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The true face of the Cold War: How did the two superpowers fight in the dark?
The Cold War was a period of global geopolitical tension involving primarily the struggle for ideological dominance and economic influence between the United States and the Soviet Union (USSR). The period began in 1947 and lasted until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Cold War was so called because there was no direct military conflict between the two superpowers, however, they supported opposing sides in multiple regional conflicts, which are often referred to as proxy wars.
The Cold War struggle was not only manifested in the nuclear arms race and conventional military developments, but also indirectly through psychological warfare, propaganda campaigns, espionage, remote embargoes, sports diplomacy, and technological competitions such as the space race. .
After World War II, the Soviet Union installed satellite governments in the territories of Eastern and Central Europe it occupied and facilitated the expansion of communism in North Korea in 1948, followed by an alliance with the People's Republic of China in 1949. The United States announced the "Truman Doctrine" in 1947 to carry out "containment", launched the Marshall Plan in 1948 to help the economic recovery of Western Europe, and established the NATO military alliance in 1949. In contrast, the Soviet Union initiated the Warsaw Convention.
The Korean War (1950-1953) was a major proxy war during the Cold War that ended in a stalemate, in which U.S. involvement included support for anti-communist and right-wing dictatorships.
Almost all colonial countries underwent decolonization and gained independence between 1945 and 1960, which led to many countries becoming the Third World battlefields of the Cold War. The Cuban Revolution of 1959 established the first communist regime in the Western Hemisphere, while the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 was the closest thing to nuclear war during that period. The Vietnam War (1955-1975) was also a major proxy conflict that ended in defeat for the United States.
In Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union crushed the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 and invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968 to consolidate its rule, and both sides used economic aid to try to win the loyalty of non-aligned countries.
Following the Sino-Soviet split in 1961, the United States intervened in 1969 in response to the Soviet Union's plan for a massive nuclear strike on China and began engaging with China in 1972. That same year, the United States and the Soviet Union signed a series of nuclear arms control treaties to limit their respective nuclear arsenals. In 1979, the fall of pro-American regimes in Iran and Nicaragua and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan once again raised fears of war. Gorbachev's rise to power in the Soviet Union in 1985 allowed him to expand political freedoms at home, which led to the fall of communist regimes in Eastern Europe in 1989 and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Author George Orwell first used the term "Cold War" in a 1945 essay, describing a world living under the threat of nuclear war.
As the Cold War progressed, the confrontation strategies of the two superpowers continued to change. For example, while the United States restrained its military actions against the Soviet Union, it promoted economic aid to strengthen its relations with friendly countries. With the end of the Cold War, the world landscape has changed dramatically, with the United States becoming the only superpower. But the impact of the Cold War still exists today and has left a deep mark on global politics and economy.
As history progresses, how does the legacy of the Cold War affect international relations today?
