ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by looking at the essence of the Cold War relationship as a distinct international system. It focuses on the military competition that was at the core of the US-Soviet conflict and that, in the end, helped contribute to the end of the Cold War. Some residues of the Cold War remain part of the current reality. The perceived communist strength was the totalitarian nature of Soviet rule. Two events in 1956 started the change from tight to loose bipolarity. First, Great Britain joined France and Israel in an attack on Egypt to occupy the Suez Canal zone. The second great change was in the quality of the competition. Militarily, the Cold War was primarily a confrontation between conventional forces facing one another across the no-man’s-land that comprised the Iron Curtain. Nuclear weapons were the second legacy of World War II. The economic implosion that eventually engulfed the Soviet state had its roots in the 1970s/even before.
