Terran Cold War

Organizations| NATO:* United States of America
* Western Europe
* Canada
* United Kingdom
* Turkey
* Greenland

Supported by:* South Korea
* Japan
* Taiwan
* Thailand
* South Vietnam (until 1976)
* Philippines
* Chile
* Argentina
* Brazil
* Central American states (CIA backed)
* Anti-Communist groups
* Eastern Europe
* People's Republic of China (until Sino-Soviet split in 1962, ended in 1989)
* Vietnam
* North Korea
* Laos
* Cuba

Supported by:* Iran
* Pro-Soviet proxies

Personnel| -United States* Harry Truman
* Dwight Eisenhower
* John F. Kennedy
* Lyndon B. Johnson
* Richard Nixon
* Gerald Ford
* Jimmy Carter
* Ronald Reagan
* George H. W. Bush
* US Armed Forces chiefs of staff

-NATO* NATO state leaders
* NATO military commanders

-Various Soviet defectors | -Soviet Union* Joseph Stalin
* Nikita Khrushchev
* Leonid Brezhnev
* Yuri Andropov
* Konstantin Chernenko
* Mikhail Gorbachev (until 1991)
* Soviet military commanders

-Warsaw Pact* Warsaw Pact leaders
* Warsaw Pact military commanders

-Soviet allies* Mao Zedong (until 1962)
* Kim Il Sung (until 1992)
* Ho Chi Mihn
* Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (since 1979)
* Ali Khamenei (until 1992)

Strength| -NATO:* United States Armed Forces
	+ US Army
	+ US Navy
	+ US Marine Corps
	+ US Air Force
	+ CIA
	+ NSA
* Canadian Armed Forces
* NATO Armies

-Non-NATO allies:* ASEAN (since 1967)
* Australia
* New Zealand
* South African nation (Anti-Communist regimes)
* African Nations (Anti-Communist regimes)
* Soviet Defectors and Exiled Eastern European citizens
	+ Soviet Air Force
	+ Soviet Air Defense Force
	+ Soviet Army
	+ Soviet Airborne Troops
	+ Soviet Navy
	+ Soviet Intelligence (KGB)

* Warsaw Pact Armies
	+ East German National People's Army
	+ Bulgarian People's Army
	+ Albanian People's Army (until 1968)
	+ Czechoslovak People's Army
	+ Hungarian People's Army
	+ Polish People's Army
	+ Army of the Socialist Republic of Romania

* Soviet Allies
	+ North Korean People's Army
	+ People's Liberation Army of China (until Sino-Soviet split)
	+ Islamic Republic of Iran (since 1979, due to anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiment after the Revolution)
* Soviet Proxies
* Western Europe Defectors

Result| -NATO Victory* Dissolution of Soviet Union after Terran Campaign
* Nuclear War/World War 3 nearly avoided
* Tiananmen Square Massacre
* Fall of Berlin Wall in November 1989
* Reunion of West and East Europe
* World peace achieved
* Terran Alliance formed

The **Terran Cold War** was a period of geopolitical tension on Earth between 2 superpower nations, the United States, the Soviet Union and their respective allies of NATO and the Warsaw Pact, which began following World War II, and lasted from the Terran years 1947 to 1992. The term "**Cold War***"* is used because there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two superpowers, but they each supported major proxy wars. The conflict was based around the ideological and geopolitical struggle for global influence by these two superpowers, (between the US free market Capitalist, liberal-democratic society and the Soviet's totalitarian communist regime) following their temporary alliance and victory against Nazi Germany during World War II.

Aside from the mass development of nuclear weapons and military deployment, the struggle for dominance was expressed via indirect means such as psychological warfare, propaganda, espionage, far-reaching embargoes, rivalry at sports events and technological competitions such as the Space Race throughout the 50s and 60s, which the Soviets were winning at first, but by the late-60s, the US made more progress, thus being the first to land on the moon in 1969.

## History

The Terran Cold War began shortly after the end of the Second World War in 1945. The United States and its allies created a military alliance in 1949 known as NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) in the apprehension of a Soviet attack and formed a global policy against Soviet influence. In 1955, the Soviet Union formed the Warsaw Pact in response to NATO. Major issues of this phase included the 1948–49 Berlin Blockade, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The US and the USSR competed for influence in Latin America, the Middle East, and the decolonizing states of Africa and Asia.

in the mid 1960s, the second phase began that saw the Sino-Soviet split, where China and the Soviet Union complicate relations within the Communist sphere, while France, a Western Bloc state, began to demand greater autonomy of action. The USSR invaded Czechoslovakia to suppress the Prague Spring of 1968, while the US experienced internal turmoil from the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War. Throughout the 1960s–70s, an international peace movement took root among citizens around the world, which included, activism against nuclear arms testing and calls for nuclear disarmament, with large anti-war protests. By the 1970s, both sides had started making allowances for peace and security, ushering in a period of détente that saw the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and the US opening relations with the People's Republic of China as a strategic counterweight to the USSR. Meanwhile, a number of self-proclaimed Marxist regimes were formed in the second half of the 1970s in the Third World, in countries like Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Afghanistan and Nicaragua.

The Détente collapsed at the end of the decade with the beginning of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. The early 1980s was another period of elevated tension. The United States increased diplomatic, military, and economic pressures on the Soviet Union, at a time when it was already suffering from economic stagnation. However, tensions nearly reached a breaking point in 1983, when the Soviets accidently shot down Korean Air flight 007 on September 1, killing all passengers and crew onboard. Twenty-five days later, a false alarm at a Soviet missile warning bunker nearly causes nuclear conflict with the US.

In 1985, the new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the liberalizing reforms of "*glasnost" (freedoms to Soviet citizens)* and "*perestroika" (restructuring Soviet government into a Democratic form)* and ended Soviet involvement in Afghanistan in February 1989. Pressures for national sovereignty grew stronger in Eastern Europe, and Gorbachev refused to militarily support their governments any longer.

On November 9, 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall and a peaceful wave of revolutions (with the exception of Romania and Afghanistan) overthrew almost all communist governments of the Eastern Bloc. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union itself lost control in the Soviet Union and was banned following a coup attempt in August 1991, when they were rebellious against Gorbachev's reforms. Then in January 1992, the Confederacy of Independent Systems invades the USSR during the Terran Campaign. Despite the Soviet victory, it was still a massive blow to the Soviet economy, thus leading to the collapse of the USSR. The declaration of independence of its constituent republics and the collapse of communist governments across much of Africa and Asia (all except those countries like: China in 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Cuba), officially ending the Terran Cold War.

As of today, the United States is the world's only remaining superpower, leading the Terran Alliance.