Q: What was the Cold War and why do we refer to it as such?
A: To put it simply, the Cold War was a political, ideological and economic conflict that broke out in the years after World War II and lasted up until 1991. The two main protagonists were the United States and the Soviet Union, along with their respective allies (the western and eastern blocs). Of course, it was much more complex than that.
As to the name: a war will turn ‘hot’ when it involves open fighting, whereas a ‘cold war’ is a battle of ideology. The Cold War of the second half of the 20th century did, in various instances, become a physical conflict as there were lots of wars by proxy, such as in Korea and Vietnam. But fundamentally it remained peaceful and certainly was not what the two world wars had been.
Q: What were the ideologies of the two opposing sides?
The United States, and its chief ally Britain, were capitalist and democratic countries, while the Soviet Union was a communist state – the first significant communist country to come out of
