The Cold War was a war that literally wasn't your typical war. There weren't any fighter planes flying over countries dropping bombs, no tanks no ground troops, no actually deployment of missile, and no ground troops. However there were a stockpile of nuclear weapons, money was being spent like an actually War was being fought, propaganda, and there were two superpower enemies but no actually fighting occurred. The Cold War was a big arms race that was started after World War II between the United States and the Soviet Union (USSR or modern day Russia). This war causes a bipolar system in the world where there were two dominant powers fighting to become the dominant power. The Cold War was a real complicated war because it was more a fight about ideology, Democracy and Communism. The United States, after World War II was trying to promote it democratic ideology to the entire world. The other superpower that benefited from World War II, the Soviet Union, tried to also spread their communist idea throughout Europe and the rest of the world. The two clashes of ideologist cause a war of competition between the two countries. The Cold War caused a split between East and West and the United States and Russia competed with each other in every single aspect of life from Space Exploration to Sports. The Cold War almost became a nuclear war at one point when in 1962 the Soviets had begun building nuclear missile in Cuba, which is 90 miles away from the coast of Florida and President Kennedy send ships down to block the Soviets. (Cuban Missile crisis). .
The Cold War also led America into adapting a doctrine called the containment doctrine where the foreign policy transformed into trying to oppose the Soviets militarily and diplomatically all around the world. This is the main reason the United States got involved in Vietnam. The US wanted to prevent Vietnam from turning into a communist nation so in 1964 they intervened militarily in the small Asia country even though they didn't have suppose of the American people.