Cold War Tensions

Definition

Cold War tensions refer to the political and military tension after World War II between powers in the Western Bloc (the United States, its NATO allies and others) and powers in the Eastern Bloc (the Soviet Union and its allies).

Analogy

Think of Cold War tensions like a long-standing feud between two rival sports teams. They never directly confront each other on the field (avoiding a "hot" war), but they're always trying to outdo each other, recruiting better players, devising new strategies, etc.

Related terms

Arms Race: A competition for supremacy in nuclear warfare between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies during the Cold War.

Iron Curtain: A term used to describe the boundary that separated the Warsaw Pact countries from NATO countries from about 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991.

Containment: A strategic foreign policy pursued by the United States beginning in the late 1940s in order to check expansionist policy of Soviet Union.