Cold War Era and Post-Cold War World
Cold War Era and Post-Cold War World
This domain tests how the bipolar rivalry began, escalated, eased and ended, and how 1991 changed alliances, sovereignty and the Global South. Expect doctrines, dates and causal chains, not isolated labels.
Core rules and concepts
- The Cold War was a systemic rivalry between US-led capitalist and Soviet-led socialist blocs, fought through arms races, alliances, propaganda, espionage and proxy wars.
- Containment produced the Truman Doctrine 1947, Marshall Plan 1948 and NATO 1949; Soviet responses included Cominform 1947, Comecon 1949 and the Warsaw Pact 1955.
- Nuclear danger peaked in the Cuban Missile Crisis 1962; détente followed with SALT I 1972 and the Helsinki Accords 1975.
- A second Cold War began after the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the USSR's dissolution in 1991 ended the order.
- The post-Cold War world had a unipolar moment of US primacy, but also multipolar trends, regional powers, globalisation and ethno-national conflicts.
Worked example
Why is the Cuban Missile Crisis treated as a turning point? Reasoning: it brought the superpowers to direct nuclear risk, produced a communication hotline and the 1963 Test Ban Treaty, and pushed both sides towards limited arms control. It did not end rivalry, but it changed its management.
Traps that cost marks
- Non-alignment meant active independence, not isolation or neutrality.
- Do not place the Warsaw Pact before NATO.
- Do not reduce the Cold War to Europe; decolonisation, Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan were central.
- Distinguish détente from the end of the Cold War.