What is distinctive about the cold war as compared to other international conflicts of the twentieth century?

After the Second World War the spirit of rivalry was further strengthened with the chief victors getting into two different fronts. The first and the seconds’ world wars were fought due to imperialistic attitudes of some western countries. But the cold war is ideologically different from the first and the Second World War. The division of Europe into two antagonistic spheres became evident. The main cause of the cold war was the ideological conflict between the U.S.S.R and the U.S. The cold war s origin can be traced back to Russian revolution in 1917. Communism established itself a militant faith. It believed to bring world revolution by the total extinction of the non believers. By exerting internal and external pressures the desired goals were aimed to be achieved. The beliefs and ideas of communism were strictly opposed by America. On the other hand soviet and Chinese communist leaders defined bourgeoisie capitalism as an anti progressive force. It was attributed with the features like oppressive and imperialistic attitude. But they were doomed to be buried under socialism. The first and the second world were inspired by imperialistic interest. Rise of extremist power was also prepared the stage for the Second World War, besides totalitarism surfaced to varying degrees in the first half of the 19^th century. As a result individual liberty was sacrificed on the name of the state. Large scale unemployment and economic distress considerably increased the fear of enemies both internally and externally. Germany’s Nazi regime, Italy’s fascism regime and Japan’s modernization drive also played a vital role. Mutual distrust and failure of building an anti fascist alliance along with the non existence of a strong international body to co-ordinate among international powers also hailed it. The first world was mainly characterised by expansion plans by military and naval commands of different countries. Several mobilization plans and a lightening of the hostile coalitions built a momentum for war over riding arguments for peace developing from trade, industry and good sense created an international crisis. The Great War had claimed t5he lives of no less than 15^th million people. Its development took place due to high ambitions, aspirations and jealousy which centred around countries like Germany, Britain, Russia, France, Belgium etc. But the Second World War was vaster in its impact. The cold war in comparison is an era of conflict which has witnessed no wide scale, direct conflicts. Rather the war was fought on diplomatic terms. In 1945 the US was a supreme power and it was evident in its economy that accounted for about 50 percent of the total world GNP. In the Second World War the U.S.S.R had lost 20 million men in war casualties and approximately the same number in related events. But still a large portion of the eastern and the central Europe into the centre of the Germany and also the Balkans were occupied by U.S.S.R. Germany was divided into two war fronts centring which tensions prevailed between U.S.S.R on one hand and united front of the French ,British and the Americans. The prime foreign policy objective of the US was containment of communism. The country took a number of effective measures to oppose communism. All Latin American countries committed themselves to join defence against internal and external communist subversion in Rio treaty of 1947. Attempts were being made to form a united front of non-communist European countries. In 1949 north Atlantic treaty organization was formed. Its main objective was to provide defence to the west European countries. Turkey and FRG joined it later. On the other central and eastern European countries were brought together in the Warsaw pact time under the leadership of the Soviet Union. Confrontation between two military alliances started a new arms race. The fear of nuclear warfare loomed over the whole world. The cold war came to Asia first when china proclaimed itself as the peoples of china in October 1949.china saw US as an adversary of its interest. The most dangerous crisis of the world war took place in October 1962 over the issue of soviet missiles placed in the Caribbean island of cuba.