Please explain what a "cold war" is? serious answers please!?

Answer 1

The Cold War was the protracted geopolitical, ideological, and economic struggle that emerged after World War II between the global superpowers of the Soviet Union and the United States, supported by their military alliance partners. It lasted from about 1947 to the period leading to the dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991.

The global contest was popularly termed The Cold War because direct hostilities never occurred between the United States and the Soviet Union. Instead, the "war" took the form of an arms race involving nuclear and conventional weapons, networks of military alliances, economic warfare and trade embargos, propaganda, espionage and proxy wars, especially those involving superpower support for opposing sides within civil wars. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 was the most important direct confrontation, together with a series of confrontations over the Berlin Blockade and the Berlin Wall. The major civil wars polarized along Cold War lines were the Greek Civil War, Korean War, Vietnam War and the Soviet-Afghan War, along with more peripheral conflicts in Angola, El Salvador, and Nicaragua.

The greatest fear during the Cold War was the risk it would escalate into a full nuclear exchange with hundreds of millions killed. Both sides developed a deterrence policy that prevented problems from escalating beyond limited localities. Nuclear weapons were never used in the Cold War

During the Cold War, we had bomb drills in school~it was scary. We were suppose to sit in the hall with our heads between our knees ~ "duck and cover" ~in case Russia attacked~~
http://www.ilstu.edu/~mlhaerl/drill.jpg
http://www.hkhinc.com/newmexico/albuquerque/doomsday/takecover.jpg
http://students.westport.k12.ct.us/us/duckandcover.jpg

Answer 2

The two superpowers USA and USSR fighting proxy-wars in smaller countries sometimes directly sometimes just through economic and diplomatic warfare.

The idea here in the US was EEK the Russians are coming -- we need to defend ourselves!!!

Even after the Berlin Wall had fallen and the Soviet Union was collapsing. Even the most wild fanatic couldn't claim that the Russians were coming. So what did they do? The Bush Administration acted, same as before -- we need a huge Pentagon budget, everything's the same -- but the pretext had changed. It's not the Russians. Now it's, and I'm quoting, "the technological sophistication" of Third World powers -- that's the new enemy.

So the Cold War was largely a myth designed to justify the larger socio-economic structures the US has imposed on the rest of the world, often through force.

Answer 3

Actually sense there will most likely never be another one the Cold War may be considered in part a delusionfrom the past.

Anyway at the end of WW2, Russian troops dominated Eastern Germany and the Eastern Block realizing that the Capitolist West might compromise their access to trade and growth markets & institutions. fearing such interventions and the flight of the Eastern European Intelligencia the Russians even built a wallto seperate Germany which came to a grand delimma in Berlin which itself became divided.

American Politians tied to the interest of Big Business used this to invent the red scare of Communist expansion, which was given a big boost when it was discovered that the Rosenbergs had given the secret to the atom bomb to Russia.

Ike himself knew the Russians were more afraid of the States than Americans were of Russia but allowed the red scare to fester and strengthen conservative government and big business military contracting. Then he made a fatal mistake by misreading Clausewitzian Philosophy. While preparing for arms talks he sent spy planes over Russia trying to get a estimate of Russias capacity in missle sites. The mistake was, after Russia shot Garry Powers down Ike assumed that nothing was left to be traced, so he lied about the whole thing. The next day the Russians had a feild day showing off parts of the jet. Ike lied again and so the following day Russia produced Powers in the flesh, which made the Cold War mutually expansive and one Russia was destined to loose by brut force of the american capitol infrastructure!

Answer 4

The cold war took place between the old Soviet Union (Communist Russia), against the United States and our Allies.

It was dubbed the "Cold War" because actual fighting never took place (Which is a myth, I will get back to that in a minute.)

During WWII the US was aligned with communist russia to defeat a common enemy Germany. After Berlin fell to the Allie forces, Germany was split down the middle, thats is there we got East Germany ( Russia;s side) and West Germany ( the US Side). We split germany up so Germany would not rise in power again to start another war.
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After the war the Russian philosophy was to grab as many war torn nations and East of Germany to Russia;s soil as their own. This included Poland, Romania, Hungary, the Chezch, Ukraine, and several others,,,,,

Where as the US helped the war torn nations by giving them aid and helping them rebuild their countries, And the US never asked for the aid money in return.....

Now if you don't know, communism is far different then democracy... in Communism, the state controls everything. You can not own a business, you can not own land, or a house. You work only for the government and the government gives you an allowance to live on.. . from the time you are born untill death, you are the government;s property. Everything you do in life is for the government...

The US did not Agree with Russia's policies, and they were against Russia taking over all therse little countries to further the communist regime, and take away the freedoms of the people of those countries...

So the Cold war consited of basically the US and the Soviets building up an arsenal of weapons.. including Hydrogen, Atomic, and nucleur weapons. The cold war started the space race, we wanted more satatalites in space. The idea was to have the stronger military just in case an all out war were to break out.

War however did break out between the ideas of the two countries...North Korea which was Communist at the time invaded South Korea.. South Korea wanted to remain democratic so they asked for our help, we did.. and to this day south Korea is still independent and democratic....

War broke out again in Vietnam... Again it was a communist aggression, that wanted to take away the freedoms of the South Vietnamese.. We went into Vietnam to help, It took longer than expected, the public in the US were growing weary because the media, which for the 1st time was doing a lot of reporting from the front line, kept slanting the coverage to make the US appear to be losing the war.. This worked the people got tired and in a War the US troops were losing, we pulled out of S. Vietnam and the North over took it, and millions have since died because of the communist regime.

enter the 1980s Reagan becomes President and starts to pull ahead of Russia in the spending for the military, Russia can not keep up, and they start to crumble. By 1991, The berlin wall falls.. most of the eastern European nations that fell under russia after WWII begin to declare thier independance..

Answer 5

It was a during a time, I recall in the 80's, when Russia and the U.S. didn't much care for each other. We always tried to out number the other side with more nukes. For example, if we had 20 nukes pointed at their country, they in turn would have 30 pointed at ours, then we would have 40 pointed at theirs, and so on. Eventually both sides realized how stupid this was, especially since it wouldn't even take a fraction the world's nukes to obliviate the planet. Actually, what mostly ended the cold war was the fall of communism in Russia. I'm not suggesting we're still not pointing our nukes at each other. Both sides are just no longer stupid enough to try to out number the other side.

It was termed "Cold War" because it was based on fears and implied threats but never really became an actual war.

Answer 6

I am a veteran of 2 cold wars. Korea is a cold war. At one time it was actual fighting . A truce is made,they don't fight,but a peace agreemnet has never been signed. there may be some squirmishes though. Therefore you have a DMZ (De-militarized Zone between North and South Korea
The east block of europe was actually a cold war era place too.
anything could have happened. The Russians could have invaded into the west block of Berlin causing a stir and a war could have started. Actual shootings.

Answer 7

A cold war is a war fought without military force, at least directly. For instance, in The Cold War, the US and the Soviet Union never actually fought each other on the battlefield, but instead postured diplomatically and supported enemies of the other by fighting proxy wars, such as Korea and Vietnam and funding other wars, such as in Afghanistan and other countries.

Answer 8

The "cold war" was a term used to refer to the icy state of relations between the United States and the Soviet Union (and their various allies on both sides) in the years after the Second World War. They wanted to show their hositility but could not afford to declare war firstly because they could not afford to (e.g. at the time of the Berlin airlift in 1948) and then becuase of the consequences of nuclear warfare.

The "cold war" was not very cold in places like Korea where there was a lot of very nasty fighting, although the United States and Soviet Union (as opposed to "advisers" and intelligence services) never fought each other directly.

Answer 9

Cold war is where two or more countries find themselves in disputes, lots of them.They feared a third World war would be coming.

God bless

Answer 10

The first person using the term cold war was writer georges orwell
whom wrote and essay on the atomic war age..

http://orwell.ru/library/articles/ABomb/english/e_abomb.html

if you wanna more on the orwell, it would seem that neofascists american has somewhat endorsed an Orwellian approach to resolve conflicts..


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell

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