Cold War ([Hist.]) Quick reference
A Dictionary of Reference and Allusion (3 ed.)
... War [Hist.] A state of political hostility which existed between the Soviet bloc countries and the Western powers after the Second World War. > A long-lasting state of hostility between countries, organizations, or people Already, there are signs of a new Cold War emerging as the US and China seek to curry favour with poor African countries that are seen to have potential as oil suppliers. Guardian Unlimited columnists 2005 The strong showings of the ANC and the DA in Wednesday's general election may sharpen the cold war between the two parties. Daily...
cold war Reference library
The Oxford Essential Dictionary of the U.S. Military
... war 1 a state of international tension wherein political, economic, technological, sociological, psychological, paramilitary, and military measures short of overt armed conflict involving regular military forces are employed to achieve national objectives. 2 ( the Cold War ) the state of political hostility that existed between the Soviet bloc countries and the U.S.-led Western powers from 1945 to 1990...
Cold War Quick reference
World Encyclopedia
... War Political, ideological and economic confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union and their allies from the end of World War 2 until the late 1980s. Despite incidents such as the Berlin Airlift ( 1948–49 ) and the Cuban missile crisis ( 1962 ), open warfare never occurred between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ( NATO ) and the Warsaw Pact - although indirect confrontation occurred in the Korean War and the Vietnam War . the Cold War ended with the collapse of communism in the late 1980s and the dissolution of the...
Cold War Quick reference
A Dictionary of British History (3 ed.)
... War The antagonism between the USA and USSR lasting from the late 1940s until the late 1980s, ‘cold’ because it was waged through diplomatic and ideological means rather than force. Britain was allied to the USA. The Cold War came to an end with the collapse of Soviet power, largely as a result of its intervention in Afghanistan, and its progress towards...
Cold War Quick reference
A Dictionary of Sports Studies
...ideologies. In sport, the history of the Olympics in the second half of the 20th century was dominated by Cold War strategies and rivalries, and sport systems in both ideological blocs were fostered and supported in order to prepare Cold War warriors for the battlefields of international...
Cold War
Dictionary of the Social Sciences
... War Sustained competition and conflict between states that stop short of major military confrontation. In practice, the term is used almost exclusively to refer to the standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union in the post–World War II era. This rivalry took place on several levels: ideology; economic competition; a massive conventional and nuclear arms race ; and proxy wars and other “limited” military conflicts in client states. Two views of the origins of the Cold War have been prominent in academic discussions. Traditionalists place the...
Cold War Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Canadian History
...direct military conflict unacceptable. Many local, or proxy, wars were fought, but were contained by tacit mutual agreement. The immediate trigger for the Cold War was the falling out of the wartime allies over the post-war division of Europe. In 1947 the United States began Marshall Plan aid to western Europe, and in 1949 NATO was formed. The focus of the Cold War widened to Asia—where the communists emerged victorious in China in 1949 —with wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. The Cold War came to an end with the collapse of communism in eastern...
Cold War Reference library
Fred Halliday
The Oxford Companion to American Politics
... War The term “Cold War” is used to describe the protracted conflict between the Soviet and Western worlds that, while falling short of “hot” war, nonetheless involved a comprehensive military, political, and ideological rivalry from the end of World War II through the early 1990 s. The phrase entered the modern political vocabulary after World War II, as a description, popularized by the columnist Walter Lippmann , of the conflict between the Soviet and Western blocs. It was initially used to describe a historical period—the Cold War—that began with the...
Cold War Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Politics of the World (2 ed.)
... War . The term “Cold War” is used to describe the protracted conflict between the Soviet and Western worlds that, while falling short of “hot” war, nonetheless involved a comprehensive military, political, and ideological rivalry from the end of World War II to the early 1990s. It entered modern political vocabulary after World War II, as a description, popularized by the columnist Walter Lippmann , of the conflict between the Soviet and Western blocs. It was initially used to describe a historical period—the Cold War—that began with the breakdown of the...
Cold War Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Military History
...bad job, but the floodgates burst and the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 is regarded as the end of the Cold War. The Warsaw Pact and the USSR broke up, leaving the successor state Russia to thrash about in search of a new purpose, and a triumphant NATO to develop interventionist policies it would never have dared to pursue previously. This has confirmed fears of ‘encirclement’ in Russia and it is not unimaginable that this could evolve into a new Cold War. Christopher...
Cold War Quick reference
A Dictionary of Contemporary World History (5 ed.)
...Cold War A term coined by Baruch in 1947 to describe the emerging tensions between the Soviet Union, and the Eastern European states under its influence on the one hand, and the USA and its Western European allies on the other. The tensions had been apparent ever since the division of occupied Germany into four zones and the beginning of Soviet administration in Eastern Europe, and was intensified by the Marshall Plan , which the Soviet Union forbade the countries under its control to accept. The Cold War can be subdivided into three periods: 1. The...
Cold War Quick reference
A Dictionary of Human Geography
... War The aggressive ideological stand-off between Western allies and the Soviet Union and its satellites that operated from the end of the Second World War until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 ( see West ). As the Second World War ended, divergent visions for post-war Europe emerged. The Western allies sought reconstruction within a framework of democracy and capitalism, which sought to limit the rise of communism , both in Europe and around the world. The Soviet Union wanted to advance socialism, propagate communist ideology, and to foster...
Cold War. Reference library
The Oxford Companion to United States History
...Relations and the End of the Cold War , 1994. Melvyn P. Leffler and David S. Painter , eds., Origins of the Cold War: An International History , 1994. Thomas J. McCormick , America's Half-Century: United States Foreign Policy in the Cold War , 2d ed., 1995. James E. Cronin , The World the Cold War Made: Order, Chaos, and the Return of History , 1996. Walter LaFeber , America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945–1996 , 8th ed., 1996. Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov , Inside the Kremlin's Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev , 1996. John...
Cold War Quick reference
A Dictionary of World History (3 ed.)
...popular usage spoke of a ‘Cold War’ (as opposed to an atomic ‘hot war’) between the two sides. The Western allies took steps to defend their position with the formation of the Truman Doctrine ( 1947 ) and the Marshall Plan ( 1947 ) to bolster the economies of Western Europe. In 1949 NATO was formed as a defence against possible attack. The communist bloc countered with the establishment of the Council for Mutual Aid and Assistance ( COMECON , 1949) and the Warsaw Pact (1955). Over the following decades, the Cold War spread to every part of the...
Cold War Quick reference
Peter Byrd
A Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics and International Relations (4 ed.)
...communism and to expand American power throughout Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East. Some writers in this category thus trace the Cold War back to American opposition to the 1917 Russian Revolution. Of course, many accounts weave together two or even all three of these broad categories. In the 1980s there was a short‐lived but intensive reawakening of the Cold War, sometimes called the New Cold War. Détente petered out in the late 1970s, arms control faltered, and in December 1979 the Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan . From 1980 onwards...
Cold War Reference library
Michelle DEN BESTE
Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History (2 ed.)
...Cold War Following the end of World War II in 1945 , a new kind of war, a so-called Cold War, broke out. This new war centered on ideological and political conflicts, particularly the conflict between capitalism and communism. This Cold War, which turned hot several times, particularly in Korea and Vietnam, endured for nearly fifty years and affected most of the globe as countries increasingly had to choose sides with one of the superpowers (the United States and the Soviet Union) in an increasingly bipolar world. During conferences at Yalta ( 1943 ) and...
Cold War Reference library
Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World
...] Bibliography Gaddis , John Lewis . The Cold War: A New History . New York: Penguin, 2005. This is one of the most accessible texts for anyone looking for a readable, concise yet thorough treatment of the period. LaFeber, Walter . America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945–2002 . 9th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2004. The classic work on the topic, it has been revised to show connections between the Cold War and current relations between the United States and Russia and the War on Terror. Powaski, Ronald E. The Cold War: The United States and the Soviet Union,...
Cold War Reference library
Encyclopedia of African American History 1896 to the Present
... War . The Cold War ( 1917–1991 ), the popular name given to the political, economic, and military struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union, had its origins in 1917 with the success of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and concluded with the dissolution of the Soviet nation in 1991 . Although most Cold War battles were fought on the international front, America's fight against Communism often had marked domestic repercussions as well. In both the international and domestic conflicts related to the Cold War, African Americans were not...
Cold War Reference library
Norman Davies
The Oxford Companion to World War II
... War . Although the term was not generally used until the 1950s, historians of the Cold War have traced its origins to the strains of the Grand Alliance from 1941 onwards. Both Churchill and Roosevelt agreed that the western powers must sink their differences with Stalin for the duration of the war against Germany: and western propaganda went to great lengths to conceal the crimes of their Soviet ally. Stalin's contribution to the Allied war effort was so immense that he could flout the Atlantic Charter almost at will, and could gain acceptance of the...
Cold War Reference library
Christopher N. Lanigan
The Oxford Companion to British History (2 ed.)
... War . The antagonism between the USA and USSR lasting from the late 1940s until the late 1980s, ‘cold’ because it was waged through diplomatic and ideological means rather than force. Britain was allied to the USA. Britain’s role in the emergence of the Cold War is controversial. One view is that war-ravaged Britain was marginal to the development of frosty American–Soviet relations, and that her encouragement of a permanent US military presence in Europe was largely related to fears of German revival. Cultural differences and the repressive nature of the...
