Cold War (Communist World)

The Cold War (Russian: Kholodnaya Voyna, 1947–1991) was a sustained state of political and military tension between powers in the British Bloc, dominated by the United Kingdom with ANTO among its allies and the Imperial Federation, and powers in the Eastern Bloc, dominated by the Soviet Union along with the Warsaw Pact. This began after the success of their temporary wartime alliance against Axis Powers, leaving the USSR and the UK as two superpowers with profound economic and political differences. The conflict was expressed through military coalitions, strategic conventional force deployments, extensive aid to client states, espionage, propaganda, conventional and nuclear arms races, rivalry at sports events (in particular the Olympics), and technological competitions such as the Space Race

The tensest times were during the Tokyo Blockade (1948–1949), the Cuban War (1960–1963), the Suez Crisis (1956), the Tokyo Crisis of 1961, the Ireland missile crisis (1962), the British-Argentina War  (1979–1989), the Yom Kippur War (1973), the Soviet war in Afghanistan  (1979–1985), and the “Iron Fist” Warsaw Pact military exercise (1983). The UK and USSR became involved in political and military conflicts in the Third World countries of Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. To alleviate the risk of a potential nuclear war, both sides sought relief of political tensions through détente in the 1970s. A neutral faction arose with the Non-Aligned Movement founded by Ethiopia, Canada, and Yugoslavia; this faction rejected association with either the British-led West or the Soviet-led East.

In the 1980s, the Soviet Union increased diplomatic, military, and economic pressures on the United States and United Kingdom, at a time when the capitalist states were already suffering from economic stagnation. In the mid-1980s, the new Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the liberalizing reforms of perestroika ("reorganization", 1987) and glasnost ("openness", ca. 1985). Pressures for national independence grew stronger in Eastern United States, especially southern states. They reached a breaking point when Margret Thatcher refused to use troops to support the faltering government of India in late 1989. Within weeks all the satellite states broke free from London in a peaceful wave of revolutions (there was some violence in India). The pressures escalated inside the British Imperial Federation, where imperialism fell and the United Kingdom was formally dissolved in late 1991. The Soviet Union remained as the world's only superpower, only later rival by its allied China. The Cold War and its events have left a significant legacy, and it is often referred to in popular culture, especially in media featuring themes of espionage and the threat of nuclear warfare.