noun: cold war1. a state of political hostility between countries characterized by threats, propaganda, and other measures short of open warfare, in particular.

Cold War : Term is used to describe the relationship between America

and the Soviet Union 1945 to 1980. Neither side ever fought the other - the consequences would be too

appalling - but they did ‘fight’ for their beliefs using client states who fought for their beliefs on their behalf e.g.

South Vietnam was anticommunist and was supplied by America during the war while North Vietnam was pro-Communist and fought the south (and the Americans) using weapons from communist Russia or communist

China. In Afghanistan, the Americans supplied the rebel Afghans after the Soviet Union invaded in 1979 while they

never physically involved themselves thus avoiding a direct clash with the Soviet Union.

Cold War Timeline

• The following page list events that are associated with the Cold War

1946• Churchill gives “Iron Curtain”

speech

1947• Truman Doctrine-US helps

Greece-hard military side of containment

1947• Marshall Plan announced soft

financial side of containment

1948• Berlin Blockade-USSR blocks

Berlin and we airlift in supplies

1949• Moa Zedong take controll of

China

1949• USSR explodes first nuclear

weapon

1950• McCarthy with hunts begin

1950• North Korea invades South

Korea

1953• Rosenberg's executed

1954• Vietnam splits at 17th

1957• First satellite in space,

Sputnik launched

1959• Fidel overtakes Cuba

1960• Soviets shoot down US CIA

U2 spy plane

1960• Kennedy elected President

1961• Bay of Pigs fails

1961• Khrushchev puts Berlin Wall

up

1962• US send more troops to

Vietnam

1963• Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

ratified

1963• Kennedy assassinated

1964• Golf of Tonkin incident

1965• US sends troops to Dominican

Republic to fight Communism

1969• Apollo 11 lands on moon

(Neil Armstrong)

1970• Nixon extends war into

Cambodia

1973• Cease fire in Vietnam

1973• US helps overthrow Chile

government

1974• Egypt and Syria attack Israel

1974• Nixon resigns

1979• Shah of Iran overthrown- Iran

Hostage Crises (66 Americans help hostage for 444 days in Iran) took over Embassy in Tehran.

1983• US helps overthrow Grenada

1983• Iran Contra affair-arms sold in

Iran go towards Contra (member of a guerrilla force in Nicaragua) support in Nicaragua

1986• Reagan and Gorbachev resolve

to remove all nuclear weapons from Europe

1989• Soviets withdraw from

Afghanistan

1989• China puts down democracy

revolt- Poland becomes independent

1989• Hungary becomes

independent

1989• November-Wall comes down

1989• Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and

Romania become independent- free from Soviet control

1990• Lithuania independent

1990• Yeltsin becomes Russian

President.

1991• Cold War ends: End of Soviet

Union (Russia)