the answer to ur question is this and u might be thinking how do i know bec i had this question at sschool and i got it right so yh. The Cold War was a war of ideological differences between the United States and the Soviet Union, the countries that emerged as superpowers after World War II (1939–45). ... "Assured destruction," a term first used about 1964, bluntly describes the end result of a nuclear war.