11.7Meanwhile, elsewhere (1945–1980)

The Cold War was global. Europe split into a democratic, American-aligned West and a communist, Soviet-dominated East, divided by an "Iron Curtain" and symbolized by the Berlin Wall. In 1949, communists led by Mao Zedong took power in China, the world's most populous nation.

Across Asia and Africa, dozens of colonies won independence as the old European empires dissolved, though many new nations became battlegrounds of superpower rivalry. Wars, coups, and revolutions from Vietnam to the Congo to Latin America were shaped by the Cold War contest. By 1980, the world remained divided between two nuclear-armed camps, their standoff the defining fact of international life.