Belonging to neither the East or the West, developing countries were called 'third world countries' and became a stage for proxy wars between the East and West. The Soviet Union and Eastern European countries formed the communist camp (East), and the United States, centered on NATO, formed the capitalist camp (West), dividing the world in two. Therefore, the policy of nuclear deterrence was the conditional peace experienced by the world.Īfter World War II, the United States of America and the Soviet Union were in opposition over the expansion of their power. However, the fear of causing a nuclear holocaust had prevented the nuclear powers to wage war against each other. In addition to the United States and the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France, China and Israel also possessed nuclear weapons during the Cold War. The Cold War also simultaneously witnessed the largest arms race (both conventional and nuclear) in history, leading to widespread global fears of a potential nuclear war.

The Cold War was instead waged by means of diplomatic maneuvering, economic pressure, selective aid, intimidation, propaganda, assassination, low-intensity military operations and full-scale proxy war, as well as espionage and information from circa 1947 until the terminal decline of the Warsaw Pact in the late 1980s. The struggle was widely called the Cold War because it did not involve direct armed conflict between the contestants (by contrast, a so-called 'hot' war). 2.5 The Virtuous Mission and Operation Snake Eater.

Why was iy called the cold war