Cold War (Alexander the Liberator)

The Cold War is an ongoing state of political and military tension between opposing geopolitical power-blocs, with one bloc typically reported as being led by the United Socialist States of America and NASTO, and the other led by the Russian Empire, Alaska and the Warsaw Pact. Historians do not fully agree on when the conflict began, but a common timeframe begins in 1947 when Russian-born American dictator Leon Trotsky announced the Trotsky Plan, a U.S.S.A. foreign policy meant to rebuild Western Europe but also support the rise of Communism. That same year, the Imperial Russian Armed Forces established military bases in Denmark, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany.

The Cold War split the temporary wartime alliance against Nazi Germany, leaving the Russian Empire and the United Socialist States of America as two superpowers with profound economic and political differences. The USSA was a Marxist–Leninist state led by its Communist Party, which in turn was dominated by a leader with different titles over time, and a small committee called the Politburo. The Party controlled the press, the military, the economy and many organizations. It also controlled the other states in the Eastern Bloc, and funded Communist parties around the world. In opposition stood the capitalist East, led by Russia, a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system. The nations of the Eastern Bloc were generally either under a system of Limited Democracy (Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia, Albania, East Germany, Spain and Hungary) or Liberal Democracy (Austria, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Portugal, Russia, and Czechoslovakia), while some allies of the Eastern Bloc are authoritarian states (Northwest Greece).

Some of the front lines of the Cold War took place in former Western colonies such as the Congo, Syria, Indonesia, Angola, and Mozambique.

A small neutral bloc arose with the Non-Aligned Movement, which sought good relations with both sides. The two superpowers never engaged directly in full-scale armed combat, but they were heavily armed in preparation for a possible all-out nuclear world war. Each side had a nuclear strategy that discouraged an attack by the other side, on the basis that such an attack would lead to the total destruction of the attacker—the doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD). Aside from the development of the two sides' nuclear arsenals, and their deployment of conventional military forces, the struggle for dominance was expressed via proxy wars around the globe, psychological warfare, massive propaganda campaigns and espionage, far-reaching embargos, rivalry at sports events, and technological competitions such as the Space Race.

The first phase of the Cold War began in the first two years after the end of the Second World War in 1945. The USSA consolidated its control over the states of the Western Bloc, while Russia began a strategy of global containment to challenge American power, extending military and financial aid to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (for example, supporting the anti-communist side in the Greek Civil War) and creating the Warsaw Pact alliance.