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The US and the USSR competed for influence in Latin America, the Middle East, and the decolonising states of Africa, Asia, and Oceania. In response to Nato, the Soviet Union formed the Warsaw Pact in 1955. The US and its allies created the Nato military alliance in 1949 to contain the Soviet influence.ĪLSO READ: Crimean head blames Ukraine for loss of Donbas, Luhansk

The first phase of the Cold War began shortly after World War-II in 1945. As most colonies achieved independence during 19451960, they became Third World (developing and least developed countries) battlefields in the Cold War. The US supported right-wing governments and uprisings worldwide, while the Soviet government funded left-wing parties and revolutions around the world. The Eastern Bloc was led by the Soviet Union that influenced the Second World (communist and militarily powerful) and was also tied to a network of authoritarian states. The Western Bloc was led by the US and other First World (developed) nations, generally liberal democratic but tied to a network of authoritarian states, mostly their former colonies. These conflicts were driven by the ideological (the Western Bloc’s capitalism and the Eastern Bloc’s communism) and geopolitical struggle for global influence.ĪLSO READ: The story behind Ukraine’s separatist regions | Explainer HOW WAS IT THEN FOUGHT?Īside from occasional nuclear arsenal and conventional military deployment, the power struggle chiefly involved indirect means such as psychological warfare, propaganda campaigns, espionage, far-reaching embargoes, unhealthy rivalry at sporting events and technological competitions such as the space race, besides the arms race.

The Cold War is called so because there was no large-scale, direct fighting between the two superpowers, but they got into major regional conflicts known as proxy wars. The period is generally believed to span the 1947 Truman Doctrine (President Harry S Truman established that the US would provide political, military and economic assistance to all democratic nations under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces) until the 1991 disintegration of the Soviet Union.