1A state of political hostility between countries characterized by threats, propaganda, and other measures short of open warfare.

1. 1.1the Cold War The state of political hostility that existed between the Soviet bloc countries and the US-led Western powers from 1945 to 1990.
   Example sentencesExamples

   • In the 1950s the United States recruited Pakistan as an ally in its Cold War with the Soviet Union.
   • He was the head of the Progressive Party and ran on a pure liberal New Deal platform, but one that also advocated engagement with the Soviet Union instead of a Cold War.
   • It's like a Cold War between two formerly great friends.
   • This is starting to worry me a bit, remembering what I learned about the cold war in high school.
   • Abandonment of the Vietnam war did not tip the balance towards the Soviet Union in the cold war.
   • Throughout the cold war, relations were cool between the EC and the Soviet Union.
   • In recent years the most significant watershed has been the end of the cold war and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
   • Such is the power of inertia in politics: what's happening today is largely a response to a Cold War that is over and an empire that no longer exists.
   • If there's anything that Reagan should be honoured for it was his preparedness to welcome the initiative offered by Mikhail Gorbachev to declare a Cold War truce.
   • During this Cold War, United States military aircraft flew thousands of covert reconnaissance intelligence flights.
   • As with the cold war, leftists are engaging in the proud tradition of revisionist history.
   • It is as if the end of the cold war left the huge defence industry desperate for a new enemy.
   • The concept of ‘a world peace’ is rooted in the thinking of the cold war balance of power.
   • Growing up in the 60's and 70's was to grow up with the words Cold War hanging over your head every day.
   • Who started the Cold War - the United States or the Soviet Union?
   • There is also the thing, which I think explains a lot of this, is a Cold War mentality.
   • In 1958, at the height of the Cold War, Cliburn won the first International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow.
   • During the Cold War the Soviet Union acted to restrain the US.
   • With the crumbling of the Soviet bloc and the end of the cold war, some proxy wars ended but others began.
   • The Soviet Union was collapsing and with it the certainties of the cold war and communist ideology.
   • He has exactly the same views now as those he had at the height of the cold war.
   • For the duration of the cold war, US foreign policy was to value political stability above all else.
   • But Americans in 1963 were in the midst of a Cold War, still haunted by the specters of Cuba and Berlin and Korea.
   • None of this would have happened if there was still a Cold War and if there was still a Soviet Union.
   • During the Cold War the city was used by film-makers as a stand-in for St Petersburg in movies such as Reds, The Kremlin Letter and Doctor Zhivago.
   • Others have already spoken about the enormous contribution that he made to the ending of the cold war.
   • This definition emerged from intense and difficult negotiations in a Cold War context, and it is marked by the biases of the men who negotiated and approved it.
   • But what are these compared to the second or first world war or even the cold war?
   • But, sooner or later, this Cold War relic will be cast aside.
   • During the Cold War it was the scene of exchanges of spies.
   • Since the cold war Europe faces no threats that require an automatic triggering of US support.
   • It is particularly interesting to note the change in countries like Brazil and Russia - only 15 years ago, one was in political and economic chaos and the other a Cold War enemy.
   • When the cold war ended, the fear that the world might end tomorrow seemed a little less immediate.
   • Gone were the certainties of the cold war, with their doctrine of deterrence and containment, he told them.
   • It also reminds us that the cold war mentality has not gone the way of the cold war.
   • Today it remains enslaved to this Cold War legacy, with both its structure and vision predicated on a world divided into states and spheres of influence.
   • Think about what we did in World War I, World War II, throughout the Cold War.
   • It is clear that emerging terrorist threats are as daunting as those of the cold war.
   • The end of the cold war opened up the prospect of ending the neutral status, but public opinion remained attached to it.
   • Twenty-five years ago the cold war was still raging, and Muldoon was still in power.