Just after the end of World War Two, many parts of Asia, Africa, and Europe were in political and economic turmoil. To counter this, the Allied Powers, who had just succeeded, began to intervene in many government re-buildings, and some revolutions. The communist Soviet Union and the United States were the big two powers, due to France and England being in ruins. This then led to a, sort of, large land grab for these two nations. Russia eventually gained a lot of the Middle East and Eastern Europe, while the United States establish anti-communist governments in Western Europe and the Pacific. This then lead to major tensions between the two countries over who is more powerful. The Cold War had started.
A map of Europe during the Cold War. This map depicts the wave of communist influence as red and the wave of capitalist influence as blue.