Sociology Plus
Cold War Definition
The Cold War was the state of hostility and political competition between the major communist and capitalist powers — above all the Soviet Union and the United States — that prevailed after the Second World War. Though the superpowers never fought each other directly, their confrontation was waged through political subversion, espionage, and the promotion of regional and civil wars, always stopping short of open war between them.
Conduct of the Conflict
Because direct confrontation risked catastrophe, the Cold War was in effect fought by proxy in the Third World, particularly through civil wars pitting forces sympathetic to communist ideology against those hostile to it. Its strategic backdrop included nuclear deterrence and the balance of power between the rival blocs.
Periodisation and End
Commentators disagree over the conflict’s precise span. Some restrict the term to the years of greatest mutual suspicion, roughly 1945–55; others hold that it ended only with glasnost, perestroika, and the break-up of the Eastern military and economic bloc in 1989–90. The Cold War closed with the collapse of communism in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. Although communist regimes survive — most notably in China — communism is widely regarded as having “lost the war.”