Eras
The Cold War
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A prolonged geopolitical and ideological confrontation between the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union and its allies following the Second World War, fought through proxy wars, an arms race, espionage and competing alliance systems rather than direct large scale combat between the two superpowers. Historians differ on both its start, whether the wartime allies' cooperation broke down as early as 1945 or only crystallized into open confrontation with the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan of 1947, and its end, whether the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 or the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 marks its true close.
Facts
Disputed
Start YearThe Truman Doctrine, announced 12 March 1947, is the conventional marker for open confrontation, but the wartime allies' cooperation had already broken down over Eastern Europe and Iran in 1945 and 1946, and some historians date the Cold War's origins to the differing occupation policies both powers adopted immediately after Germany's surrender in 1945. End YearThe Soviet Union's formal dissolution on 26 December 1991 is the conventional end date, though the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 and the joint US-Soviet declaration that December that the Cold War was over are also widely treated as its effective close. Geographic ScopeGlobal in reach through allied and client states, but centered on the confrontation between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization bloc in Western Europe and North America and the Warsaw Pact bloc in Eastern Europe, with major proxy contests in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere in Asia, Africa and Latin America. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Sources
1. We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Gaddis, 1997)
John Lewis Gaddis, Oxford University Press, 1997
The Oxford History of the Twentieth Century
Oxford University PressIncludes: The Fall of the Berlin Wall
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.Includes: Suharto
Wikipedia
WikipediaIncludes: North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, era placementQuote, Includes: North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, era placement
Founded in the aftermath of World War II, NATO was established with the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949.
Wikipedia
WikipediaIncludes: Warsaw Pact, Warsaw Pact, era placementQuote, Includes: Warsaw Pact, Warsaw Pact, era placement
On 14 May 1955, the USSR and seven other Eastern European countries established the Warsaw Pact.
Wikipedia
WikipediaIncludes: Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, era placementQuote, Includes: Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, era placement
Government representatives from Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela met in Baghdad.
Dissenting Readings (1 dissenting reading)
Start Year
John Lewis Gaddis's We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (1997), drawing on Soviet archives opened after 1991, argues the Cold War's origins lie in 1945 rather than in the Truman Doctrine of 1947. Gaddis holds that the United States and the Soviet Union began building incompatible kinds of empire the moment the Second World War ended, an empire of consent in the American case and an empire of coercion in the Soviet one, and that this asymmetry, not any single 1947 policy announcement, accounts for the confrontation that followed. On this reading, 1947 marks when the West named and organized against a rivalry already two years old.
A dissenting reading, from John Lewis GaddisJohn Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Gaddis, 1997), Oxford University Press, 1997
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