Ch. 21’s Big Question — What was the global significance of the cold war?

The global significance of the Cold War was “witnessed a sharp division between the communist world and the Western democratic world” (Strayer, 950). This is what the Cold War is caused to separate “the continent of Europe; the countries of China, Korea, Vietnam, and Germany; and the city of Berlin” (Strayer, 950). There had several crises that “brought the nuclear-armed superpowers of the United States and the USSR to the brink of war, although in every case they managed to avoid direct military conflict between themselves” (Strayer, 950). This is the major conflict that “many countries in Africa and Asia claimed membership in a Non-Aligned Movement” (Strayer, 950). This is what the Cold War is so important throughout a social role in world history. 

The Cold War had happened began in “Eastern Europe, where Soviet insistence on security and control clashed with American and British desires for open and democratic societies with ties to the capitalist world economy” (Strayer, 948). This is referred to military services, such as “rival military alliances (NATO and the Warsaw Pact), a largely voluntary American sphere of influence in Western Europe, and an imposed Soviet sphere in Eastern Europe” (Strayer, 948 & 949). This is what “Europe was bitterly divided. But although tensions flared across this dividing line, particularly in Berlin, no shooting war occurred between the two sides (see Map 21.3)” (Strayer, 949). 

Overall, the Cold War had been divided between Eastern and Western Europe. This is sometimes referred to as the term “the Iron Curtain” (Strayer, 949). Similarly, this process is just “the extension of communism into Asia — China, Korea, and Vietnam — globalized the cold war and occasioned its most destructive and prolonged ‘hot wars’” (Strayer, 949) only.