Cold War Rivalries

Rather than a traditional war in which one country's military is directly pitted against another or even the morphed trench warfare of the first world war, the Cold War was a war that took place on all other fronts. Primarily consisting of the rivalry between the USSR and the United States, each country aimed to spread it's ideals - the battle between democracy and communism. In addition, the constant threat of nuclear warfare emphasized the "cold" nature of the war. While the tensions were always high, it was truly the rivalry that defined the war.

The mounting pre-WWI tensions in Europe were very similar to those of the Cold War. For years, the Central Powers were striving for imperialistic domination over its surrounding nations. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the chain of retribution by allies and rivals illustrated that competition between nations could result in the immediate snapping of national tensions. It could be said that Ming Dynasty China's competition between itself and the rest of the world was a sort of rivalry. At a point, China decided to shut itself off to foreign influence because it believed that, due to technological and cultural advancement, it was so advanced of a society that no other nation could possibly be better than it. Similarly, the US and Russia both struggled to prove themselves more advanced in a war based on national superiority. After the self-fueled Meiji Restoration and the corresponding surge in nationalism in Japan, Japan believed itself superior to China. Japan invaded China many times, culminating in the Rape of Nanking, in which the Japanese captured the Chinese capital of Nanking, slaughtered its people, and raped its women. Unlike the rivalry between the US and Russia, Japan had a significant advantage over China, and while building tensions played a factor, their wars were based on physical decimation of the enemy.