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The Cold War: The Legacy Of The Cold War

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The legacy of the Cold War continues to influence world affairs today. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the post-Cold War world is widely considered unipolar, with the United States as the sole remaining superpower. The Cold War defined the political role of the United States in the post–World War II world: by 1989 the U.S. held military alliances with 50 countries, and had 1.5 million troops posted abroad in 117 countries. The Cold War also institutionalized a global commitment to huge, permanent peacetime military-industrial complexes and large-scale military funding of science. Following the Cold War, Russia cut military spending dramatically, and the adjustment was wrenching, as the military-industrial sector had previously employed one of every five Soviet adults and its dismantling left hundreds of millions throughout the former Soviet Union unemployed. After Russia embarked on capitalist economic reforms in the 1990s, it …show more content…

Financial obligations included those necessary to avoid further dislocations while the change took place from a wartime footing to a peacetime environment. National military establishments and alliances had to be reconfigured. Highly dependent institutional frameworks were to be restructured, and new obligations were acquired by nations that were once bystanders to the East-West confrontation. In the wake of the Cold War, freed or newly-founded nations inherited expenses, commitments, and resources for which they were not prepared. The successor states also found themselves with contemporary national-security burdens and substantial environmental contamination legacies, all to be financed while new or revised civilian economies had to be instituted. Since the superpowers carried much of the confrontational burden, both Russia and the United States ended up with substantial economic

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