The Cold War begins
Two systems divide the world without directly fighting each other.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 3 years
- Known to
- ± 1 year
- Era
- Contemporary, Holocene
Wartime cooperation collapses into confrontation: Churchill's iron curtain speech in 1946, the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan in 1947 and 1948, the Berlin blockade and airlift, NATO in 1949 and the Warsaw Pact in 1955. The Soviet Union tests a bomb in 1949. For forty years both blocs arm, subsidise and fight through proxies across Asia, Africa and Latin America, while avoiding direct war because of what direct war would now mean.