the Cold War baby what caused it and what effects did it have well if that's the question you're asking then you have found the Right video My Dear pupil so if you're ready to get them brain cows milk let's get to it okay before we jump right into the causes let me just Define what we mean by Cold War in case you missed it in the last video a cold war describes a state of hostility that exists between two states chiefly characterized by an ideological struggle rather than open Warfare and the particular cold war that we're talking about is between the United States and the Soviet Union so the first cause of the standoff was conflicting ideologies between the two superpowers namely the Dem Democratic capitalism of the United States and the authoritarian communism of the Soviet Union so Democratic capitalism emphasizes free market economics and political participation from citizens but authoritarian communism emphasizes strict government control of the economy and redistribution of wealth equally to all citizens who have essentially no voice in the government oh by the way if you want note guys to follow along with this video on all my videos then check the link in the description okay so clearly those two ideologies are at odds with one another but why in the fresh hex says you with those ideologies create enough tension to alter Global geopolitics for the last of the 20th century I mean Americans you do you Soviets you also do you well ultimately the problem is that neither of these ideologies are built on a you do you and I do me principle both ideologies are universalizing ideas meaning that those who hold them want everyone else to hold them as well the US wasn't satisfied to keep democracy to themselves nor were the Soviets satisfied to keep communism to themselves each ideology can only prove its Superior worth once every square inch of the planet was conformed to one ideology or the other so yeah since the US and the Soviet Union were the two great super powers of this age it's not surprising that their desire to spread democracy or communism throughout the world would cause some uh problems but then the second cause of the Cold War was the mutual mistrust that existed between two powers and that mistrust started even before World War II had ended you see before the end of the war the three big Powers the US the Soviet Union and Great Britain met together at a series of conferences to discuss plans for the post-war world and they basically all agreed that Central and Eastern European countries would be able to hold free elections after the war was over if that smells like democracy to you then your sniffer is working just fine but that presented a big fat problem to the Soviet Union which bordered those States namely that if those states were Democratic and capitalist well then they wouldn't be Communists and remember both of these ideologies want to make the whole world over in their own image so Joseph Stalin decided to keep those countries under Soviet control to act as a buffer zone between Russia and Europe therefore all those Nations became communist in short order and serve the purposes of the Soviet Union the US not surprisingly saw this as a flagrant violation of their agreement to allow these nations the right of self-determination and democracy so mutual mistrust unlocked but then they also Tangled over Germany and that led to further antagonism between the two superpowers so after the war Germany was divided into four occupation zones one of which went to the Soviet Union and then the French and the British and the United States respectively and that occupation was meant to be temporary but again Stalin refused to set Eastern Germany free and it quickly became another communist satellite state of the Soviet Union it was all of these territorial divisions that led former British prime minister Winston Churchill to Proclaim that an iron curtain had fallen across Europe therefore Guided by conflicting ideologies and growing mistrust the Cold War began and would last for the next four decades however the implications of this conflict were much larger than the two superpowers alone in fact the effects of this conflict reach into nearly every last part of the stinking world now we'll talk more about the effects of the Cold War in the next video including new military alliances and the proliferation of nuclear weapons and proxy wars and all the rest but here I just want to focus on how the Cold War intersected with another major development during this period namely decolonization so remember that each power wanted their own ideology to cover the whole earth and so as the process of decolonization was creating dozens of brand new States across the world the US and the Soviet Union race to influence each of these new States and win them to their respective size like two team captains on the playground picking teams for kickball and so all of these nations are finally becoming free of colonial rule and establishing their own paths to Independence in the United States and the Soviet Union started seeing them as pwns in their larger ideological struggle and so this growing pressure for newly independent nations to join one side or the other of this superpower conflict that had nothing to do with them was kind of a bummer however some groups and individuals in these newly forming States refused to be Pawns in this global conflict which in many ways would make them dependent on more powerful Nations which is exactly the situation that they had just escaped in their recent Colonial past and therefore something called the non-aligned movement was born it was led by Indonesian president ammed sucaro who hosted the first meeting of this movement in 1955 and there 29 African and Asian heads of state met among the most significant being India Ghana Indonesia and Egypt and they all represented new states that were formerly colonies or those still resisting colonial rule in search of Independence and they described themselves as non-aligned in order to communicate that they refused to be controlled by the conflict between these two superpowers therefore the non-aligned movement represented an alternative to the existing economic political and social orders created by the Cold War rivalry however leaders of non-aligned nations were also shrewd and they knew how to take advantage of the Cold War rivalry by figing support for one side or the other some non-aligned states were able to gain weapons and resources that they needed for their own defense and development for example Indonesia had no problem receiving aid from the Soviet Union and it struggled to create a post-war state but they also had no problem positiv destroying the Communist party there racking up something like half a million deaths in the process Okay click here to keep reviewing for Unit 8 and click here to grab my video note guyses which are going to help you cram all the contents of this course firmly into your brain fold I'm glad we got to hang out for a few minutes and I'll catch you on the flipflop I'm lout