| cold war | |
| —n | |
| a state of political hostility and military tension between two countries or power blocs, involving propaganda, subversion, threats, economic sanctions, and other measures short of open warfare, esp that between the American and Soviet blocs after World War II (the Cold War) | |
A constant nonviolent state of hostility between the Soviet Union and the United States. The cold war began shortly after World War II, with the rapid extension of Soviet influence over eastern Europe and North Korea. With the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the cold war ended. (See Berlin airlift, Berlin wall, and Iron Curtain.)