Shortly after World War II (1939-1945) and the collapse of Nazi Germany, the United States found itself in the midst of another global war. Only this time, the Soviet Union were not our allies at battle, but our foes in a nuclear, geopolitical, and cultural war.

The relationship between these two superpowers went from one of mutual protection to one of distrust and paranoia. While America stopped at nothing to contain communism and preclude its spread in the West, the Soviet Union began to compete with the U.S. in a nuclear arms race.

Although Gorbachev’s agreement with satellite states of the Warsaw Pact, the demolition of the Berlin Wall, and the reunification of Germany marked the official end to the Cold War in 1991, its effects are still prevalent in Western civilization today.

The most prevalent political effect of the Cold War was the spread of communism in Eastern Europe. After the Soviet Union fell under communism during the rule of the Bolsheviks, many European nations also followed suit in the 20th century.

By 1988, Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic (also known as East Germany), Hungary, Poland, and Romania were also nations under the communist party.

Under the Truman Doctrine, the United States fought hard to keep communism from spreading in the East, but President Truman and his predecessors did not have as much success as they planned. However, the United States kept their capitalistic policies in full effect throughout the Cold War.

In contemporary times, tensions with communist nations are still a concern for American politicians, leading to diplomatic issues similar to those of the Cold War. For example, when Mao Zedong came to power in China during 1949 he proclaimed the country as the People’s Republic of China, and to this day, China is still communist under Xi Jinping.

Communist nations and capitalist nations have had unstable economic relationships since the Cold War, and Red China and the United States have experienced one of the biggest trade gaps since Donald Trump has taken office on January 20th. The Communist Party of China has control over all political appointments, which makes the voice of the people very quiet and very overshadowed.

Cuba and North Korea are also communist nations that the United States share a troubled history with. For instance, Fidel Castro led a revolution in Cuba that quickly turned the nation red. Because of this, the United States imposed a ban on all trade with Cuba and travel restrictions to and from Cuba were tightened.

In the case of North Korea, Kim Il-sung’s communist nation is now governed by his grandson, Kim Jong-Un who rose to power in 2011. Kim Il-sung made North Korea an official communist nation in 1948 and they still follow that practice to this day. The United States has had increasing issues with the nation of North Korea in the past five years, foreshadowing a potential war.

Not only did the Cold War perpetrate the fear of communism in the east, but a fear of nuclear war spread throughout both hemispheres, marking the start of the Cuban Missile Crisis. When the Soviet Union found out America had an atomic bomb after the strike on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II, they immediately became suspicious of the United States and what other secrets could be lurking.

In October of 1962, the Soviets decided to create an atomic bomb of their own, and the two nations were in an all-out arms race to display national strength. Since Fidel Castro and Nikita Khrushchev signed trade agreements in March of 1960, the Republic of Cuba and the Soviet had one common enemy: the United States.

Khrushchev began to lead the Soviet army in constructing intermediate and medium-range nuclear missile sites that were capable of killing millions of Americans in less than a few minutes. This led to the American response of retaliation to prevent Khrushchev and the Soviets from having the upper hand in a potential nuclear war. President Kennedy then created the Executive Committee of the National Security Council that pushed to the denuclearization of the Soviet Union.

The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 led to hysteria and pandemonium in both the United States and the Soviet Union. The fear of the unknown is what drove the Cuban Missile Crisis to the height of its glory and cause the once-allied nations to become sworn enemies.

The United States and North Korea are currently experiencing a missile crisis of their own type. For instance, North Korea just launched their most high-tech intercontinental ballistic missile last weekend causing President Trump to become “committed to the total denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula”.

Both the Bush and Obama administrations have been dedicated to the similar goal, showing that the continuous fear of nuclear war has been around since the sixties. Since North Korea is a communist republic, an upcoming nuclear power, and an enemy to the United States, tensions between the two nations are parallel to that of the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Because the United States does not know the full potential of North Korea’s nuclear power, the United States government must treat every threat and warning with full defensive opposition to mitigate the fear of the unknown.

The continuity of global issues that started during post-WWII shows how the consequences of the Cold War are still relevant today. Since multiple communist nations such as Russia, China, North Korea, and Cuba still have diplomatic, militaristic, migration, and trade issues with the United States to this day, it is impossible to deny that these precedents were all set in place during the Cold War.