So you may have noticed that our discussion of the Cold War has branched out from Europe to include Asia and the Middle East and Latin America. And in fact, almost every part of the globe was involved in some way, with the planet being divided into three worlds. The first world was the US, Western Europe, and any place that embraced capitalism and a more or less democratic form of government. The second world was the Soviet Union and its satellites, mostly the Warsaw Pact nations, China and Cuba. The third world was everyone else, and we don't use this term anymore because it lumps together a hugely diverse range of countries. We'll talk more about the specific economic and development challenges faced by the so-called third world countries, but the big one in terms of the Cold War was that neither the US nor the Soviets wanted any of these countries to remain neutral. Every nation was supposed to pick sides, either capitalist or communist, and while it seems like an easy choice now, in the 50s and 60s it wasn't nearly so clear.