The Start of the Cold War

The U.S.-Soviet tensions evident at Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam made conflict likely. However, the high costs of the war meant that neither superpower wanted a full-scale war with the other. Rather, they settled into a cold war, a conflict does not involve direct military confrontation between two or more rival states. The Cold War between the superpowers played out in propaganda campaigns, secret operations, and an arms race.

The deadliest results of the Cold War occurred outside the lands of the two superpowers. The U.S.-Soviet rivalry led both countries to arm opposing sides in conflicts around the world, thereby transforming small civil wars and regional conflicts into much larger events. This increased the death tolls and level of destruction in these wars.

In the early 1950s, the United States and Soviet Union each developed a hydrogen bomb that was much more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan at the end of World War II. The arms race fostered close ties between the military and the industries that developed weapons. Before he left office in 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower expressed his concerns about the U.S.- Soviet competition for supremacy in nuclear armaments. He warned against allowing the military-industrial complex, the informal alliance between the government and the large defense contractors, to gain too much power. In later decades, citizens in many countries expressed similar worries. They began to protest the stockpiling of nuclear weapons.