Cold War Period

Less than a year after the conclusion of the Second World War, Winston Churchill declared that ‘From Stettin in the Baltic, to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent’ of Europe. Before the 1940s were out East and West had face-off over the Berlin Blockade and the Soviets had detonated their own atomic weapon. These events helped set the tone for much of the rest of the twentieth century in what was referred to as the ‘Cold War’.

The post-Second World War environment was shaped by the rivalry between the US and USSR and the diametrically opposed ideologies of capitalism and communism; while the risk of nuclear annihilation prevented direct overt combat between the two major players, each would build a network of allies and clients around the globe. In Europe, NATO and the Warsaw Pact would form two of the largest peacetime armed camps ever seen; they would eye each other with deep suspicion and while avoiding direct conflict each would engage in intelligence gathering and muscle-flexing that would lead to the loss of lives.

Around the globe, revolutions, wars of liberation and regional power struggles would all come to be viewed through the prism of the Cold War as the superpowers vied to provide support to the parties, sometimes even becoming directly engaged in large-scale combat operations lasting for years. That the underlying causes of these conflicts often bore only a tangential connection to the East-West confrontation was largely irrelevant to the deadly power games being played.

In 1989 the Berlin Wall came down and in short order the Warsaw Pact, whose member nations had several times had to be kept in line through force, unravelled; by 1991 the USSR itself was no more and the Cold War was over. While a Third World War had been avoided (at times by the narrowest of margins) this era had been anything but ‘cold’ and the foundations had been laid for a new era of conflict.

Paraguay coup d'état (1989)

First Intifada (1987-1993)

Action in the Gulf of Sidra (1986)

Operation El Dorado Canyon (1986)

Operation Epervier (1986-2014)

South Lebanon War (1985-2000)

Operation Meghdoot (Cloud Messenger) (1984)

Second Sudanese Civil War (1983-2005)

Sri Lankan Civil War (1983-2009)

US Invasion of Grenada (Operation Urgent Fury) (1983)

Falklands War (1982)

First Lebanon War (1982-1985)