As most of those states were newly formed and/or developing it became a term often used to describe economically poorer states and is still sometimes used as such.ĭespite the added ideological element of communism versus capitalism, the Cold War resembled other wars before it in that it became a battle for control over territory. That led to some states opting out and declaring themselves ‘non-aligned’ – creating a ‘Third World’. This conflict between the first and second world went beyond economics and created two irreconcilable international systems – leaving other states a stark choice to operate within one system or the other. The ‘Second World’ was the Soviet Union and a range of ‘Eastern’ states that were governed predominantly by communist (or socialist) parties who rejected capitalism as an economic model. These states were allied with the United States, broadly followed an economic system of capitalism, and (at least aspirationally) a political system of liberal democracy. The ‘First World’ was the ‘Western’ nations (this is where the term ‘the West’ comes from). The Cold War was responsible for the historical image of a world divided into three zones.
This period also underlined the importance of ideology in shaping global conflict, principally between capitalism and communism, which produced two incompatible international systems.
For that reason, smaller-scale conflict and competition existed but a major ‘hot’ war, such as those in prior decades, was avoided. This was known as ‘Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)’. The Cold War (1947–91) was known as such because the presence of nuclear weapons made a traditional war between the rival parties (in this case the United States and the Soviet Union) unlikely as they each had the power to destroy each other and in doing so jeopardise human civilisation as a whole. This feature is part of the online resources to accompany the textbook Foundations of International Relations.
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