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The Cold War Tensions with the United States and Russia have been around for quite some time. Russia and the United States were allies during World War II, but soon after they became enemies. After W.W.II, even though the Soviet Union had a strong military, it was encircled by hostile capitalist governments and felt that if communism was to remain strong, it needed to form an alliance with other communist countries. Also after the war, Germany was divided right through the middle of Berlin, Germany. West Germany was democratic and East Germany was communist. In 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was created under U.S. leadership to defend the west against the Soviet Union’s military threat. Seventeen European countries, Canada, and the U.S. signed the treaty. Therefore, in 1955 Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union signed the Alliance Treaty in Warsaw, Poland, known as the Warsaw Pact. These eight communist countries agreed to settle all disputes among themselves or others through peaceful means. They all would come to the aid of the one threatened from an outside attack. Thus, the US as head of NATO and the Soviet Union as