Cold war (term)
The expression cold war rarely appeared before 1945. Some writers credit the fourteenth century Spaniard Don Juan Manuel for first using a similar term regarding conflict between Christianity and Islam, though he used tepid rather than cold. The word cold first appeared in a faulty translation of his work during the 19th century. In 1934, a newspaper report described faith healing as a truce in the cold war between science and religion after a man survived a snake bite. Regarding its contemporary application to nation-state conflicts, the phrase appears for the first time in English within an anonymous editorial published in The Nation Magazine in March 1938 titled Hitler's Cold War. The phrase then circulated sporadically through newspapers throughout the summer of 1939 to describe nervous tension and spectre of arms-buildup on the European continent. Graham Hutton, Associate Editor of The Economist, used the term in his essay titled The Next Peace published in the August 1939 edition of The Atlantic Monthly. He elaborated on the notion of cold war perhaps more than any English-language invocation of the term to that point. Poles claimed this period involved provocation by manufactured incidents while Germans utilized tactics to weaken resistance.
At the end of World War II, George Orwell used the term in the essay You and the Atom Bomb published on the 19th of October 1945, in the British magazine Tribune. Contemplating a world living in the shadow of the threat of nuclear war, he warned of a peace that is no peace which he called a permanent cold war. Orwell directly referred to that war as the ideological confrontation between the Soviet Union and the Western powers. Moreover, in The Observer of the 10th of March 1946, Orwell wrote that after the Moscow conference last December, Russia began to make a cold war on Britain and the British Empire. This usage shifted the concept from sporadic political commentary into a defining framework for understanding global power dynamics following the atomic age. His writings established the groundwork for how historians would later categorize the decades of tension that followed.
The definition which has now become fixed is of a war waged through indirect conflict. The first use of the term in this sense to describe post-World War II geopolitical tensions between the USSR and its satellites and the United States and its western European allies is attributed to Bernard Baruch. In South Carolina, on the 16th of April 1947, he delivered a speech by journalist Herbert Bayard Swope saying let us not be deceived we are today in the midst of a cold war. Newspaper reporter-columnist Walter Lippmann gave the term wide currency with his book Cold War published in 1947. Baruch was an American financier and presidential advisor who helped cement the modern geopolitical definition of the phrase during this critical moment in history. The term hot war also occasionally appears by contrast but remains rare in literature on military theory.
Since the US-USSR Cold War spanning 1947 to 1991, a number of global and regional tensions have also been called a cold war both historical and modern. This period represents the primary historical context where the term gained its most common usage among historians and political analysts. Opponents in such conflicts often provide economic or military aid such as weapons tactical support or military advisors to lesser nations involved in conflicts with the opposing country. Surrogates are typically states that are satellites of conflicting nations meaning nations allied to them or under their political influence. The era defined how nations interacted without direct military engagement while maintaining high levels of ideological hostility across multiple continents for over four decades.
Malcolm H. Kerr first coined the term Arab Cold War to refer to a political conflict inside the Arab world between Nasserist republics defending Arab socialism Pan-Arabism and Arab nationalism led by Nasser's Egypt against traditionalist monarchies led by Saudi Arabia. An Atlantic Council member Bilal Y. Saab an About.com writer Primoz Manfreda and Iranian scholar Seyyed Hossein Mousavian use the term to refer to tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Commentator Ehsan Ahrari writer Bruce Riedel political commentator Sanjaya Baru and Princeton University academic Zia Mian have used the term since 2002 to refer to long-term tensions between India and Pakistan which were part of British India until its partition in 1947. Naval Postgraduate School academic Edward A. Olsen British politician David Alton York University professor Hyun Ok Park and University of Southern California professor David C. Kang used the term to refer to tensions between North Korea and South Korea divided since the end of World War II in 1945. They interchangeably called it the Korean Cold War while North Korea stated in August 2019 that further US-South Korean military cooperation would prompt them to trigger a new cold war on the Korean Peninsula.
In spring 2017, professor emeritus Angelo Codevilla used the term cold civil war to criticize ruling class government bureaucracies judiciary academia media associated client groups Democratic officials and Democrat-controlled jurisdictions against what he considered a majority of American people and their way of life. Journalist Carl Bernstein criticized then-President Donald Trump whom he called in 2019 a sham con grifter president of the United States for exacerbating what Bernstein considered cold civil war citing Trump administration's scapegoating of Hillary Clinton amid the Mueller special counsel investigation. The Washington Post columnist Matt Bai in January 2021 used a Cold Civil War in reference to US imminent disunion especially by rural Americans who live increasingly in their own reality nourished by their own alternative facts and led by their own reckless leaders. A media studies professor David A. Love in March 2021 criticized the US Republican Party for instigating a cold civil war by pushing for unprecedented voter suppression measures targeting minority and marginalized communities. Governing magazine contributor Tony Woodlief in October 2021 criticized political pundits their use of the term and emphases of political class divide for overlooking ample data illuminating substantial common ground among Americans.
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Common questions
When did the term cold war first appear in English?
The phrase appears for the first time in English within an anonymous editorial published in The Nation Magazine in March 1938 titled Hitler's Cold War. Some writers credit the fourteenth century Spaniard Don Juan Manuel for first using a similar term regarding conflict between Christianity and Islam, though he used tepid rather than cold.
Who coined the modern definition of cold war after World War II?
The first use of the term in this sense to describe post-World War II geopolitical tensions between the USSR and its satellites and the United States and its western European allies is attributed to Bernard Baruch. In South Carolina, on the 16th of April 1947, he delivered a speech by journalist Herbert Bayard Swope saying let us not be deceived we are today in the midst of a cold war.
What dates define the US-USSR cold war period?
The US-USSR Cold War spans from 1947 to 1991. This period represents the primary historical context where the term gained its most common usage among historians and political analysts while nations interacted without direct military engagement.
When did George Orwell publish his essay about the cold war?
At the end of World War II, George Orwell used the term in the essay You and the Atom Bomb published on the 19th of October 1945, in the British magazine Tribune. He warned of a peace that is no peace which he called a permanent cold war regarding the ideological confrontation between the Soviet Union and the Western powers.
Who coined the term Arab cold war and when was it defined?
Malcolm H. Kerr first coined the term Arab Cold War to refer to a political conflict inside the Arab world between Nasserist republics defending Arab socialism Pan-Arabism and Arab nationalism led by Nasser's Egypt against traditionalist monarchies led by Saudi Arabia. The era defined how nations interacted without direct military engagement while maintaining high levels of ideological hostility across multiple continents for over four decades.