Cold War

"After the end of World War II, the world was split into two -- East and West. This marked the beginning of the era called the Cold War"

- Opening Narrative of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

The Cold War was the strategic, economic and ideological struggle between the global superpowers the Soviet Union and the United States of America, supported by their respective and emerging alliance partners. Important allies of the United States were the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Israel, Canada, Japan, Saudi Arabia, West Germany and Australia. Important allies of the Soviet Union were East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Syria, Egypt (for a while), Romania, Cuba, North Korea, North Vietnam and while maintaining a tenuous relationship with a few other communist states like China and Yugoslavia. The Cold War lasted over four decades, from circa 1947 (the post-World War II period) until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Overview
The struggle was widely called the Cold War because it did not involve direct armed conflict between the contestants (by contrast, a so-called "hot" war). The Cold War was instead waged by means of diplomatic maneuvering, economic pressure, selective aid, intimidation, propaganda, assassination, low-intensity military operations and full-scale proxy war from circa 1947 until the terminal decline of the Warsaw Pact in the late 1980s. The Cold War also simultaneously witnessed the largest arms race (both conventional and nuclear) in history, leading to widespread global fears of a potential nuclear war. In addition to the United States and the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France, China and Israel also possessed nuclear weapons during the Cold War. However the fear of causing a nuclear holocaust had prevented the nuclear powers to wage war against each other. Therefore the policy of nuclear deterrence was the conditional peace experienced by the world.

Missile Gap
During the late 1950s, the Soviet Union bluffed about the amount of missiles it had, which the United States also was led to believe, known as the missile gap. Because of this, various sabotage operations were conducted within the Soviet Union by the United States by using a sleeper agent. The person that President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed to the mission was The Boss. However, she ended up using the Philosophers' spy network in order to proceed with the operation, due to the CIA refusing to lend her a hand. Things went according to plan until the launch of Sputnik 5, when the CIA pocketed a large percentage of their sleeper agent's pay, resulting in the sleeper agent defecting to the Soviet Union completely and falsifying the leaked documents.

Bay of Pigs Invasion
On April 17-19, 1961, the United States of America, specifically the CIA, attempted to arrange for Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba, in order to oust Fidel Castro from power. However, at a crucial moment, Kennedy hesitated in sending the support air strike, resulting in their deaths as well as the invasion ending in complete disaster. The CIA and the Pentagon fabricated The Boss's involvement in the invasion in order to cover up the fact that she was hospitalized and under a coma due to the Lady Mercury project going awry. As a result, the CIA and the Pentagon's already tense relations grew worse due to the CIA taking over a lot of the latter's military projects, and Fidel Castro was more willing to listen to the Soviet Union in order to have protection against a potential future invasion of America.

The Cuban Missile Crisis
The world came close to World War III in 1962 - the Cuban Missile Crisis. The US discovered that Russian ships were exporting missiles into Cuba and launch sites were being constructed along the Cuban coast. The US navy blockaded all access to Cuba and things came to a head when a few US aircraft were shot down by Cuban SAM sites on intelligence missions. Both the US and the Soviet Union mobilised their armies while President John F. Kennedy and Premier Nikita Khrushchev held top-secret talks to avert the crisis. Finally in October Khrushchev relented and pulled out of Cuba, averting global catastrophe. However the US had to return a Soviet scientist who had just recently defected. The scientist was returned over the Iron Curtain while the US fed information to all the intelligence agencies around the world that they were dismantling ICBM sites in Turkey.

The Cold War in the Metal Gear series
Both The Boss and Naked Snake carried out operations during the Cold War. The Cobra Unit was also active at this time. There were also at least two ways to win the Cold War. One was to recover the entirety of the Philosophers' Legacy, and the other was to gain control of Central and South America.

Recovering the Philosophers' Legacy was the true purpose of the Virtuous Mission and Operation Snake Eater launched by the United States in 1964. At the time the Legacy was in the illegal possession of GRU Colonel Volgin who attempted to overthrow Premier Khrushchev using the new weapon called the Shagohod. Naked Snake averted nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union by destroying the Shagohod and eliminating both Volgin and the Boss, who had defected as per mission orders in the Virtuous Mission. Half of the Legacy would make its way back to the United States while the other half was presumably kept by the KGB.

With the United States having acquired half the Legacy they were able to continue funding military spending and enjoy economic growth along with its allies. However the Soviet Union's planned economy could not keep up with the military demands and was beginning to fail. Because of this the Soviet Union and the US were engaged in SALT talks to reduce their arsenal of nuclear warheads. Without the Legacy the Soviets could not continue supplying their armed forces that were secretly deployed overseas and abandoned them, the most notable case being the Soviet missile base in San Hieronymo Peninsula. The Legacy was eventually made whole in 1970, retrieved by a reorganised branch of the American Philosophers named the Patriots.

Afterwards, the US and the Soviet Union turned their attention towards Central America. Cuba was already a thorn to the Americans since the 1960s. But if the Soviets could control Central and Latin America (dubbed "America's backyard"), it would cause a big blow against the US due to their economic and trading ties, and the Soviet Union would win the Cold War. In 1974, through the careful manipulation of the Patriots (going under the name of Cipher), the KGB sent Vladimir Zadornov to win the support of the FSLN in Nicaragua. In response the CIA sent various agents into Costa Rica as a deterrent and capture the Sandinistas that fled from Nicaragua. The CIA station chief in South America, Hot Coldman, authorised the development of the Peace Walker AI project as the perfect deterrent to nuclear war, working in collaboration with Zadornov, forming the rogue CIA unit known as the Peace Sentinels. The Militaires Sans Frontieres, led by Naked Snake (Big Boss), managed to destroy Peace Walker and prevent its launch into Cuba (in the process averting nuclear annihilation) while the Russians lost their control over the FSLN, and by extension any chances of controlling Central America.

End of the Cold War
The Soviets, as a last ditch effort in attempting to win the Cold War, decided to invade Afghanistan during the 1980s. However, they failed in controlling it, due to the American-backed Mujahideen as well as various costs of the invasion being too expensive, and did a systematic withdrawal.

By the early 1990s the Soviet Union's power was weakening. The failing of its economic policies, rising discontent in the Warsaw Pact countries, and the successes enjoyed by the United States had eventually caused the Soviet Union to collapse. With the fall of the Berlin Wall signalling the reunification of Germany, the former Soviet Union split up into many countries and renounced communism. The Cold War had ended. As a direct result of its end, Russia ended up having a lot of political instability, and America itself didn't do so well, either, as it slashed its defense budget by 15%, forcing a lot of weapons industries into takeovers or bankruptcies, including ArmsTech Inc, and the Department of Defense was also forced to turn to the private sector for its weapons development as a result.

Appearances

 * Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
 * Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops
 * Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker