The aftermath of World War II was the beginning of an era defined by the decline of the old great powers and the rise of two superpowers: the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States of America (USA), creating a bipolar world. Allied duringWorld War II, the US and the USSR became competitors on the world stage and engaged in what became known as theCold War, so called because it never boiled over into open war between the two powers but was focused on espionage,political subversion and proxy wars. Western Europe and Japan were rebuilt through the American Marshall Plan whereasEastern Europe fell in the Soviet sphere of influence and rejected the plan. Europe was divided into a US-led Western Blocand a Soviet-led Eastern Bloc. Internationally, alliances with the two blocs gradually shifted, with some nations trying to stay out of the Cold War through the Non-Aligned Movement. The Cold War also saw a nuclear arms race between the two superpowers; part of the reason that the Cold War never became a "hot" war was that the Soviet Union and the United States had nuclear deterrents against each other, leading to a mutually assured destruction standoff.
As a consequence of the war, the Allies created the United Nations, a new global organization for international cooperation and diplomacy. Members of the United Nations agreed to outlaw wars of aggression in an attempt to avoid a third world war. The devastated great powers of Western Europe formed the European Coal and Steel Community, which later evolved into the European Common Market and ultimately into the current European Union. This effort primarily began as an attempt to avoid another war between Germany and France by economic cooperation and integration, and a common market for important natural resources.
The end of the war also increased the rate of decolonization from the great powers with independence being granted toIndia (from the United Kingdom), Indonesia (from the Netherlands), the Philippines (from the US) and a number of Arab nations, primarily from specific rights which had been granted to great powers from League of Nations Mandates in the post World War I-era but often having existed de facto well before this time. Also related to this was Israel gaining independence from its previous status as part of Mandatory Palestine in the years immediately following the war. Independence for the nations of Sub-Saharan Africa came more slowly.
The aftermath of World War II also saw the rise of the People's Republic of China, as the Chinese Communists emerged victorious from the Chinese Civil War in 1949.
