Cold War

Introduction
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy
wars, and economic competition between the Communist World – primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite
states and allies – and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States and its allies. Although the
chief military forces never engaged in a major battle with each other, they expressed the conflict through
military coalitions, strategic conventional force deployments, extensive aid to states deemed vulnerable, proxy
wars, espionage, propaganda, conventional and nuclear arms races, appeals to neutral nations, rivalry at
sports events, and technological competitions such as the Space Race.

Background:
Various events before the Second World War had been demonstrative of mutual distrust and suspicion
between the Western powers and the Soviet Union, including the Bolsheviks' challenge to capitalism Western
support of the anti-Bolshevik White movement in the Russian Civil War; the 1926 Soviet funding of a British
general workers strike causing Britain to break relations with the Soviet Union; Stalin's 1927 declaration of
peaceful coexistence with capitalist countries "receding into the past" conspiratorial allegations during the
1928 Shakhty show trial of a planned British- and French-led coup d'état the American refusal to recognize the
Soviet Union until 1933; and the Stalinist Moscow Trials of the Great Purge, with allegations of British, French,
Japanese and Nazi German espionage

As a result of the German invasion in June 1941, the Allies decided to help the Soviet Union; Britain signed a
formal alliance and the United States made an informal agreement. In wartime, the United States supplied both
Britain and the Soviets through its Lend-Lease Program.

However, Stalin remained highly suspicious and believed that the British and the Americans had conspired to
allow the Soviets to bear the brunt of the fighting against Nazi Germany. According to this view, the Western
Allies had deliberately delayed opening a second anti-German front in order to step in at the last moment and
shape the peace settlement. Thus, Soviet perceptions of the West left a strong undercurrent of tension and
hostility between the Allied powers.

Beginnings of the Eastern Bloc:

During the final stages of World War II, the Soviet Union laid the foundation for the Eastern Bloc by directly
annexing several countries as Soviet Socialist Republics that were initially (and effectively) ceded to it by Nazi
Germany in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. These included eastern Poland (incorporated into two different
SSRs), Latvia (which became the Latvian SSR), Estonia (which became the Estonian SSR), Lithuania (which
became the Lithuanian SSR), part of eastern Finland (which became the Karelo-Finnish SSR) and
eastern Romania (which became the Moldavian SSR). The Eastern European territories liberated from the
Nazis and occupied by the Soviet armed forces were added to the Eastern Bloc by converting them
into satellite states,[41] such as East Germany, the People's Republic of Poland, the People's Republic of
Bulgaria, thePeople's Republic of Hungary, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic the People's Republic of
Romania and the People's Republic of Albania.
Berlin Blockade:
After the Marshall Plan, the introduction of a new currency to Western Germany to replace the
debased Reichsmark and massive electoral losses for communist parties in 1946, in June 1948, the Soviet
Union cut off surface road access to Berlin. On the day of the Berlin Blockade, a Soviet representative told the
other occupying powers "We are warning both you and the population of Berlin that we shall apply economic
and administrative sanctions that will lead to circulation in Berlin exclusively of the currency of the Soviet
occupation zone." Thereafter, street and water communications were severed, rail and barge traffic was
stopped and the Soviets initially stopped supplying food to the civilian population in the non-Soviet sectors of
Berlin. Because Berlin was located within the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany and the other occupying
powers had previously relied on Soviet good will for access to Berlin, the only available methods of supplying
the city were three limited air corridors. By February 1948, because of massive post-war military cuts, the entire
United States army had been reduced to 552,000 men. Military forces in non-Soviet Berlin sectors totaled only
8,973 Americans, 7,606 British and 6,100 French. Soviet military forces in the Soviet sector that surrounded
Berlin totaled one and a half million men. The two United States regiments in Berlin would have provided little
resistance against a Soviet attack. Believing that Britain, France and the United States had little option other
than to acquiesce, the Soviet Military Administration in Germany celebrated the beginning of the
blockade. Thereafter, a massive aerial supply campaign of food, water and other goods was initiated by the
United States, Britain, France and other countries. The Soviets derided "the futile attempts of the Americans to
save face and to maintain their untenable position in Berlin." The success of the airlift eventually caused the
Soviets to lift their blockade in May 1949.

NATO:
The United States joined Britain, France, Canada, Denmark, Portugal, Norway, Belgium, Iceland, Luxembourg,
Italy, and the Netherlands in 1949 to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the United States'
first "entangling" European alliance in 170 years. West Germany, Spain, Greece, and Turkey would later join
this alliance. The Eastern leaders retaliated against these steps by integrating the economies of their nations
in Comecon, their version of the Marshall Plan; exploding the first Soviet atomic device in 1949; signing an
alliance with People's Republic of China in February 1950; and forming the Warsaw Pact, Eastern Europe's
counterpart to NATO, in 1955. The Soviet Union, Albania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria,
Romania, and Poland founded this military alliance.

Chinese War:
Shortly after World War II, the civil war resumed in China between the Kuomintang (KMT) led by
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and the Communist Party of China led by Mao Zedong. The USSR had signed
a Treaty of Friendship with the Kuomintang in 1945 and disavowed support for the Chinese Communists. The
outcome was closely fought, with the Communists finally prevailing with superior military tactics. Although the
Nationalists had an advantage in numbers of men and weapons, initially controlled a much larger territory and
population than their adversaries, and enjoyed considerable international support, they were exhausted by
the long war with Japan and the attendant internal responsibilities. In addition, the Chinese Communists were
able to fill the political vacuum left in Manchuria after Soviet forces withdrew from the area and thus gained
China's prime industrial base. The Chinese Communists were able to fight their way from the north and
northeast, and virtually all of mainland China was taken by the end of 1949. On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong
proclaimed the People's Republic of China (PRC). Chiang Kai-shek and 600,000 Nationalist troops and 2
million refugees, predominantly from the government and business community, fled from the mainland to the
island of Taiwan. In December 1949, Chiang proclaimed Taipei the temporary capital of the Republic of China
(ROC) and continued to assert his government as the sole legitimate authority in China.
The continued hostility between the Communists on the mainland and the Nationalists on Taiwan continued
throughout the Cold War. Though the United States refused to aide Chiang Kai-shek in his hope to "recover the
mainland," it continued supporting the Republic of China with military supplies and expertise to prevent Taiwan
from falling into PRC hands. Through the support of the Western bloc (most Western countries continued to
recognize the ROC as the sole legitimate government of China), the Republic of China on Taiwan
retained China's seat in the United Nations until 1971

Korean War:

In June 1950, Kim Il-sung's North Korean People's Army invaded South Korea. Fearing that communist Korea
under a Kim Il Sung dictatorship could threaten Japan and foster other communist movements in Asia, Truman
committed U.S. forces and obtained help from the United Nations to counter the North Korean invasion. The
Soviets boycotted UN Security Council meetings while protesting the Council's failure to seat the People's
Republic of China and, thus, did not veto the Council's approval of UN action to oppose the North Korean
invasion. A joint UN force of personnel from South Korea, the United
States, Britain, Turkey, Canada, Australia, France, the Philippines, the Netherlands, Belgium, New Zealand and
other countries joined to stop the invasion. After a Chinese invasion to assist the North Koreans, fighting
stabilized along the 38th parallel, which had separated the Koreas. Truman faced a hostile China, a Sino-
Soviet partnership, and a defense budget that had quadrupled in eighteen months. The Korean Armistice
Agreement was signed in July 1953 after the death of Stalin, who had been insisting that the North Koreans
continue fighting. In North Korea, Kim Il-sung created a highly centralized and brutal dictatorship, according
himself unlimited power and generating a formidable cult of personality.

Eisenhower and Khrushchev

When Dwight D. Eisenhower was sworn in as U.S. President in 1953, the Democrats lost their two-decades-
long control of the U.S. presidency. Under Eisenhower, however, the United States' Cold War policy remained
essentially unchanged. Whilst a thorough rethinking of foreign policy was launched (known as "Operation
Solarium"), the majority of emerging ideas (such as a "rollback of Communism" and the liberation of Eastern
Europe) were quickly regarded as unworkable. An underlying focus on the containment of Soviet communism
remained to inform the broad approach of U.S. foreign policy. While the transition from the Truman to the
Eisenhower presidencies was a conservative-moderate in character, the change in the Soviet Union was
immense. With the death of Joseph Stalin (who led the Soviet Union from 1928 and through the Great Patriotic
War) in 1953, his former right-hand man Nikita Khrushchev was named First Secretary of the Communist Party.
During a subsequent period of collective leadership, Khrushchev gradually consolidated his hold on power. At a
speech to the closed session of the Twentieth Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union,
February 25, 1956, Nikita Khrushchev shocked his listeners by denouncing Stalin's personality cult and many
crimes that occurred under Stalin's leadership. Although the contents of the speech were secret, it was leaked
to outsiders, thus shocking both Soviet allies and Western observers. Khrushchev was later named premier of
the Soviet Union in 1958.
The impact on Soviet politics was immense. The speech stripped Khrushchev's remaining Stalinist rivals of
their legitimacy in a single stroke, dramatically boosting the First Party Secretary's power domestically.
Khrushchev was then able to ease restrictions, freeing some dissidents and initiating economic policies that
emphasized commercial goods rather than just coal and steel production.

1953 East Germany uprising

Following large numbers of East Germans traveled west through the only "loophole" left in the Eastern Bloc
emigration restrictions, the Berlin sector border, the East German government then raised "norms" -- the
amount each worker was required to produce—by 10%. Already disaffected East Germans, who could see the
relative economic successes of West Germany within Berlin, became enraged, provoking large street
demonstrations and strikes A major emergency was declared and the Soviet Red Army intervened.

Creation of the Warsaw Pact

In 1955, the Warsaw Pact was formed partly in response to NATO's inclusion of West Germany and partly
because the Soviets needed an excuse to retain Red Army units in potentially problematic Hungary. For 35
years, the Pact perpetuated the Stalinist concept of Soviet national security based on imperial expansion and
control over satellite regimes in Eastern Europe. Through its institutional structures, the Pact also compensated
in part for the absence of Joseph Stalin's personal leadership, which had manifested itself since his death in
1953. While Europe remained a central concern for both sides throughout the Cold War, by the end of the
1950s the situation was frozen. Alliance obligations and the concentration of forces in the region meant that
any incident could potentially lead to an all-out war, and both sides thus worked to maintain the status quo.
Both the Warsaw Pact and NATO maintained large militaries and modern weapons to possibly defeat the other
military alliance.

1956 Polish protests

In Poland demonstrations by workers demanding better conditions began on June 28, 1956,
at Poznań's Cegielski Factories and were met with violent repression. A crowd of approximately 100,000
gathered in the city center near the UB secret police building. 400 tanks and 10,000 soldiers of the Polish Army
under General Stanislav Poplavsky were ordered to suppress the demonstration and during
the pacification fired at the protesting civilians. The death toll was placed between 57 and 78 people. Hundreds
of people sustained injuries.

Hungarian Revolution of 1956

After Stalinist dictator Mátyás Rákosi was replaced by Imre Nagy following Stalin's
death and Polish reformist Władysław Gomułka was able to enact some reformist requests, large numbers of
protesting Hungarians compiled a list of Demands of Hungarian Revolutionaries of 1956, including free secret-
ballot elections, independent tribunals, and inquiries into Stalin and Rákosi Hungarian activities. Under the
orders of Soviet defense minister Georgy Zhukov, Soviet tanks entered Budapest. Protester attacks at the
Parliament forced the collapse of the government

The new government that came to power during the revolution formally disbanded the Hungarian secret police,
declared its intention to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact and pledged to re-establish free elections. The Soviet
Politburo thereafter moved to crush the revolution with a large Soviet force invading Budapest and other
regions of the country. Approximately 200,000 Hungarians fled Hungary, some 26,000 Hungarians were put on
trial by the new Soviet-installed János Kádár government and, of those, 13,000 were imprisoned. Imre Nagy
was executed, along with Pál Maléter and Miklós Gimes, after secret trials in June 1958. By January 1957, the
Hungarian government had suppressed all public opposition. These Hungarian government's violent
oppressive actions alienated many Western Marxists, yet strengthened communist control in all the European
communist states, cultivating the perception that communism was both irreversible and monolithic

Third World Alliances

Some underdeveloped states devised a strategy that turned the Cold War into what they called "creative
confrontation"—playing off the Cold War participants to their own advantage while maintaining nonaligned
status. The diplomatic policy of nonalignment regarded the Cold War as a tragic and frustrating facet of
international affairs, obstructing the overriding task of consolidating fledgling regimes and their all-out attack of
economic backwardness, poverty, and disease. Nonalignment held that peaceful coexistence with the first-
world and second-world nations was both preferable and possible. India's Jawaharlal Nehru saw neutralism as
a means of forging a "third force" among nonaligned nations, much as France's Charles de Gaulle attempted to
do in Europe in the 1960s. The Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser maneuvered skillfully between the United
States, Canada, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Japan, China, and the Eastern bloc in pursuit of his goals.
The first such effort, the Asian Relations Conference, held in New Delhi in 1947, pledged support for all
national movements against colonial rule and explored the basic problems of Asian peoples. Perhaps the most
famous Third World conclave was the Bandung Conference of African and Asian nations in 1955 to discuss
mutual interests and strategy, which ultimately led to the establishment of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961.
The conference was attended by twenty-nine countries representing more than half the population of the world.
As at New Delhi, anti-imperialism, economic development, and cultural cooperation were the principal topics.
There was a strong push in the Third World to secure a voice in the councils of nations, especially the United
Nations, and to receive recognition of their new sovereign status. Representatives of these new states were
also extremely sensitive to slights and discriminations, particularly if they were based on race. In all the nations
of the Third World, living standards were wretchedly low. And while some, such as India, Nigeria,
and Indonesia, were becoming great powers, others are so small and poor as to promise little hope for potential
economic viability.
Initially a roster of 51 members, the UN General Assembly had increased to 126 by 1970. The dominance of
Western members dropped to 40% of the membership, with Afro-Asian states holding the balance of power.
The ranks of the General Assembly swelled rapidly as former colonies won independence, thus forming a
substantial voting bloc with members fromLatin America. Anti-imperialist sentiment, reinforced by the East,
often translated into anti-Western positions, but the primary agenda among nonaligned countries was to secure
passage of social and economic assistance measures. Superpower refusal to fund such programs has often
undermined the effectiveness of the nonaligned coalition, however.
The Bandung Conference symbolized continuing efforts to establish regional organizations designed to forge
unity of policy and economic cooperation among Third World nations. The Organization of African Unity (OAU)
was created in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1963 because African leaders believed that disunity played into the
hands of the superpowers. The OAU required a policy of nonalignment from each of its 30 member states and
spawned several subregional economic groups similar in concept to the European Common Market. The OAU
has also pursued a policy of political cooperation with other Third World regional coalitions, especially with Arab
countries. Much of the frustration expressed by nonaligned nations stemmed from the vastly unequal
relationship separating rich and poor states. The resentment, strongest where key resources and local
economies have been exploited by multinational Western corporations, has had a major impact on world
events. The formation of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in 1960 reflected these
concerns. OPEC devised a strategy of counter-penetration, whereby it hoped to make industrial economies that
relied heavily on oil imports vulnerable to Third World pressures. Initially, the strategy had resounding success.
Dwindling foreign aid from the United States and its allies, coupled with the West's pro-Israel policies in
the Middle East, angered the Arab nations in OPEC. In 1973, the group quadrupled the price in crude oil. The
sudden rise in the energy costs intensified inflation and recession in the West and underscored the
interdependence of world societies. The next year the nonaligned bloc in the United Nations passed a
resolution demanding the creation of a new international economic order in which resources, trade, and
markets would be distributed fairly. Nonaligned states forged still other forms of economic cooperation as
leverage against the superpowers. OPEC, the OAU, and the Arab League had overlapping members, and in
the 1970s the Arabs began extending huge financial assistance to African nations in an effort to reduce African
economic dependence on the United States and the Soviet Union.
However, the Arab League has been torn by dissension between authoritarian pro Soviet states, such as
Nasser's Egypt and Assad's Syria, and the aristocratic-monarchial (and generally pro-Western) regimes, such
as Saudi Arabia and Oman. And while the OAU has witnessed some gains in African cooperation, its members
were generally primarily interested in pursuing their own national interests rather than those of continental
dimensions. At a 1977 Afro-Arab summit conference in Cairo, oil producers pledged $1.5 billion in aid to Africa.
Recent divisions within OPEC have made concerted action more difficult. Nevertheless, the 1973 world oil
shock provided dramatic evidence of the potential power of resource suppliers in dealing with the more
developed world. Despite the large number of non-aligned states, many of them were indeed aligned such as
the Philippines and Cuba, the former with the West, the latter with the East.

Cuban Revolution and Cuban Missile Crisis

The years between the Cuban Revolution in 1959 and the arms control treaties of the 1970s marked growing
efforts for both the Soviet Union and the United States to keep control over their spheres of influence. U.S.
President Lyndon B. Johnson landed 22,000 troops in the Dominican Republic in 1965, claiming to prevent the
emergence of another Cuban Revolution. While the period from 1962 until Détente had no incidents as
dangerous as the Cuban Missile Crisis, there was an increasing loss of legitimacy and good will worldwide for
both the major Cold War participants.

Vietnam War
U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson landed 42,000 troops in the Dominican Republic in 1965 to prevent the
emergence of "another Fidel Castro." More notable in 1965, however, was U.S. intervention in Southeast Asia.
In 1965 Johnson stationed 22,000 troops in South Vietnam to prop up the faltering anticommunist regime. The
South Vietnamese government had long been allied with the United States. The North Vietnamese under Ho
Chi Minh were backed by the Soviet Union and China. North Vietnam, in turn, supported the National Liberation
Front, which drew its ranks from the South Vietnamese working class and peasantry. Seeking to contain
Communist expansion, Johnson increased the number of troops to 575,000 in 1968.
Although neither the Soviet Union nor China intervened directly in the conflict, they did supply large amounts of
aid and material to the North and supported them diplomatically.
While the early years of the war had significant U.S. casualties, the administration assured the public that the
war was winnable and would in the near future result in a U.S. victory. The U.S. public's faith in "the light at the
end of the tunnel" was shattered on January 30, 1968, when the NLF mounted the Tet Offensive in South
Vietnam. Although neither of these offensives accomplished any military objectives, the surprising capacity of
an enemy to even launch such an offensive convinced many in the U.S. that victory was impossible.
A vocal and growing peace movement centered on college campuses became a prominent feature as the
counter culture of the 1960s adopted a vocal anti-war position. Especially unpopular was the draft that
threatened to send young men to fight in the jungles of Southeast Asia.
Elected in 1968, U.S. President Richard M. Nixon began a policy of slow disengagement from the war. The
goal was to gradually build up the South Vietnamese Army so that it could fight the war on its own. This policy
became the cornerstone of the so-called "Nixon Doctrine." As applied to Vietnam, the doctrine was called
"Vietnamization." The goal of Vietnamization was to enable the South Vietnamese army to increasingly hold its
own against the NLF and the North Vietnamese Army.
On October 10, 1969, Nixon ordered a squadron of 18 B-52s loaded with nuclear weapons to race to the
border of Soviet airspace in order to convince the Soviet Union that he was capable of anything to end the
Vietnam War.
The morality of U.S. conduct of the war continued to be an issue under the Nixon presidency. In 1969, it came
to light that Lt. William Calley, a platoon leader in Vietnam, had led a massacre of Vietnamese civilians a year
earlier. In 1970, Nixon ordered secret military incursions into Cambodia in order to destroy NLF sanctuaries
bordering on South Vietnam.
The U.S. pulled its troops out of Vietnam in 1973, and the conflict finally ended in 1975 when the North
Vietnamese took Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City. Millions of Vietnamese died as a consequence of the Vietnam
War. The lowest casualty estimates, based on the now-renounced North Vietnamese statements, are around
1.5 million Vietnamese killed. Vietnam released figures on April 3, 1995, that a total of one million Vietnamese
combatants and four million civilians were killed in the war. The accuracy of these figures has generally not
been challenged. The official estimate for U.S. death toll is about 58,000, with some missing and presumed
dead. Millions of Vietnamese fled after the war ended. After the war, thousands of Vietnamese were rounded
up into "re-education" camps. Since the mid-1980s, Vietnam has followed a path of economic liberalization
similar to the Chinese model, and though still poor, over the past decade Vietnam has been one of the fastest
growing economies in the world.

Nixon Doctrine
By the last years of the Nixon administration, it had become clear that it was the Third World that remained the
most volatile and dangerous source of world instability. Central to the Nixon-Kissinger policy toward the Third
World was the effort to maintain a stable status quo without involving the United States too deeply in local
disputes. In 1969 and 1970, in response to the height of the Vietnam War, the President laid out the elements
of what became known as the Nixon Doctrine, by which the United States would "participate in the defense and
development of allies and friends" but would leave the "basic responsibility" for the future of those "friends" to
the nations themselves. The Nixon Doctrine signified a growing contempt by the U.S. government for the
United Nations, where underdeveloped nations were gaining influence through their sheer numbers, and
increasing support to authoritarian regimes attempting to withstand popular challenges from within.

In the 1970s, for example, the CIA poured substantial funds into Chile to help support the established
government against a Marxist challenge. When the Marxist candidate for president,Salvador Allende, came to
power through free elections, the United States began funneling more money to opposition forces to help
"destabilize" the new government. In 1973, a U.S.-backed military junta seized power from Allende. The new,
repressive regime of General Augusto Pinochet received warm approval and increased military and economic
assistance from the United States as an anti-Communist ally. Democracy was finally re-established in Chile in
1989.

Reform spreads through Communist Europe

As Gorbachev-inspired waves of reform propagated throughout the Communist bloc, grassroots organizations,
such as Poland’s Solidarity movement, rapidly gained ground. In 1989, the Communist governments in Poland
and Hungary became the first to negotiate the organizing of competitive elections. In Czechoslovakia and East
Germany, mass protests unseated entrenched Communist leaders. The Communist regimes
in Bulgaria and Romania also crumbled, in the latter case as the result of a violent uprising. Attitudes had
changed enough that US Secretary of State James Baker suggested that the American government would not
be opposed to Soviet intervention in Romania, on behalf of the opposition, to prevent bloodshed.[4] The tidal
wave of change culminated with the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, which symbolized the collapse of
European Communist governments and graphically ended the Iron Curtain divide of Europe.
The collapse of the European governments with Gorbachev’s tacit consent inadvertently encouraged
several Soviet republics to seek greater independence from Moscow’s rule. Agitation for independence in
the Baltic states led to first Lithuania, and then Estonia and Latvia, declaring their independence. Disaffection in
the other republics was met by promises of greater decentralization. More open elections led to the election of
candidates opposed to Communist Party rule.
In an attempt to halt the rapid changes to the system, a group of Soviet hard-liners represented by Vice-
President Gennady Yanayev launched a coup overthrowing Gorbachev in August 1991. Russian
President Boris Yeltsin rallied the people and much of the army against the coup and the effort collapsed.
Although restored to power, Gorbachev’s authority had been irreparably undermined. In September, the Baltic
states were granted independence. On December 1, Ukraine withdrew from the USSR. On December 31, 1991
the USSR officially dissolved, breaking up into fifteen separate nations.

Legacy
Russia and the other Soviet successor states have faced a chaotic and harsh transition from a command
economy to free market capitalism following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. A large percentage of the
population currently lives in poverty. GDP growth also declined, and life expectancy dropped sharply. Living
conditions have also declined in other parts of the former 'Eastern bloc'.

In addition, the poverty and desperation of the Russians, Ukrainians and allies of post–Cold War have led to
the sale of many advanced Cold War-developed weapons systems, especially very capable modern upgraded
versions, around the globe. World-class tanks (T-80/T-84), jet fighters (MiG-29 and Su-27/30/33), surface-to-air
missile systems (S-300P, S-300V, 9K332 and Igla) and others have been placed on the market in order to
obtain some much-needed cash. This poses a possible problem for western powers in coming decades as they
increasingly find hostile countries equipped with weapons which were designed by the Soviets to defeat them.
The post–Cold War era saw a period of unprecedented prosperity in the West, especially in the United States,
and a wave of democratization throughout Latin America, Africa, and Central, South-East and Eastern Europe.

Sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein expresses a less triumphalist view, arguing that the end of the Cold War is a
prelude to the breakdown of Pax Americana. In his essay "Pax Americana is Over," Wallerstein argues, "The
collapse of communism in effect signified the collapse of liberalism, removing the only ideological justification
behind US hegemony, a justification tacitly supported by liberalism's ostensible ideological opponent."[5]

The space exploration has petered out in both the United States and Russia without the competitive pressure
of the space race. Military decorations have become more common, as they were created, and bestowed, by
the major powers during the near 50 years of undeclared hostilities.