- Define and explain The Cold War Worldwide in your own words
- Use key terms such as Superpower accurately
- Apply what you have learned to new examples and questions
- Avoid the common mistakes learners make with this topic
This lesson focuses on The Cold War Worldwide: proxy wars, decolonisation and the superpowers' global contest.
Proxy wars, decolonisation and the superpowers' global contest.
Key ideas
Rivals, not warriors
The superpowers never fought each other directly because nuclear weapons made total war suicidal. Instead they competed through alliances (NATO founded 1949, the Warsaw Pact 1955), arms races, propaganda and proxy wars. The Cold War was a struggle for influence fought everywhere except the direct battlefield.
The Cold War ended from within and below
Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms of glasnost and perestroika aimed to save the Soviet system but unleashed demands he could not control. In 1989 mass protests swept Eastern Europe and the Berlin Wall fell; the USSR itself dissolved in 1991. Historians debate how much credit belongs to Gorbachev, to Western pressure, or to ordinary people's courage.
Key term — Superpower: A state with global military, economic and political influence. After 1945 only the USA and USSR qualified.
Name the two rival military alliances of the Cold War.
NATO (1949) and the Warsaw Pact (1955).
Answer: NATO (1949) and the Warsaw Pact (1955).
- Saying the Cold War was only about the USA and USSR It drew in the whole world: Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and many decolonising states became Cold War battlegrounds, often at terrible local cost.
- Treating 1989 as a purely Western victory The end owed much to internal Soviet failure and to Eastern Europeans themselves. Reducing it to one side's triumph misses the debate historians actually have.
Practice
Direct war risked nuclear escalation, which would have been suicidal for both sides.
Gorbachev's reforms destabilised Soviet control, and mass protests in Eastern Europe (e.g. the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989) ended communist rule; the USSR dissolved in 1991.
Whether the end was mainly due to Western pressure, Gorbachev's reforms, or the actions of ordinary people in Eastern Europe — historians weigh these differently.
The US policy of preventing the spread of Soviet influence, announced in 1947.
Quick check
Which of these best defines "Superpower"?
What happened in 1962 that nearly caused nuclear war?
- The Cold War Worldwide: proxy wars, decolonisation and the superpowers' global contest.
- Rivals, not warriors: The superpowers never fought each other directly because nuclear weapons made total war suicidal.
- Détente: A relaxation of tension between superpowers, as in US–Soviet relations in the 1970s.
- Watch out for: saying the Cold War was only about the USA and USSR