The Cold War Test-2

Non-alignment as a strategy evolved in the Cold War context. With the disintegration of the USSR and the end of the Cold War in 1991, non-alignment evolved, both as an international movement and as the core of India’s foreign policy, lost some of its earlier relevance and effectiveness.

As a leader of NAM, India’s response to the ongoing Cold War was two-fold: At one level, it took particular care in staying away from the two alliances. Second, it raised its voice against the newly decolonised countries becoming part of these alliances.

The idea of a New International Economic Order (NIEO) originated with the realisation of economic development of newly independent nations. Without sustained development, a country could not be truly free. It would remain dependent on the richer countries including the colonial powers from which political freedom had been achieved.

The five principles were:

•  Mutual respect for each other's territorial integrity and sovereignty.

•  Mutual non-aggression.

•  Mutual non-interference in domestic affairs.

•  Equality and mutual benefit.

•  Peaceful co-existence

The end of the Second World War was also the beginning of the Cold War. The world war ended when the United States dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, causing Japan to surrender. The war had involved almost all the major powers of the world and spread out to regions outside Europe including Southeast Asia, China, Burma (now Myanmar) and parts of India’s northeast.

Both sides have the capacity to retaliate against an attack and to cause so much destruction that neither can afford to initiate war. Thus, the Cold War — in spite of being an intense form of rivalry between great powers — remained a ‘cold’ and not hot or shooting war. The deterrence relationship prevents war but not the rivalry between powers.

The Eastern Bloc (also the Socialist Bloc, the Communist Bloc, and the Soviet Bloc) was the group of communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, and Southeast Asia under the hegemony of the Soviet Union (USSR) during the Cold War (1947–1991) in opposition to the capitalist Western Bloc.

The eastern alliance, known as the Warsaw Pact, was led by the Soviet Union. It was created in 1955 and its principal function was to counter NATO’s forces in Europe.

International alliances during the Cold War era were determined by the requirements of the superpowers and the calculations of the smaller states.

Three Estates is related to the French society and French Revolution.

Cold War tended to divide the world into two rival alliances. It dominated the second half of the twentieth century.

The Western Bloc during the Cold War refers to capitalist countries under the hegemony of the United States and NATO against the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact.