Both the Conservative Historian Paul Johnson in his seminal book Modern Times and the Marxist Historian Eric Hobsbawm in the famous book The Age of Extremes seem to agree that the Cold War, despite being a predictable outcome of the alliance between the West and the Soviet Union, was ultimately unavoidable.
They argue that the Cold War was, above all, an ideological conflict, two opposing views that expanded themselves throughout the word in a race where the ultimate gain was the conquest of territory and ideological allies.
Several events contributed to the Cold War. The space race was a key element wherein both powers were trying to demonstrate to the world which one was technologically superior. But many other events had impact on the cold war, the Vietnam War, the Missile Crisis in Cuba, the surge of military dictatorship in South America, the Chinese Revolution, the ascension of the pacific economies - especially Japan, but also the Asian Tigers, even the sports competition became a battleground wherein the superior system tried to prevail.
The Cold War was inevitable and in a sense was a positive event. Thanks to the Mutually Assured Destruction concept, none of the opposing powers sought to start a 3rd World War, keeping the balance of power in the world and allowing for its economic development. The conflicts were localised and were as much ideological as they were bellical.
The superior economic system in the Western societies - liberal economy - ultimately made impossible for the Soviet Block - centralised economy - to maintain the arms race and to guarantee a minimum social development to their people, leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dismantling of the Soviet Union in the late 80s and early 90s which put an end the the Cold War era.
