlin wall escapes.

Learn about the construction of the Berlin Wall and how East Germans tried to find a way past it.

Wartime Big Three Conferences​

Believing that the maintenance of postwar peace depended on friendly relations with the Soviet Union, U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt sought to win the confidence of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin at the wartime meetings between himself, Stalin, and British Minister Winston Churchill , at which they planned military strategy and postwar policy. The “Big Three” met first at Tehrān (November 1943) and then in Yalta (February 1945). At the final wartime meeting of the U.S., U.K., and U.S.S.R. leaders, in Potsdam (August 1945), Roosevelt, who had died, was replaced by Pres. Harry Truman and Churchill gave way to Clement Attlee after a change of government in the U.K.

Tehran Conference

Yalta conference, potsdam conference, video: overview of the potsdam conference.

Learn about the Potsdam Conference, attended by Winston Churchill, Harry Truman, and Joseph Stalin to decide the future of Germany and Europe after WWII.

Cold War Pages

Cold War Competition: Space & Sports

Rivalry between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the Space Race and sports were an extension of their attempts to prove the superiority of their respective systems.

The Red Scare, Spies, & Cold War Fiction and Film

As the Cold War intensified in the 1950s, anti-communism and fears of communist subversion pervaded American society.

Nuclear War & Arms Control​

The dropping of atomic bombs on Japan during World War II began the Atomic Age of nuclear warfare and strategy.

Cold War Alliances & Leaders

Cold War alliances were formed by the U.S. and U.S.S.R. and their respective allies.

Cold War Policies, Propaganda, & Speeches

The Cold War was a strategic and tactical contest to influence the nature of the governments and societies of the world’s countries.

Major Cold War Events

On occasion actions by both sides of the Cold War divide resulted in confrontations that brought the ideological adversaries to the brink of war.

• Cold War and Global Hegemony, 1945-1991

We are accustomed to viewing the cold war as a determined and heroic response of the U.S. to communist aggression spearheaded and orchestrated by the Soviet Union. This image was carefully constructed by presidents and their advisers in their memoirs (1). This view also was incorporated in some of the first scholarly works on the cold war, but was then rebutted by a wide variety of revisionist historians who blamed officials in Washington as well as those in Moscow for the origins of the Soviet-American conflict (2).

Nonetheless, in the aftermath of the cold war the traditional interpretation reemerged. John Gaddis, arguably the most eminent historian of the cold war, wrote in the mid-1990s that the cold war was a struggle of good versus evil, of wise and democratic leaders in the West reacting to the crimes and inhumanity of Joseph Stalin, the brutal dictator in the Kremlin (3).

This interpretation places the cold war in a traditional framework. It is one way to understand American foreign policy between the end of World War II and the breakup of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) in 1991. But for quite some time now, historians, political scientists, and economists have been studying the cold war in a much larger global context. They do so because the new documents from the Soviet Union and its former empire as well as older documents from the U.S. and its allies suggest that Stalin conducted a more complex and inconsistent foreign policy than previously imagined and that U.S. officials initially did not regard Stalin, notwithstanding his crimes and brutality, as an unacceptable partner with whom to collaborate in stabilizing and remaking the postwar world.

Most scholars looking at Soviet documents now agree that Stalin had no master plan to spread revolution or conquer the world. He was determined to establish a sphere of influence in eastern Europe where his communist minions would rule. But at the same time, Stalin wanted to get along with his wartime allies in order to control the rebirth of German and Japanese power, which he assumed was inevitable. Consequently, he frequently cautioned communist followers in France, Italy, Greece, and elsewhere to avoid provocative actions that might frighten or antagonize his wartime allies. Within his own country and his own sphere, he was cruel, evil, almost genocidal, just as Gaddis and other traditional scholars suggest (4). Yet U.S. and British officials were initially eager to work with him. They rarely dwelled upon his domestic barbarism. Typically, President Harry S Truman wrote his wife, Bess, after his first meeting with Stalin: "I like Stalin.... He is straightforward. Knows what he wants and will compromise when he can't get it." Typically, W. Averell Harriman, the U.S. ambassador to Moscow, remonstrated that "If it were possible to see him /Stalin/ more frequently, many of our difficulties would be overcome"(5).

Yet the difficulties were not overcome. American fears grew. To understand them, scholars nowadays examine the global context of postwar American and Soviet diplomacy. They see the contest between American freedom and Soviet totalitarianism as part of an evolving fabric of international economic and political conditions in the twentieth century. After World War II, they say, U.S. leaders assumed the role of hegemon, or leader, of the international economy and container of Soviet power. To explain why, scholars examine the operation of the world economy and the distribution of power in the international system. They look at transnational ideological conflict, the disruption of colonial empires, and the rise of revolutionary nationalism in Asia and Africa. They explain the spread of the cold war from Europe to Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America by focusing on decolonization, the rise of newly independent states, and the yearnings of peoples everywhere to modernize their countries and enjoy higher standards of living. Yet the capacity of the U.S. to assume the roles of hegemon, balancer, and container depended on more than its wealth and strength; the success of the U.S. also depended on the appeal of its ideology, the vitality of its institutions, and the attractiveness of its culture of mass consumption—what many scholars nowadays call "soft power" (6).

At the end of World War II, the U.S. and the Soviet Union emerged as the two strongest nations in the world and as exemplars of competing models of political economy. But it was a peculiar bipolarity. The U.S. was incontestably the most powerful nation on the earth. It alone possessed the atomic bomb. It alone possessed a navy that could project power across the oceans and an air force that could reach across the continents. The U.S. was also the richest nation in the world. It possessed two-thirds of the world's gold reserves and three-fourths of its invested capital. Its gross national product was three times that of the Soviet Union and five times that of the United Kingdom. Its wealth had grown enormously during the war while the Soviet Union had been devastated by the occupation by Nazi Germany. Around 27 million inhabitants of the U.S.S.R. died during World War II compared to about 400,000 Americans. The Germans ravished the agricultural economy of Soviet Russia and devastated its mining and transportation infrastructure (7).

Compared to the U.S. in 1945, the Soviet Union was weak. Yet it loomed very large not only in the imagination of U.S. officials, but also in the minds of political leaders throughout the world. It did not loom large because of fears of Soviet military aggression. Contemporary policymakers knew that Stalin did not want war. They did not expect Soviet troops to march across Europe. Yet they feared that Stalin would capitalize on the manifold opportunities of the postwar world: the vacuums of power stemming from the defeat of Germany and Japan; the breakup of colonial empires; popular yearnings for postwar social and economic reform; and widespread disillusionment with the functioning of democratic capitalist economies (8).

During World War II, the American economy had demonstrated enormous vitality, but many contemporaries wondered whether the world capitalist system could be made to function effectively in peacetime. Its performance during their lifetimes had bred worldwide economic depression, social malaise, political instability, and personal disillusionment. Throughout Europe and Asia, people blamed capitalism for the repetitive cycles of boom and bust and for military conflagrations that brought ruin and despair. Describing conditions at the end of the war, the historian Igor Lukes has written: "Many in Czechoslovakia had come to believe that capitalism... had become obsolete. Influential intellectuals saw the world emerging from the ashes of the war in black and white terms: here was Auschwitz and there was Stalingrad. The former was a byproduct of a crisis in capitalist Europe of the 1930s; the latter stood for the superiority of socialism" (9).

Transnational ideological conflict shaped the cold war. Peoples everywhere yearned for a more secure and better life; they pondered alternative ways of organizing their political and economic affairs. Everywhere, communist parties sought to present themselves as leaders of the resistance against fascism, proponents of socioeconomic reform, and advocates of national self-interest. Their political clout grew quickly as their membership soared, for example, in Greece, from 17,000 in 1935 to 70,000 in 1945; in Czechoslovakia, from 28,000 in May 1945 to 750,000 in September 1945; in Italy, from 5,000 in 1943 to 1,700,000 at the end of 1945 (10). For Stalin and his comrades in Moscow, these grassroots developments provided unsurpassed opportunities; for Truman and his advisers in Washington, they inspired fear and gloom. "There is complete economic, social and political collapse going on in Central Europe, the extent of which is unparalleled in history," wrote Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy in April 1945 (11). The Soviet Union, of course, was not responsible for these conditions. Danger nonetheless inhered in the capacity of the Kremlin to capitalize on them. "The greatest danger to the security of the United States," the CIA concluded in one of its first reports, "is the possibility of economic collapse in Western Europe and the consequent accession to power of Communist elements" (12).

Transnational ideological conflict impelled U.S. officials to take action. They knew they had to restore hope that private markets could function effectively to serve the needs of humankind. People had suffered terribly, Assistant Secretary of State Dean G. Acheson told a congressional committee in 1945. They demanded land reform, nationalization, and social welfare. They believed that governments should take action to alleviate their misery. They felt it "so deeply," said Acheson, "that they will demand that the whole business of state control and state interference shall be pushed further and further" (13).

Policymakers like Acheson and McCloy, the officials who became known as the "Wise Men" of the cold war, understood the causes for the malfunctioning of the capitalist world economy in the interwar years. They were intent on correcting the fundamental weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Long before they envisioned a cold war with the Soviet Union, they labored diligently during 1943 and 1944 to design the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. They urged Congress to reduce U.S. tariffs. They wanted the American people to buy more foreign goods. They knew that foreign nations without sufficient dollars to purchase raw materials and fuel would not be able to recover easily. They realized that governments short of gold and short of dollars would seek to hoard their resources, establish quotas, and regulate the free flow of capital. And they knew that these actions in the years between World War I and World War II had brought about the Great Depression and created the conditions for Nazism, fascism, and totalitarianism to flourish (14).

"Now, as in the year 1920," President Truman declared in early March 1947, "we have reached a turning point in history. National economies have been disrupted by the war. The future is uncertain everywhere. Economic policies are in a state of flux." Governments abroad, the president explained, wanted to regulate trade, save dollars, and promote reconstruction. This was understandable; it was also perilous. Freedom flourished where power was dispersed. But regimentation, Truman warned, was on the march, everywhere. If not stopped abroad, it would force the U.S. to curtail freedom at home. "In this atmosphere of doubt and hesitation," Truman declared, "the decisive factor will be the type of leadership that the United States gives the world." If it did not act decisively, the world capitalist system would flounder, providing yet greater opportunities for Communism to grow and for Soviet strength to accrue. If the U.S. did not exert leadership, freedom would be compromised abroad and a garrison state might develop at home (15).

Open markets and free peoples were inextricably interrelated. To win the transnational ideological conflict, U.S. officials had to make the world capitalist system function effectively. By 1947, they realized the IMF and the World Bank were too new, too inexperienced, and too poorly funded to accomplish the intended results. The U.S. had to assume the responsibility to provide dollars so that other nations had the means to purchase food and fuel and, eventually, to reduce quotas and curtail exchange restrictions. In June 1947, Secretary of State George C. Marshall outlined a new approach, saying the U.S. would provide the funds necessary to promote the reconstruction of Europe. The intent of the Marshall Plan was to provide dollars to likeminded governments in Western Europe so they could continue to grow their economies, employ workers, insure political stability, undercut the appeal of communist parties, and avoid being sucked into an economic orbit dominated by the Soviet Union. U.S. officials wanted European governments to cooperate and pool their resources for the benefit of their collective well-being and for the establishment of a large, integrated market where goods and capital could move freely. In order to do this, the U.S. would incur the responsibility to make the capitalist system operate effectively, at least in those parts of the globe not dominated by the Soviet Union. The U.S. would become the hegemon, or overseer, of the global economy: it would make loans, provide credits, reduce tariffs, and insure currency stability (16).

The success of the Marshall Plan depended on the resuscitation of the coal mines and industries of western Germany (17). Most Europeans feared Germany's revival. Nonetheless, U.S. officials hoped that Stalin would not interfere with efforts to merge the three western zones of Germany, institute currency reform, and create the Federal Republic of Germany. Marshall Plan aid, in fact, initially was offered to Soviet Russia and its allies in eastern Europe. But Stalin would not tolerate the rebuilding of Germany and its prospective integration into a western bloc. Nor would he allow eastern European governments to be drawn into an evolving economic federation based on the free flow of information, capital, and trade. Soviet security would be endangered. Stalin's sphere of influence in eastern Europe would be eroded and his capacity to control the future of German power would be impaired. In late 1947, Stalin cracked down on eastern Europe, encouraged the communist coup in Czechoslovakia, and instigated a new round of purges (18).

Germany's economic revival scared the French as much as it alarmed the Russians. The French feared that Germany would regain power to act autonomously. The French also were afraid that initiatives to revive Germany might provoke a Soviet attack and culminate in another occupation of France. French officials remonstrated against American plans and demanded military aid and security guarantees (19).

The French and other wary Europeans had the capacity to shape their future. They exacted strategic commitments from the U.S. The North Atlantic Treaty was signed in 1949 as a result of their fears about Germany as well as their anxieties about Soviet Russia. U.S. strategic commitments and U.S. troops were part of a double containment strategy, containing the uncertain trajectory of the Federal Republic of Germany as well as the anticipated hostility of the Soviet Union. Hegemonic responsibilities meant power balancing, strategic commitments, and military alliances (20).

Just as western Germany needed to be integrated into a western sphere lest it be sucked into a Soviet orbit, so did Japan. U.S. officials worried that their occupation of Japan might fail and that the Japanese might seek to enhance their own interests by looking to the Soviets or the communist Chinese as future economic partners. In 1948, U.S. policymakers turned their attention from reforming Japanese social and political institutions to promoting economic reconstruction. Japan's past economic growth, they knew, depended on links to Manchuria, China, and Korea, areas increasingly slipping into communist hands. Japan needed alternative sources of raw materials and outlets for her manufactured goods. Studying the functioning of the global capitalist economy, America's cold warriors concluded that the industrial core of northeast Asia, Japan, needed to be integrated with its underdeveloped periphery in southeast Asia, much like Western Europe needed to have access to petroleum in the Middle East (21). It was the obligation of the hegemon of the world capitalist economy to make sure component units of the system could benefit from the operation of the whole.

But, as hegemon, the U.S. also had to be sensitive to the worries and responsive to the needs of other countries. In Asia, as in Europe, many peoples feared the revival of the power of former Axis nations. Truman promised them that U.S. troops would remain in Japan, even as Japan regained its autonomy, and that the U.S. would insure peace in the Pacific, even if it meant a new round of security guarantees, as it did with the Philippines and with Australia and New Zealand (22).

Yet, much as American officials hoped to integrate Japan with Southeast Asia, revolutionary nationalist movements in the region made that prospect uncertain. During World War II, popular independence movements arose in French Indochina and the Netherlands East Indies. Nationalist leaders like Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam and Sukarno in Indonesia wanted to gain control over their countries' future (23). Decolonization was an embedded feature of the postwar international system, propelled by the defeat of Japan and the weakening of traditional European powers. Decolonization fueled the cold war as it provided opportunities for the expansion of communist influence. Third World nationalists wanted to develop, industrialize, and modernize their countries. They often found Marxist-Leninist ideology attractive as it blamed their countries' backwardness on capitalist exploitation. At the same time, the Soviet command economy seemed to provide a model for rapid modernization. Stalin's successors, therefore, saw endless opportunities for expanding their influence in the Third World; leaders in Washington perceived dangers (24).

As hegemon of the free world economy, U.S. officials felt a responsibility to contain revolutionary nationalism and to integrate core and periphery. The Truman administration prodded the Dutch and the French to make concessions to revolutionary nationalists, but often could not shape the outcomes of colonial struggles. When the French, for example, refused to acknowledge Ho Chi Minh's republic of Vietnam and established a puppet government under Bao Dai in 1949, the U.S. chose to support the French. Otherwise, Truman and his advisers feared they would alienate their allies in France and permit a key area to gravitate into a communist orbit where it would be amenable to Chinese or Soviet influence. Falling dominos in Southeast Asia would sever the future economic links between this region and Japan, making rehabilitation in the industrial core of northeast Asia all the more difficult (25).

In the late 1950s and 1960s Japan's extraordinary economic recovery, sparked by the Korean War and fueled by subsequent exports to North America, defied American assumptions. Yet, by then, American officials had locked the U.S. into a position opposing nationalist movements led by communists, like Ho Chi Minh. U.S. officials feared that if they allowed a communist triumph in Indochina, America's credibility with other allies and clients would be shattered. Hegemons needed to retain their credibility. Otherwise, key allies, like Western Germany and Japan, might doubt America's will and reorient themselves in the cold war (26).

Hegemony and credibility required superior military capabilities. Leaders in Washington and Moscow alike believed that perceptions of their relative power position supported risk-taking on behalf of allies and clients in Asia and Africa. In the most important U.S. strategy document of the cold war, NSC 68, Paul Nitze wrote that military power was an "indispensable backdrop" to containment, which he called a "policy of calculated and gradual coercion." To pursue containment in the Third World and erode support for the adversary, the U.S. needed to have superior military force (27). Prior to 1949, the U.S. had a monopoly of atomic weapons. But after the Soviets tested and developed nuclear weapons of their own, U.S. officials believed they needed to augment their arsenal of strategic weapons. Their aim was not only to deter Soviet aggression in the center of Europe, but also to support the ability of the U.S. to intervene in Third World countries without fear of Soviet countermoves.

Nuclear weapons, therefore, produced paradoxical results. Their enormous power kept the cold war from turning into a hot war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Leaders on both sides recognized that such a war would be suicidal. But at the same time nuclear weapons encouraged officials in both Washington and Moscow to engage in risk-taking on the "periphery," that is, in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the Caribbean because each side thought (and hoped) that the adversary would not dare to escalate the competition into a nuclear exchange (28). When Ronald Reagan revived the determination of the U.S. to regain military superiority in the 1980s, he sought to use those military capabilities, not for a preemptive attack against the Soviet Union, but as a backdrop to support U.S. interventions on behalf of anti-communist insurgents from Nicaragua and El Salvador to Afghanistan and Angola. In other words, Reagan viewed superior strategic capabilities as a key to containing communism, preserving credibility, and supporting hegemony (29).

For U.S. officials, waging the cold war required the U.S. to win the transnational ideological struggle and to contain Soviet power. To achieve these goals, the U.S. had to be an effective hegemon. This meant that the U.S. had to nurture and lubricate the world economy, build and coopt western Germany and Japan, establish military alliances and preserve allied cohesion, contain revolutionary nationalism, and bind the industrial core of Europe and Asia with the underdeveloped periphery in the Third World. To be effective, Cold Warriors believed that superior military capabilities were an incalculable asset. They focused much less attention and allocated infinitely fewer resources to disseminating their values and promoting their culture. Yet scholars of the cold war increasingly believe that America's success as a hegemon, its capacity to evoke support for its leadership, also depended on the habits and institutions of constitutional governance, the resonance of its liberal and humane values, and the appeal of its free market and mass consumption economy (30).

• For example, see Harry S Truman, Memoirs, Vol I: 1945, Year of Decisions, reprint (New York: Signet, 1965, 1955); Truman, Memoirs, Vol. II: Years of Trial and Hope, 1946-1952, reprint (New York: Signet, 1965, 1956); Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mandate for Change: The White House Years, 1953-1956 (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1963); Dean G. Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years at the State Department (New York: Norton, 1969); George F. Kennan, Memoirs, 2 vol. paperback ed. (New York: Bantam, 1967-1972).
• See, for example, Joyce and Gabriel Kolko, The Limits of Power: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1945-1954 (New York: Harper & Row, 1972); for a discussion of the different historiographical approaches, see my essay, "The Cold War Over the Cold War," in Gordon Martel, ed., American Foreign Policy Reconsidered, 1890-1993 (London: Routledge, 1994).
• John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
• For some of the best new scholarship on Stalin, see Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, reprint (New York: Knopf, 2004, 2003); Norman M. Naimark, The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1995); Vojtech Mastny, The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Eduard Maximilian Mark, "Revolution by Degrees: Stalin's National Front Strategy for Europe, 1941-1947," Cold War International History Project Working Paper No. 31 (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2001); Geoffrey Roberts, "Stalin and the Grand Alliance: Public Discourse, Private Dialogues, and the Direction of Soviet Foreign Policy, 1941-1947," Slovo 13 (2001): 1-15.
• Robert H. Ferrell, ed., Dear Bess: The Letters from Harry to Bess Truman, 1910-1959 (New York: Norton, 1983), 522; Harriman to Truman, June 8, 1945, Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conference of Berlin: The Potsdam Conference, 1945 (2 vols., Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1960), 1: 61.
• For soft power, see Joseph S. Nye, Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2004); Nye, The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).
• Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict From 1500 to 2000 (New York: Random House, 1987), 347-72; R. J. Overy, Russia's War (London: Penguin Books, 1997); Allan M. Winkler, Home Front U.S.A.: America During World War II, 2nd ed. (Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 2000).
• Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), 1-141.
• Igor Lukes, "The Czech Road to Communism," in Norman M. Naimark and L. IA. Gibianskii, eds., The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe, 1944-1949 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997), 29; William I. Hitchcock, The Struggle for Europe: The Turbulent History of a Divided Continent, 1945 to the Present (New York: Anchor Books, 2004), 1-125.
• Adam Westoby, Communism Since World War II (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981), 14-5.
• Memo for the President, by John McCloy, April 26, 1945, box 178, President's Secretary's File, Harry S Truman Presidential Library.
• Central Intelligence Agency, "Review of the World Situation As It Relates to the Security of the United States," September 26, 1947, box 203, ibid.
• Testimony by Dean G. Acheson, March 8, 1945, U.S. Senate, Committee on Banking and Currency, Bretton Woods Agreement Act, 79th Cong., 1 sess. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1945), 1: 35.
• U.S. Department of Commerce, The United States in the World Economy (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1943); Harley A. Notter, Postwar Foreign Policy Preparation, 1939-1945 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1950), 128; Georg Schild, Bretton Woods and Dumbarton Oaks: American Economic and Political Postwar Planning in the Summer of 1944 (New York: St. Martin's, 1995).
• Harry S Truman, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 1947 (Washington, D.C.: U.S.G.P.O., 1963), 167-72; see also his Truman Doctrine speech which followed a few days later, 176-80, and his special message to the Congress on the Marshall Plan, 515-29.
• Michael J. Hogan, The Marshall Plan: America, Britain, and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1947-1952 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987); David W. Ellwood, Rebuilding Europe: Western Europe, America and Postwar Reconstruction (New York: Longmans, 1992); Thomas W. Zeiler, Free Trade, Free World; The Advent of GATT (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).
• John Gimbel, The Origins of the Marshall Plan (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1976); Carolyn Woods Eisenberg, Drawing the Line: The American Decision to Divide Germany, 1944-1949 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
• Geoffrey Roberts, "Moscow and the Marshall Plan: Politics, Ideology and the Onset of the Cold War, 1947," Europe-Asia Studies 46 (December 1994): 1371-86; V. M. Zubok and Konstantin Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin's Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 46-53.
• William I. Hitchcock, France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944-1954 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998).
• Timothy P. Ireland, Creating the Entangling Alliance: The Origins of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981).
• Michael Schaller, The American Occupation of Japan: The Origins of the Cold War in Asia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); Howard B. Schonberger, Aftermath of War: Americans and the Remaking of Japan, 1945-1952 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1989); John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999), 271-3, 525-46.
• Leffler, Preponderance of Power, 346-7, 393-4, 428-32, 464-5; Roger Dingman, "The Diplomacy of Dependency: The Philippines and Peacemaking with Japan," Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 27 (September 1986): 307-21; Henry W. Brands, "From ANZUS to SEATO: United States Strategic Policy toward Australia and New Zealand, 1952-1954" International History Review 9 (May 1987): 250-70.
• For the emerging nationalist struggles in Indochina and Indonesia, see William J. Duiker, Sacred War: Nationalism and Revolution in a Divided Vietnam (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995); George McTurnan Kahin, Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1952).
• Odd Arne Westad, "The New International History of the Cold War: Three (Possible) Paradigms," Diplomatic History 24 (Fall 2000): 551-65; David C. Engerman, Nils Gilman, Mark H. Haefele, and Michael E. Latham, eds., Staging Growth: Modernization, Development, and the Global Cold War (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003).
• Mark Atwood Lawrence, "Transnational Coalition-Building and the Making of the Cold War in Indochina, 1947-1949," Diplomatic History 26 (Summer 2002): 453-80; Andrew Jon Rotter, The Path to Vietnam: Origins of the American Commitment to Southeast Asia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987).
• For the importance of credibility, see the pathbreaking article by Robert J. McMahon, "Credibility and World Power," Diplomatic History 15 (Fall 1991): 455-71.
• NSC 68, "United States Objectives and Programs for National Security," April 14, 1950, in Thomas H. Etzold and John Lewis Gaddis, eds., Containment: Documents on American Policy and Strategy, 1945-1950 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), 401-2; NSC 114/2, "Programs for National Security," October 12, 1951, Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1951: National Security Affairs; Foreign Economic Policy (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1979), 1: 187-89.
• For Soviet policy, see A. A. Fursenko and Timothy J. Naftali, "One Hell of a Gamble": Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958-1964 (New York: Norton, 1997); Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, Khrushchev's Cold War (New York: Norton, 2005).
• Peter Schweizer, Reagan's War: The Epic Story of his Forty Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism (New York: Doubleday, 2002).
• G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order After Major Wars (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 163-214; Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), especially 135-81; Michael Mandelbaum, The Ideas that Conquered the World: Peace, Democracy and Free Markets in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Public Affairs Press, 2002); Geir Lundestad, "Empire" by Integration: The United States and European Integration, 1945-1997 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Gaddis, We Now Know.

Bibliographical Note

Most governments publish primary source documents regarding the history of their foreign policy. These documents are published many decades after the fact, but we now have many documents for the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. For the evolution of the role of the U.S. in the cold war, see U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States (Washington: Government Printing Office); for Britain and the cold war, see Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Documents on British Policy Overseas. Since the end of the cold war, the Cold War International History Project has been publishing (and distributing free of charge) primary source documents from the Soviet Union and other formerly communist nations, including the People's Republic of China. They are indispensable for understanding the global context of the cold war. See the Cold War International History Project, Bulletin (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson International Center, 1992-2004). The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has published several volumes of documents. See, for example, Woodrow J. Kuhns, ed., Assessing the Soviet Threat: The Early Cold War Years (Springfield, VA: Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, 1997); Scott A. Koch, ed., Selected Estimates on the Soviet Union, 1950-1959 (Washington, D.C.: History Staff, Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, 1993); Ben B. Fischer, At Cold War's End: U.S. Intelligence on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, 1989-1991 (Reston, VA: Central Intelligence Agency, 1999).

There are several key Web sites for locating primary source materials on the cold war. The most important are the Cold War International History Project, the National Security Archive, the Parallel History Project for information on NATO and the Warsaw Pact, and the Primary Source Microfilm. The Federation of American Scientists also has a Web site with valuable documents on many issues, like the nuclear arms race.

• Cold War International History Project
• The National Security Archive
• The Parallel History Project on NATO and the Warsaw Pact
• Primary Source Microfilm
• Federation of American Scientists

Many U.S. government agencies also have Web sites containing documents on current and past foreign policy.

• U.S. Department of State - Department of Educational and Cultural Affairs
• U.S. Department of Defense
• Central Intelligence Agency

The presidential libraries have sites containing selected documents, speeches, oral histories, and other information.

NARA Presidential Libraries

For short books locating the cold war in a global context, see Robert J. McMahon, The Cold War: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); David S. Painter, The Cold War: An International History (New York: Routledge, 2002); Geoffrey Roberts, The Soviet Union in World Politics: Coexistence, Revolution and Cold War, 1945-1991; (New York: Routledge, 1999); Geir Lundestad, East, West, North, South: Major Developments in International Relations since 1945, 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).

Many scholars are now using primary documents from the former Soviet Union and other communist countries to study the cold war. In addition to the books and articles listed in note 3, see David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb: the Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994); William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (New York: Norton, 2003); Hope M. Harrison, Driving the Soviets Up the Wall: Soviet-East German Relations, 1953-1961 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003). Some of the most fascinating books deal with Chinese foreign policy and the relations between Mao Tse-tung and Stalin. See, for example, S. N. Goncharov, John Wilson Lewis, and Litai Xue, Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993); Jian Chen, Mao's China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).

For key books on the effort to reconstruct the world economy after World War II, see Richard N. Gardner, Sterling-Dollar Diplomacy in Current Perspective: The Origins and the Prospects of Our International Economic Order (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980); Herman Van der Wee, Prosperity and Upheaval: The World Economy, 1945-1980 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); Alfred E. Eckes and Thomas W. Zeiler, Globalization and the American Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

For transnational ideological conflict and the cold war, see Joyce and Gabriel Kolko, The Limits of Power: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1945-1954 (New York: Harper & Row, 1972); Walt W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto, 3rd. ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990); François Furet, The Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); Odd Arne Westad, Cold War and Revolution: Soviet-American Rivalry and the Origins of the Chinese Civil War, 1944-1946 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); Michael E. Latham, Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and "Nation-Building" in the Kennedy Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000); David C. Engerman, Modernization from the Other Shore: American Intellectuals and the Romance of Russian Development (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003); John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).

There are some wonderful studies on decolonization, revolutionary nationalism, and the cold war. See, for example, Robert J. McMahon, Colonialism and Cold War: The United States and the Struggle for Indonesian Independence, 1945-49 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981); Frances Gouda and Thijs Brocades Zaalberg, American Visions of the Netherlands East Indies/Indonesia: US Foreign Policy and Indonesian Nationalism, 1920-1949 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2002); Matthew James Connelly, A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria's Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002). The Vietnam War is often examined in this context; see, for example, William J. Duiker, U.S. Containment Policy and the Conflict in Indochina (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994); George C. Herring, America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975, 4th ed. (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2002).

For power and the cold war, see Mark Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945-1963 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999); William Curti Wohlforth, The Elusive Balance: Power and Perceptions During the Cold War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993); Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992). Raymond L. Garthoff has written two lengthy and illuminating books that link power and ideology. See Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations From Nixon to Reagan (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1985) and The Great Transition: American-Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold War (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1994).

For discussions of the end of the cold war that focus on ideas and transnational movements, see Matthew Evangelista, Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999); Robert D. English, Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals, and the End of the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000); Lawrence S. Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003). For discussions of hegemony and soft power, see the citations in notes 5 and 29.

Melvyn P. Leffler is the Edward Stettinius Professor of American History at The University of Virginia. Currently, he is a Jennings Randolph Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace and holds the Henry Kissinger Chair at the Library of Congress. His book, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford University Press, 1993), won the Bancroft, Ferrell, and Hoover prizes. He is now writing a book about why the Cold War lasted as long as it did and why it ended when it did.

Authored by

Melvyn P. Leffler University of Virginia Charlottesville, Virginia

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159 Cold War Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

• 🤫 Secrets of Powerful Essay on Cold War

🏆 Best Cold War Topic Ideas & Essay Examples

🥇 most interesting cold war topics to write about, 💡 simple & easy cold war essay titles, 🎓 good research topics about cold war, ❓ cold war essay questions, 🤫 secrets of powerful essay on the cold war.

The Cold War is a significant part of the world’s history. Its term refers to the period between 1950 and late 1980, known for a great tension between the Soviet Union and the United States.

Essays on the Cold War are important assignments because they allow students to research the topic in detail. As the war was a major event that has affected many countries, students should prepare well for writing their Cold War essays. Our goal is to help you in writing an outstanding paper.

Start with researching the topics for your essay and selecting the one that interests you the most. Here are some Cold War essay titles we can suggest:

• Does the Cold War affect people or nations today?
• The link between the Cold War and the Korean War
• Argumentative essay on which country started the war
• Capitalist and communist economies during the Cold War
• The impact of the Cold War on international relations
• The link between the Domino theory and the Cold War
• The Effect of the Cold War on the environment

Select one of our titles or check out the examples of the Cold War essay topics online. Now you are ready to work on your essay. Here are some secrets of writing a powerful paper on the Cold War:

• Research the selected issue and think of the Cold War essay prompts you will discuss. Develop an outline for your paper based on your future arguments. Remember that an outline should include an introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion.
• Do not forget to add a title page, if necessary.
• A good Cold War essay introduction should include some background information about the issue, its causes, and effects. Present a thesis statement in the last sentence of this section. It can look like this:

The Cold War still affects the population of North Korea.

• Discuss all relevant data in the body paragraphs. Identify the Cold War leaders, its ideology, global powers, and propaganda. Remember that the reader should get a full perspective on the issue you are discussing.
• Discuss the events that had happened before the Cold War began. What caused its eruption? What were the interests of parties responsible for the Cold War?
• Reflect on the consequences of the Cold War and its effects on today’s world. It will help you to get the reader’s interest.
• You can also discuss what would have happened if the war did not erupt or ended differently.
• Support your claims with evidence and add in-text citations when you refer to information from outside sources. Hint: Use peer-reviewed articles or scholarly books as your main sources of information. Do not rely on personal blogs or websites like Wikipedia.
• Summarize your arguments in a concluding paragraph. Restate your thesis and present the findings of the paper. Remember to end your essay on a positive note.
• Although content is important, make sure that you use correct grammar and sentence structures too. Check the paper several times to make sure that you have made no crucial mistakes. Remember that spelling is important too. You can ask your peers to review the paper for you, if possible.

Remember that our free samples are there for you if you need some ideas for your paper!

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• John Lewis Gaddis: “The Cold War: A New History” For the Soviet Union, the war was a significant devastation and the amount of people and cities lost was enormous. 2 It is obvious that the governments of the two powerful world nations had their […]
• How U.S. Relations Have Impacted and Affected Pakistani-Indian Relations Post Cold War S Pakistan relationship is however strained in that Pakistan has lost its trust for the U.S.it blames the U.S.for the violence that has escalated in the country in the recent past.
• Cold War Paranoia in “Captain America” and “Batman” This form of unexpected events underscores the uncertainty that surrounded the tension between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
• Was the American Use of the Atomic Bomb Against Japan in 1945 the Final Act of WW2 or the Signal That the Cold War Was About to Begin Therefore, to evaluate the reasons that guided the American government in their successful attempt at mass genocide of the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, one must consider not only the political implications behind the actions […]
• The US Influence on the Middle East in the Post-Cold War Era The aim of the essay is to evaluate the impact of the shift from bipolar to the unipolar international system on the Middle East.
• Cold War Consequences for European Countries After the war, the nations faced humongous economic slump, the pecuniary implications of the war took toll on the European Nations.
• How Did the Cold War Order of the Asia-Pacific Differ From That of Europe? The primary difference in the cold war order of the Asia-Pacific and that of Europe was instigated by the reason for security arrangements between the two regions.
• The Role of the Cold War in Shaping Transatlantic Relations in the Period 1945 to 1970 It was considered to give a connotation to the international structure throughout the cold war and could work as a dynamic aspect in generating the dynamics of the east-west conflict.
• Japan’s Role Since the End of the Cold War Having assumed a relatively ‘peaceful’ stand, Japan was able to recover from the impacts of WWII to become one of the most powerful countries in the world at the end of the Cold War in […]
• Misperceptions and the Cold War After the WW II, the America rose to become the most powerful nation in the world, however, the USSR perceived this negatively, which resulted into fierce rivalry between the two nations and the war hang […]
• The Onset of the Cold War The majority of historians adhere to the idea that the period of ideological tension dates back to the period after the World War II whereas other scholars agree that its beginning refers to the end […]
• Nature of State Sovereignty in the Post-Cold War Era To begin with, a discussion will be carried out on the impact of the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 and how it played a significant role of reshaping the state of sovereignty especially after the […]
• The Film Industry During Cold War The end of world war two marked the start of the cold war between the Unites States of America and the Soviet Union.
• Cold War Politics, Culture and Wars The Western democracies led by the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in a discussion regarding the development of the war and the nature of the post-war settlement.
• Liberal Optimism for Post Cold-War Period Essentially, the liberals believed that the damage caused to the allies in the Cold War would clarify the stance of the liberals.
• The Cold War and U.S. Diplomacy Among the situations that called for America’s diplomacy during the Cold War include the deliberate efforts to improve relations with the Soviet Union and ease the hostilities between the U.S.and the Soviet Union.
• International Relations During the Cold War In the face of being associates opposed to the Axis powers, the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics differed in relation to opinionated philosophy and the arrangement of the post-conflict world at […]
• The Cold War: US Foreign Policy The paper seeks to explore issues surrounding the US foreign policy in the course of the war, as well as the implications of the war on the United States’ society and culture.
• Rethinking Cold War History Near the end of the World War II, upon the surrender of the Nazi, there emerged strong alliances among nations that had participated in the world war.
• The Cold War and Its Influence on the American Society After the collapse of the Nazi government, in the year 1945, the US and the Soviet Union became the world superpowers.
• Origins of the Cold War The Cold War was the repercussion of World War II following the emergence of two key supremacy blocs in Europe one of which was subjugated by ideologies of the democracy of the capitalist America.
• Cold War Era and Threats to American Families Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by an atomic bomb marked the end of World War II and the beginning of the cold war.
• Holocaust and the Cold War Cold war refers to the military and political tension between the United States of America and the Soviet Union immediately after the World War 2.
• The Cold War Between the United States and the Soviet Union Klaus and Lane state that this war came to be known as the cold war because the two sides: the Soviet Union and the United States never engaged in a physical fight. In conclusion, the […]
• The Causes of Korea War and How It Epitomized Cold War The Korean War was fought in Korean Peninsula between armies from North and those from South Korea. The only and main cause of the Korean War was the invasion of South Korea by North Korea […]
• The Major Causes of the Cold War Between the Soviet Union and the United States According to Leffler in his book “The Specter of Communism” the cold war was a political and economical war between the United States and the Soviet Union, which started few years after the end of […]
• Reasons of the Cold War Between the Soviet Union and the US Furthermore, before the war, the US described the USSR as a reincarnation of the devil but the feeling was mutual; the USSR did not see the US any different from the devil.
• Modern American History From the Second World War to the Cold War From Ford’s, Jew hatred and political racism-Hitler was especially, personal had a high regard for the anti-Semitism of Henry Ford-; to the Carnegie’s involvement in creation of a Master Race; the relationship between Rockefeller and […]
• Physical Fitness and Sport Policy in the Cold War Johnson presidential administration shifted the priorities in the sports national policy and vision of sports rivalry in the United States.”Addressing the subject in terms of federal initiatives during the 1960s, this article will argue that […]
• To What Extent Did the Cold War Play a Role in the 1950s in Catalyzing the Iranian Revolution in 1979? S wanted the world to practice free trade while the Soviet union wanted nothing to do with international trade, the power rivalry where each of the nations wanted to dominate the other, another cause of […]
• To What Extent Did the Cold War Shaped the US Relations With Latin America? The reasons are on one hand, the great fear to the Soviet Union catch up and expansion, on the other hand the fear of Cuba bring communism domino effect to the Latin America countries and […]
• Cold War and a Bipolar World It has been emphasized that important milestones like winning of Second World War, and development of the Marshall Plan were possible due to considerable investments in the military power by the US during the cold […]
• United States and Soviet Union Relationship Throughout the Cold War Soon after the end of the Second World War, the signs of tensions and mistrust reappeared even though the two nations had been allies during the war and the US had even supplied Russia with […]
• The Cold War’s Developments in the Relations Between the US and the Soviet Union The cold war was fueled by mistrust between the USSR and the U.S. At the end of the World War II, USSR was the only power centre that nearly equaled the U.S.
• The Cold War and the Fifties Studies point out that in 1945, the west, under President Truman strongly reacted to the policies set by Stalin in Poland by stopping all its support to the Soviet Union and expressing massive misgivings about […]
• Coverage of the Cold War in Life Magazine: The Bomb That Never Exploded The attitude to the atomic bomb and its role in the Cold War sufficiently changed with the course of time, and this change is reflected, in particular, in the coverage of Cold War events by […]
• The Cold War: Global Prosperity and Human Rights The Cold War was one of the most famous and crucially important conflicts between the United States of America and the Soviet Union.
• The Cold War Between the Union Soviet Socialist Republic and the United States of America The Americans believed in the principles of democracy and free enterprise while the Russians believed that the whole world must convert to a system of governance according to the teachings of Karl Marx and Lenin.
• Importance of Berlin in Cold War The main causes were; Economic: The United States was interested in supporting free trade in the whole World but The Soviet Union did not show any interest in this venture as it feared if it […]
• The Cold War and Its Influence on Europe Control of Europe was at the centre of the cold war because communists controlled Eastern Europe and wanted to extent their influence to Western Europe as well.
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• What Impact Did World War II and the Cold War Have On the Development of Science in the 20th Century?
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• Did Ronald Reagan End the Cold War?
• Why Did the Cold War Never Become Hot?
• What Caused the Clash Between Communism and Capitalism During the Cold War?
• How Did the Cold War Affect Domestic Policy and American Society?
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"159 Cold War Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." IvyPanda , 2 Mar. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/topic/cold-war-essay-examples/.

IvyPanda . (2024) '159 Cold War Essay Topic Ideas & Examples'. 2 March.

IvyPanda . 2024. "159 Cold War Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." March 2, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/cold-war-essay-examples/.

1. IvyPanda . "159 Cold War Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." March 2, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/cold-war-essay-examples/.

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IvyPanda . "159 Cold War Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." March 2, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/cold-war-essay-examples/.