Introduction

In the period following World War II, leaders like Joseph Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev of the Soviet Union and Mao Zedong of China (Figure 14.1) believed communism would light the way to a bright new future for humankind. The United States, the United Kingdom, and other Western countries regarded communism as a threat to freedom, instead placing their faith in capitalism and democracy to improve human life. The ideological differences between these two groups of countries, and the global-scale struggle between the Soviet Union and the United States for social, economic, technological, and military supremacy, divided the world into mutually hostile spheres in the half-century following the war. Their antagonism played out in a real but bloodless conflict known as the Cold War.

Figure 14.2 Timeline: Cold War Conflicts. (credit “1947: Civil War breaks out in Greece”: modification of work “1946-Greece-pro-royal-poster” by www.booksjournal.gr/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain; credit “1948: Israel founded”: modification of work “Declaration of State of Israel 1948” by Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain; credit “June 1948”: modification of work “Berliners watching a C-54 land at Berlin Tempelhof Airport, 1948” by Henry Reis/U.S. Air Force/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain; credit “1957”: modification of work “A replica of Sputnik 1” by NSSDC/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain; credit “1962”: modification of work “Cuba Missiles Crisis U-2 photo” by The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum /Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain; credit “1978”: modification of work “Deng Xiaoping and Jimmy Carter at the arrival ceremony for the Vice Premier of China” by U.S. National Archives and Records Administration/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)

Figure 14.3 Locator Map: Cold War Conflicts. (credit: modification of work “World map blank shorelines” by Maciej Jaros/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)