Cold War

The Cold War is a term most commonly used to refer to the currently ongoing period of geopolitical tension between the rivalling superpowers of Barenia and Phoenicia, and their respective allies in the Tavaric Treaty Organization (TTO) and GOCE. Political scientists do not fully agree on its starting point, but the period is generally considered to have begun at the end of the Great Serican War at the signing of the Treaty of Gamtoi on 21 September 1947. The term  is used because there has been no large-scale direct military conflict between the two superpowers, but they engage in indirect conflicts across the globe by means of. The conflict is based primarily around the geopolitical struggle for global influence between these two superpowers and to a lesser extent, their allies. Aside from continuing escalation in the development of atomic weapons and delivery methods, the struggle for dominance has been expressed in, , propaganda campaigns, espionage, , rivalry at sports events, and in its most modern iteration, in the ongoing Space Race and colonization of extratellurian bodies.

The TTO is led by Barenia as well as a number of Hatarian nations that were generally, but tied to a network of states as part of its proxy war with the GOCE, which is in turn led by Phoenicia and its Corporate Forum connected to a number of nations that were generally modelled after Phoenician corporatocracy or otherwise connected to Phoenician culture. Both superpowers engaged in proxy warfare by supporting nations which were aligned to its geopolitical interests, at times even those nominally contrary to its ideological stances. As nearly all colonial states were decolonized and achieved independence between 1947 and 1960, they would become the primary battlefields on which the proxy wars of the Cold War were fought.

The Cold War began in full shortly after the end of the Great Serican War, as Barenia and a number of its allies during the war formed the TTO military alliance in the apprehension of a potential renewed conflict with Phoenicia. Concurrently, Phoenicia centralized its previously fragmented constituencies and unified under the Corporate Forum established in the Sixteenth Fengtianmen Congress in 1960, soon formalizing its geopolitical and cultural ties globally into the GOCE. Major crises of this first phase of the Cold War include the Serican Atomic Crisis of 1955, XXX, XXX.

Following XXX in YEAR, wherein DETAILS, it is generally accepted that the second phase of the Cold War begins.

As the Space Race began in earnest in XXX, tensions between Barenia and Phoenicia have largely cooled to the point of an informal détente. The development of the (SDI NAME PLACEHOLDER) by Barenia in YEAR and thus (IMPLICATIONS) would spark a temporary escalation in rhetoric and hostilities between both superpowers, but the later development of the similar (PLACEHOLDER) by Phoenicia in YEAR would resume the new status quo of détente, one that continues even in the modern day.

LEGACY AND IMPLICATIONS