COUNTRIES AFFECTED

• The Cold War had a tremendous impact on developing regions in Europe and Central Asia, especially those within the Soviet sphere of influence.

• When the USSR collapsed in 1991, 15 new countries were formed from within its former borders, and the balance of power in Eastern Europe had been destroyed.

• The US-USSR Cold War rivalry began just as traditional European empires came to an end.

• With decolonization in Asia and Africa, plus the already independent states in Latin America and elsewhere demanding sovereignty, there were a lot of fresh young governments out there.

• Two superpowers with very different governments, the US and the Soviet Union were eager and competitive in their efforts to influence them.

• The US military intervened often with covert operations to protect American interests.

• They wanted to stop socialist or communist governments from reclaiming land in Latin America owned by American companies.

  AFRICA

• Over in Africa, the US and the USSR vied for economic and political influence in newly independent countries.

  LATIN AMERICA

• As in It was able to maintain control over Kashmir after a ceasefire, though the region remains in dispute to this day.

• In Latin America, American companies influenced government and economic affairs, even as Soviet movements emerged in the same places.

• It meant that right after these decolonized nations liberated themselves from European control, they had to face the intrusion of American and Soviet interests.

SOUTH ASIA

• China's path to communism in 1949 and the violent conflict in Vietnam are well documented, but the Cold War mattered in other parts of Asia.

• In Southeast Asia, independence movements that grew into civil conflicts were sponsored by one superpower or the other.

• Mohandas Gandhi led a mostly peaceful independence movement against British control in South Asia.

• But more than a million people were killed. In an effort to end civil war, in 1947 British India was partitioned into Hindu-majority India, as well as East and West Pakistan, which were dominated by powerful Muslim majorities.

• Also in South Asia, Pakistan joined a trade alliance with the US and others in 1954 designed to contain the spread of communism.

• Meanwhile, India became a key player at the 1955 Bandung Conference in Indonesia, which encouraged new nations to avoid taking sides with the US or the USSR.

• The Cold War heated up along the India-Pakistan border over disputed territory in Kashmir in 1965. This worked in India's favor as it already had a stronger military.

It was able to maintain control over Kashmir after a ceasefire, though the region remains in dispute to this day.

OVERALL

The whole world was affected by the Cold War. While Americans and Soviets never actually fought, there were a number of proxy wars that caused a large number of deaths and a huge amount of misery.

EVENTS THAT LED TO COLD WAR

FALL OF BERLIN WALL

• Built in 1961, the Berlin Wall was designed by the Communist government of the German Democratic Republic as a means of curtailing the flow of East German migrants into democratic West Germany.

• This almost 100-mile long fortified line of watchtowers, concrete barricades, and trenches effectively split Berlin in two.

• The Berlin Wall became a potent symbol of the Iron Curtain - the ideological and physical divide that separated the democratic West from the communist East during the Cold War.

• Though, as the 1960s came to a close, communist power began its decline, as during this time the United States began accelerating towards becoming the world’s first completely unparalleled superpower.

DEVELOPEMENT OF HYDROGEN BOMB

• The development of the hydrogen bomb is a widely discussed topic, as there were many conflicting spheres of influence involved with its production within the political, social, and scientific communities.

• Some scientists, like Edward Teller, were proponents of the production of a super-bomb, while others were extremely opposed to the idea.

• While anti-communist tensions were at a moderate baseline in the early years of the Cold War, the period of time encompassing the race to develop a functional hydrogen bomb set the precedent for the rising tensions of the Cold War as it escalated throughout the 20th century.

• The first successful detonation of an American-made hydrogen device occurred on November 1, 1952, in the Pacific region on the Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

• With the implementation of the hydrogen bomb, the Cold War was in full swing, as the American and Soviet governments - along with their respective citizens - became entirely fixated on the growing threat of thermonuclear conflict.

CONTAINMENT OF RUSSIA

• At the end of World War II, the majority of American leadership was in agreement that the most viable approach against the political and militaristic expansion of the Soviet Union was to implement a containment strategy that would help keep the Soviet expansion in check and protect Western democratic values.

• In 1947, President Harry Truman made the containment of the Soviet Union a top priority, laying the groundwork for the Cold War by introducing domestic policies that centered on undermining communism in the United States.

• Such action helped set the tone for the next four decades of United States foreign policy.