Yeah, it's just really nice to talk to you and feel like you're listening. You're boring. Cue the intro. INTRO So the Cold War was a rivalry between the USSR and the USA that played out globally. We've tried to shy away from calling conflicts ideological or civilizational here on Crash Course, but in this case the clash of civilizations model really does apply. Socialism, at least as Marx constructed it, wanted to take over the world and many Soviets saw themselves in a conflict with bourgeois capitalism itself. And the Soviets saw American rebuilding efforts in Europe and Japan as the US trying to expand its markets, which by the way is exactly what we were doing.