section_path: 20th century/Cold War
section_name: Cold War
paragraph_text: Cold War
  
  The Cold War between the "West" (the United States, Western Europe, and Japan) and the "East" (the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China) dominated politics from the end of World War II in 1945, until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, at which point the Cold War ended and the post–Cold War era began (which includes most of the 1990s, the last decade of the 20th century).
  
  The Korean War, Vietnam War, and Soviet–Afghan War, impacted political life, while the counterculture of the 1960s and the rise of computers changed society in different, complex ways, including higher social and local mobility.