Communist Contagion (cropped) - Public domain map

Cold War, the open yet restricted rivalry that developed after World War II between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies. It was first used in the United States by the American financier and presidential adviser Bernard Baruch in a speech at the State House in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1947. During the Cold War, there was concern that it would escalate into a full nuclear exchange with hundreds of millions killed. Both sides developed a deterrence policy that prevented problems from escalating beyond limited localities. Nuclear weapons were never used in the Cold War. The Cold War cycled through a series of high and low tension years (the latter called detente). It ended in the period between 1988 and 1991 with the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the emergence of Solidarity, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, and the demise of the Soviet Union itself.