all right y'all let's keep talking about the Cold War and here we're going to consider new military alliances nuclear proliferation and proxy war and it's going to be a saucy one so if you're ready to get them braan cow's milks let's get to it so first let's consider the military alliances that formed as a result of the Cold War I mentioned in the last video that after World War II the Soviet Union occupied much of Eastern Europe which became known as the Soviet block or the Communist Block in doing this they installed Communist governments in those countries and made their economies serve the Soviet Union and not their own population because of this the countries of Western Europe not to mention the United States got a little Twitchy at the thought of having those D Communists in their backyard so these Western Nations decided to form a mutual defense alliance called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or nato in 1949 essentially this was an alliance of nations against the Soviets that included the United States at the helm and all these nations right here but not to be outdone the Soviets formed a military Alliance of their own in 1955 called the Warsaw Pact which included the Soviet Union at the helm and all these nations right here and the agreement in both of these alliances was that if any one member state was attacked that constituted an attack on all of them and therefore all member nations would respond oh by the way if you want no to follow along with this video on all my videos and check the link in the description anyway the creation of these massive military alliances cranked up the tension of the Cold War to 11 okay now the second effect of the Cold War was the buildup or proliferation of nuclear weapons now I already mentioned the arms race between the US and the Soviet Union in the last video recall that the United States pioneered the use of atomic bombs in World War II and then the Soviets went ahead and developed their own atomic bombs in 1949 so the United States responded with a development of a hydrogen bomb which was way more powerful and so the Soviets were like guys this has gone far enough like no more one upmanship and nuclear weaponry on opposite day no the Soviets responded with their own hydrogen bomb and after a couple of decades each superpower possessed enough nuclear weapons to blow the world up a thousand times over but the crisis moment of this nuclear proliferation came in 1962 with the Cuban Missile Crisis so after a failed attempt by the US to OU communist leader Fidel Castro in Cuba the Soviet leader Nikita cruff shipped a metric buttload of nuclear missiles to Cuba which was basically in America's backyard and look at it there's Cuba there's the United States from here you could blow all this up so in 1962 us spy planes discovered these missile sites and understandably the US was outraged but hold on back up that outrage train just a little bit I it's not as though the American hands were clean in this respect they had basically done the same thing by placing nuclear missiles in Turkey which shared a border with the Soviet Union but anyway after the discovery of these missiles in Cuba President John F Kennedy ordered a naval blockade around Cuba so that no other weapons could arrive now just to be clear when you're Fidel Castro and the Americans surround your whole island with warships this is not a neutral action it's nigh unto a declaration of war and so for 13 intense and anxiety-filled days everyone in America and all over the world had only one thought is today the day we are going to get blown up well I'm happy to report that the missiles were never fired and eventually all the parties backed down but what this event did show the world is that the buildup of nuclear weapons was a real problem therefore in 1968 we saw the creation of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty which called on nuclear powers to prevent non-nuclear countries from developing such disastrous weapons and finally the third effect of the Cold War you need to know is the enumeration of proxy wars now because the Cold War was you know cold and that means by definition there was no direct fighting between the two Powers but there was all sorts of indirect fighting and the name for that is a proxy war so these proxy wars were small local wars in Africa and Asia and Latin America that took on global scope as the United States and the Soviets took sides and supported the fighting now there are lots of these that we consider but we're only going to look at three so first the Korean War so after World War II ended the Allies divided Korea into North Korea and South Korea the north was occupied by the Soviets and the South was occupied by the us and its allies well in 1950 after both occupying forces had withdrawn the Communist North Korea invaded the anti-communist South Korea in order to create a single state under its own leadership and because this was a struggle of Communists and anti-communists the Soviets and the Americans got involved quick fast and in a hurry the United Nations came to the aid of South Korea and I you know I say United Nations but it was mostly the United States and the Soviets didn't send any troops to Aid North Korea but they did send a metric buttload of guns and boom boom and in this way the United States and the Soviet Union fought each other without actually fighting each other Anyway by 1953 the conflict ended in a stale and everything in the two countries remained largely as they were before the war except that 3 million people were dead as a result okay the second proxy war to consider is the angolan civil war which began in 1975 so Angola was a colony of Portugal and as is the custom of colonial Powers when it comes time to draw Colonial borders they drew them around rival people groups and threw them under one government now these angolan ethnic groups despite their rivalry United and fought against the Portuguese and won their independence but once they were actually free the real question became like which one of these groups would actually hold power in a newly independent Ang Angola now again this seems like a tidy nice little conflict in subsaharan Africa like they'll figure it out for themselves like there's no need for anyone else to get involved a crap here comes the C War so the Soviets backed one of these groups the United States another and South Africa yet another and thus began the angolan Civil War and it became another ground for larger Powers conducting the Cold War and finally the third proxy war to consider is the Contra war in Nicaragua in 1979 the sand denista National Liberation Front who were self-proclaimed socialist seized power in Nicaragua and at that the United States was all like ain't no socialist going to be in my hemisphere so two years later the US backed a group of contras who tried to overthrow the sandinistas who in turn had support from the Soviet Union and in this attempted overthrow the Contra committed many human rights violations and in the end the conflict ended in a ceasefire and the sandinistas were handily defeated in the next election Okay click here to keep reviewing for Unit 8 and click here to grab my video note guides which will help you cram all the contents of this course firmly into your brain fold and I'll catch you on the flipflop I'm lout