Cold War era

ather than a single military conflict, the “cold war” is a term used to describe the shifting struggle for power and military strength between the Western powers, including the United States, and the Communist bloc, primarily the Soviet Union, from the end of World War II until the collapse of communism in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

This period of East-West competition and tension fell short of full-scale war, and instead was characterized by mutual perceptions of hostile intention between military-political alliances, or blocs, competition for influence in third world countries, and a major superpower arms race. The cold war period is characterized by the American foreign policy principles of internationalism, as executed in the formation of alliances with other world powers in an effort to ensure the world’s collective peace; “containing” the threat of communism as posed by the Soviet Union’s increasing reach into Eastern Europe; and military deterrence, building the military strength of America and its allies in an effort to deter an attack from the Soviet Union.