Why was the Cold War named the cold war? It was named the Cold War because it possessed the longest length of time of any war, in modern history, in which two nations were at odds without engaging in direct battle. The Term Cold War was used to describe the shifting struggle for power and prestige between the Western powers and the Communist syndicate from the end of World War II until 1989.

After World War II, the West felt threatened by the continued expansionist policy of the Soviet Union. The traditional Russian fear of invasion from the West continued. Communists stopped power in Eastern Europe by means of the Red Army, the sealing off of the Russian occupation zones by army patrols, and the direction of threats toward Turkey and Greece. Conflicts sometimes grew big in the United Nations, which was at times injured by the effect of the cold war.

During the cold war, the general policy of the West toward the Communist states was to contain them with the hope that inside failure might end their threat. In 1948, the Soviet Union directly challenged the West by organizing a blockade of the western sectors of Berlin, but the United States airlifted supplies into the city until the blockade was withdrawn. The challenges in Europe influenced the United States to reverse its traditional policy of avoiding permanent alliances, so in 1949 the United States and 11 other nations signed the North Atlantic Treaty (NATO).

At the end of the Cold War in the late 1950s and early 60s, both European alliance systems began to weaken somewhat. In the Western bloc, France began to explore closer relations with Eastern Europe and the possibility of withdrawing its forces from NATO. The term Cold War was reiterated in the 1980s, when U.S. President Ronald Reagan revived cold-war policies and referred to the Soviet Union as the “evil empire.” The escalation of the nuclear arms race, some have argued, was responsible for the eventual collapse of Soviet Communism, while others characterize it to the inherent weakness of the Soviet state.

The Cold War, certainly, is used in today’s politics. To this day, we hear arguments whether the Cold War is over or not. NATO is a big monument of the Cold War and, at present, is still up and running. The Soviet Union still feels threatened by NATO because of what it meant in the past. This monument of the Cold War, NATO, is very important to the future of democracy because it represents today what it meant in the past; a union of nations.

See D. F. Fleming, The Cold War and Its Origins, 1917–1960 (1961); J. L. Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941–1947 (1972); K. W. Thompson, Cold War Theories (1981); Peter Savigear, Cold War or Detente in the 1980s (1987); John Sharnik, Inside the Cold War (1987); Walter Le Feber, America, Russia and the Cold War (6th ed. 1991).

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