The cold war, which broke out straight after the second world war, was obviously a period of mutual distrust, raised tensions and conflict; though there was no actual fighting involved as neither party wanted to start a third world war just as soon as they had managed to resolve the second one. However, this war was carried out in competitive methods such as the arms race and also the race to build nuclear WMDs. International politics within this period were shaped and moulded by the deep seated enmity between the two world powers and the political ideologies they both held.
That is not to say however, that we came perilously close to being thrown back into another World War. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 was a key period where the world found itself on the brink of an all out nuclear war. With the USSR being exposed using Cuba as a missile base; the USA feeling under threat and fearing use retaliated by secretly launching missile bases in Turkey. They even had satellite states which they used to carry out their star wars on strategic limitation talks.
The USA and the USSR were not the only ones affected, but also the countries within the sphere of influence of each, as the Korean Civil War of the 1950s shows. Korea divided into two regions with regards to ideologies where North Korea adopted a communist regime and the South took on western capitalist principles. The USA and USSR support in Korea was a way of exercising their rivalry, without a care of numbers of Korean civilians dying day after day. This just further emphasises the extent to which the two superpowers would go to in order to defeat the other. it was this fear of nuclear war that the theory of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) was introduced. This is where the western allies agreed to all retaliate if the Soviet state attacked any western country.
But this rivalry transcended just military action. The USA established NATO to provide economic aid and resources to help western states reshape their economy. The Soviets sought to go one better and introduced the Warsaw Pact to enhance economic stability in communist states in the east. As a result, the world split into a bipolar system and the world had no choice but to place itself in one sphere of influence or the other.
In conclusion, the USSR eventually lost in 1990 and the USA prevailed through the “war” which meant that capitalism had therefore the upper hand throughout the rest of the world. The implications of this have been immense. The ideology has taken over all the major markets in the world, and countries are increasingly transitioning from communism to capitalism and also adjusted the standard of living and lifestyle in the assimilation of the USA. Aside from this, the implications of bipolarity in international relations have been numerous. One such being the development of nuclear weapons increasing immensely with several countries today either possessing or developing nuclear weapons.
