The Cold War began from the year 1947 and lasted until 1991. It was a war fought indirectly between both America and the Soviet Union meaning the two power houses fought each other through other countries. The Cold War is known as a general term to refer to the geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union. The justification behind the war was the fear of the growing communism within Europe, America feared the domino affect would occur should countries like Korea and Vietnam. Thus America lent their aid to the foreign countries fighting off their wars to avoid and counteract communism from taking over the world. Although there was never an actual war between the United States and the Soviet Union there was huge tension between the two with major events occurring known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Cuban Missile Crisis regarded to when America had missiles placed within Turkey while Russia had missiles placed in Cuba as a countermeasure and the two countries were mere seconds away from declaring all out nuclear war on each other until they both managed to come to an agreement to lay down arms and remove their missiles from the countries.

The Year of the Spy occurred during the Cold War within the year 1985. Given such high tensions had rose within the world Russia and America both needed to stay ahead of one another by grabbing information off each other. The year held a string of high-profile espionage arrests by the FBI. Major names within those arrest include John Anthony Walker, Jonathan Jay Pollard, Sharon Marie Scranage and Larry Wu-tai Chin all of whom worked for separate countries. The Year of the Spy increased tensions in the West by having people constantly paranoid of each other and their allies not knowing who to trust everyone was in constant suspect of each other.