The Cold War emerged after the Second World War as a nuclear st&-off between the superpowers of the USA & its NATO allies & the Soviet Union & its east European Warsaw Pact allies The accepted dates for the Cold War are 1947 to 1991 the year in which the Communist regimes in Central & Eastern Europe collapsed & the world witnessed the formal dissolution of the USSR leaving the USA as the world's only superpower In those intervening years the world had come dangerously close to nuclear Armageddon on several occasions