Impact of Cold War on International Relations - Part 1

The Cold War was a period of confrontation that took place between 1945 and 1990 although some International scholars held the idea that the Cold War started in 1917 Russian revelation nevertheless,  it was  between the USA and its allies mainly the Western countries and the Eastern bloc spearheaded by the USSR.  However, the two powers did not fight or used weapons against each other, it was fought through nuclear arms race, proxy wars, ideological influence and propaganda war and therefore had a great impact on the world. This article will examine ways in which the Cold War affected international relation between 1945 up to its end. This essay is going to explore its impacts  and how those impacts affected the world.


The Cold War has affected International Relations in different ways first and for most, the Cold War divided the world in to three distinct camps, the NATO camp, the Warsaw camp, and the nonaligned the first two camps were armed with nuclear weapons.  The rivalry between the two super powers quickly spread to the rest of the world. The USA encourage other friendly regions in the world to form their own alliance such as CENTO in the Middle East and SEATO in the South East Asia the aim as suggested by Murphy (2003) was to surround the USSR with military alliance and as result increased tensions. Furthermore both super powers possessed nuclear missiles that can reach Moscow and Washington respectively. Thus, the Cold War become global and directly affected international stability (Murphy, 2003).   In addition both superpowers resorted to confrontation and propaganda and this in turn was played out in the rest of the world.


The Cold War led the division of Europe in general and Germany in particular it also as pointed by Cornwell (2001) made possible the modernization and  “reintegration” of the defeated powers of Germany Italy and Japan (Cornwell, 2003) Its impact was felt especially in Africa where as further stated by Painter ( 2001) ndmade possible the emergence and creation of new nation states, as the colonial masters no longer able to sustain those colonies. The Cold War considerably affected Europe where it originated as well as internationally. It led the Berlin Blockade, created the divisions of Vietnam and Korea, resulted the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 which furthers exacerbated the relationship of the West and the Soviet Union it further exacerbated and fuelled other conflicts and wars in the middle East (Painter, 2001).

Another aspect of Cold War that had an impact on international relations was protecting sphere of interest by both sides “truly at global level” for example 1956 Hungarian uprising and the subsequent intervention by the Soviet troops because the soviet did not like the Hungarian’s intention to leave the Warsaw Pact, (Bell, 2001) Similarly the USA was also maintaining sphere of interest in other parts of the world especially in Latin America.

During the Cold War fear of the spread of communism has resulted US military involvement in Latin America in various ways for example, the US helped train and provided arms and other assistance to anti-communist in Nicaragua and El-Salvador and by using force to further safeguard its interest in the region a  good example of this was the armed intervention by United States in the Dominican Republic in 1965, here the US aim was as suggested by Young & Kent, (2004) to stop the spread of  communism in the region in other words this was a pre-emptive attack against communism. Another example was the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala and the failed attempt to overthrow Castro’s government in Cuba because America regarded Castro as an unfriendly and enemy (Bell, 2001).