- The superpowers maintained power in four main ways
- Military
- Political
- Economic
- Cultural
Military
- Military alliances developed with other countries supporting the USA or USSR
- Members of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) were the countries supporting the USA
- A collective treaty was established by the USSR this is known as the Warsaw Pact
- The nuclear arms race in which both countries spent millions increasing their nuclear arsenal
Political
- Political methods included diplomacy and political influence on other countries
- The Cold War divided many parts of the world into communist and capitalist ideologies
- Europe was divided into the countries of the east which were mainly communist and those in the west which were capitalist - the two were divided by the 'Iron Curtain'
- During the 1950s the McCarthy hearings led to investigations of alleged communists as Senator Joe McCarthy alleged hundreds of communists had infiltrated the State Department and Hollywood
Economic
- Economic factors were used to gain additional support from developing and emerging countries including:
- Giving aid to countries
- Russian aid to countries such India and Ethiopia
- American aid to Europe via the Marshall plan to rebuild
Recipients of aid from Russia 1954-1984
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- Supporting corrupt regimes
- Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) has been used more recently to influence countries such as India and Singapore