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, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, West Germany, Australia and New Zealand. 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.

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, as well as espionage and information 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.

The beginnings

After World War II, the United States of America and the Soviet Union were in opposition over the expansion of their power. The Soviet Union and Eastern European countries formed the communist camp (East), and the United States, centered on NATO, formed the capitalist camp (West), dividing the world in two. Belonging to neither the East or the West, developing countries were called "third world countries" and became a stage for proxy wars between the East and West. The various branches of the Philosophers, who held influence in America, China, and the Soviet Union, believed that obtaining the lost Philosophers' Legacy would allow victory in the Cold War, causing the various factions to fight amongst themselves in order to obtain it.

Cold War tensions between the United States and the USSR eventually exploded in Korea when Soviet-backed North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950. The United States aided the South Koreans during the early stages of the war and managed to drive the North Koreans back. However, the conflict ended in stalemate in 1953, after an armistice was agreed, although the war itself had not ended yet. U.S. soldier Jack, later known as Big Boss, fought in the Korean War.

During the early parts of the Cold War, extensive testing of nuclear weapons were carried out. Two such U.S. tests were Operation Castle Bravo (better known as the Bravo Shot) at the Marshall Islands, and Operation Buster Jangle Dog at White Sands, Nevada, during which Jack and The Boss were irradiated, respectively. Both armed with nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union and the United States glared at each other with enough power to bring about the destruction of the world.

In the late 1950s, the Soviets betrayed their fellow Communist partners, the Chinese, by withdrawing all funding for their various weapons projects, including "Liangdan yixing", their hydrogen bomb and space rocket project, resulting in the Chinese experiencing failure throughout this time. In addition, the USSR made efforts to extend control over Central America, the United States proverbial backyard.
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 the President 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, 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, President John F. 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 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 due to the Cuban Missile Crisis. The U.S. discovered that Russian ships were exporting missiles into Cuba and launch sites were being constructed along the Cuban coast. The U.S. Navy blockaded all access to Cuba and things came to a head when a few U.S. aircraft were shot down by Cuban SAM sites on intelligence missions. Both the U.S. and the Soviet Union mobilised their armies while President 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 U.S. had to return a Soviet scientist who had just recently defected. The scientist was returned over the Iron Curtain while the U.S. fed information to all the intelligence agencies around the world that they were dismantling ICBM sites in Turkey. The reason for the Soviet scientist's return to the Soviet Union as the Soviets requirement for standing down would not be known until two years afterwards, when details of the development of a secret weapon were leaked.

The Virtuous Mission and Operation Snake Eater

Having eventually located where the Legacy was at and who owned it, America and China dispatched their own agents to retrieving it. Recovering the Philosophers' Legacy was the true purpose of the Virtuous Mission and Operation Snake Eater launched by the United States in 1964, with rescuing Sokolov, and later, disposing of The Boss as a traitor, acting as pretenses towards this goal. At the time, the Legacy was illegally in the 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 U.S. 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.

San Hieronymo Incident

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 U.S. were engaged in SALT talks to reduce their arsenal of nuclear warheads. Without the