Cold War Conflict 

Summary - The Cold War was a forty-four year global conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union in the decades after World War Two.  The term “cold war” was used to describe the conflict because the two countries acted toward each other like they were at war, however they could not directly fight each other because both possessed nuclear weapons in large enough numbers to destroy the world several time over.  At the core of the Cold War conflict was the fact that the United States and the Soviet Union had very different ideologies, or views about the world, and saw the other country’s ideology as a threat.  The United States was a capitalist democracy and the Soviet Union was a communist dictatorship.  The Soviet Union saw as its goal to spread communism to other countries, while the United States opposed this and focused its efforts on preventing the expansion of communism.  However, the United States policies in practice were more interested in opposing communism than promoting democracy around the world.  The Cold War was a global conflict in which both sides fought through proxies in order to avoid the risk of a direct American-Soviet war,  because both countries had large arsenals of nuclear weapons.  As a result the global Cold War was often fought through regional conflicts and civil wars.  The Cold War ended in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed due to its own internal problems and the cost of fighting the Cold War.

Unit Question -  Should the Cold War be considered a "World War"?

Homework # 1 - Overview of Rise & Fall of Communism

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