LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Cold War: Soviet Union
built 221 days ago
Since nuclear weapons made great power conflict (the current organizing principle) unthinkable during the Cold War, America's military strategy was one of deterrence. It worked for many reasons. Among those reasons was the fact that Marxism taught that communism had time on its side. It was historically inevitable, Marx claimed, that the world would turn to communism. As a result, Soviet leaders were unwilling to risk regime control by engaging in a precipitous war that could send them tumbling from power. What about today's super-empowered individual?
Source:
The term "second Cold War" has been used by some historians to refer to the period of intensive reawakening of Cold War tensions in the early 1980s. In 1980 Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter, vowing to increase military spending and confront the Soviets everywhere. Both Reagan and Britain's new prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, denounced the Soviet Union in ideological terms that rivaled that of the worst days of the Cold War in the late 1940s.
Source:
Cold War tensions revived in the late 1950s, when both sides began development of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). The USSR tried to protect Communist East Germany from a haemorrhage of population to the West by building the Berlin Wall in 1961. Each superpower ... attempted to gain influence over emerging nations in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. A serious crisis arose in 1962 when the USSR placed missiles in Cuba, their new ally. President John F. Kennedy threatened nuclear retaliation, and the Soviets withdrew the missiles in return for Kennedy’s promise not to invade Cuba.
Source:
Although indirect conflict between Cold War powers continued through the late 1960s and early 1970s, tensions began to ease, as the period of détente began. The Chinese had sought improved relations with the U.S. in order to gain advantage over the Soviets. In February 1972, Richard Nixon traveled to Beijing and met with Mao Zedong and Chou En-Lai. Nixon and Henry Kissinger then announced a stunning rapprochement with Mao's China.
Source:
Despite its rapid and relatively bloodless end, the Cold War was fought at a tremendous cost globally over the course of more than four decades. It cost the US up to $8 trillion in military expenditures, and the lives of nearly 100,000 Americans in Korea and Vietnam.[46] It cost the Soviets an even higher share of their gross national product. In Southeast Asia, local civil wars were intensified by superpower rivalry, leaving millions dead.
Source:
In November 1989, the most symbolic evidence of the Cold War, the Berlin Wall, was torn down. As the two Germanys moved toward reunification, the Soviet Union was faced with the development it had opposed for nearly half a century, a united and prosperous Germany.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Soviet Union