The Cold War is an indirect political, ideological, and sometimes military confrontation that took place during 1947-1991

between the two largest powers in the world after World War II, the United States of America and the Soviet Union.

Among its manifestations was the division of the world into two camps: a communist led by the Soviet Union and a liberal led by the United States

.

Historical context


Western countries - led by the United States, France and Britain - allied with the Soviet Union during World War II out of fear of a common Nazi enemy.

It was clear that the ideological contradiction and conflict of interests raging would not delay in disclosing itself if the war ended.

The Yalta Conference (February 1945) exposed the prevailing mistrust between the Western Allies and the Soviets, despite Britain and the United States accepting the territorial gains of the Soviet Union that were in contradiction to what the Allies had agreed upon during the war.

The United States and Western Europe were wary of the Soviet Union’s leap towards annexing countries from Eastern Europe or placing them under its tutelage. These concerns were confirmed by the holding of the Potsdam Conference (July-August 1945) and the refusal of Soviet President Joseph Stalin to organize democratic elections in Poland, which prompted A heated dispute between the two parties reached its extent two years later.

The Soviet Union’s ambitions to dominate Eastern Europe were the reason for US President Harry Truman’s statement in 1947 of his intention to confront the Soviet expansion, and he declared his confrontation with the strategy of "containment", which is based on blocking the expansion of communism by a set of means, including the proposal of economic support for European countries that want to remain free outside the Soviet umbrella .

Thus, Washington launched the famous "Marshall Plan", which is to support Europe economically to rebuild its war-ravaged countries, and to cut off the path of Soviet hegemony cluttered with the clothing of aiding Europe.

Stalin responded to the American move to consolidate his control over the socialist countries (at the time they were called popular democracies) by establishing in 1947 the "Communist Information Office" (Cominform), a forum for communist parties in European countries that included most of the communist formations in Eastern Europe. Western countries, the French and Italian Communist Parties, had a great popular presence in their countries.

Through this forum, Moscow sought to frame and guide the ideological and political development of its member countries and parties.

Thus was born the Soviet counter-strategy, considering that the world was divided into two camps: one "democratic", anti-imperialist led by the Soviet Union, and the other "imperialist undemocratic" led by the United States.

This division and coexistence,


then, Europe found itself divided between the two major camps within a global struggle known politically and in the media as the "Cold War", especially after the Communists' coup in Czechoslovakia (1948) and the liquidation of their political opponents and the empowerment of the Soviets from the country.

The Prague coup warned that the next step might be Germany. Western countries took the initiative to respond by declaring Germany a stronghold for fighting communism, and the three main western countries (the United States, Britain and France) decided to unify their areas of influence in Germany and coined a currency for the western part of it.

Stalin's response was not late, so he announced the closure of all road and railways leading to Berlin to push Westerners to leave their areas of influence in the city, so the United States responded by setting up an air bridge to supply the city, and threatening to use force if the Soviets intercepted air transport in the originally agreed lanes. .

Stalin retreated, fearing a military confrontation with the only nuclear power in the world at that time and lifting the siege. The Berlin crisis ended with the division of Germany into two states.

The relations of the two global camps witnessed a significant transformation following the death of the Soviet leader Stalin in 1953, as his successor Nikita Khrushchev adopted a more conciliatory policy and Westerners found their misguidance in it, especially since at that stage the West witnessed an upsurge in voices opposed to American hegemony, expressed by the position of the French President, General Charles de Gaulle, who Since his return to power in 1958, he strongly criticized what he called "the American tutelage," and then ended up withdrawing France from NATO leadership in 1966.

In the eastern camp, the People's Republic of China began to compete with the Soviet Union to an extent that enmity reached a complete break between them in 1960.

Despite this, the two camps remained in hostility and rivalry that sometimes approached the "edge of the abyss", expressed by their alignment in areas of armed conflict across the world (the war of the two Koreas, the rebellions in Latin America, the Congo and Namibia wars, the Arab-Israeli conflict ... etc.), but the Cuban crisis In 1962, the most important confrontation was about to throw the world into a devastating nuclear war.

Peaceful coexistence between the two major camps dominated the stage of international relations from the beginning of the seventies until the fall of the Soviet Union entirely in 1991, and then the world entered a new phase, the era of unipolarism, led by the United States.