Lasting longer than all of America’s wars was the non-shooting one called the Cold War. As befitting a war without battles, its dates are a bit uncertain. But it clearly began in the late 1940s when aggressive moves by the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe alarmed other nations and especially led to conflict with the United States.  

Some would put the start at Winston Churchill’s 1946 speech in Fulton, Mo., in which he first used the term “Iron Curtain.” Certainly the Berlin Airlift of 1948-49 was a sign of a Cold War. And the rapid end of the Soviet Union and decline of Communist control of Eastern Europe beginning in 1989 signaled the end of this war. The Soviet Union was America’s main Cold War foe, but they included other Communist nations such as China and Korea.

During the roughly 40 years of the war were the testing and development of nuclear weapons, anti-Soviet alliances with nations around the world and frequent confrontations in places such as Berlin, Cuba and the South China Sea. And Cold War animosities played a role in causing hot wars in Korea and Vietnam.

For most Americans, the Cold War affected their lives through higher taxes for defense spending and with fears of atomic attack that led to building bomb shelters, nuclear attack drills in school and related practices of the 1950s and 1960s.

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