Question

Which of the following was a conflict of the beginning of the Cold War?

Answer 1

the Berlin Blockade
the Cuban Missile Crisis
the Space Race

Answer 2

The Berlin blockade too place in the late 40s, as I recall, when the Soviets blocked the three corridors through East Germany that had been used by the Western Allies to reach West Berlin by land transport. The Allied response was the Berlin Airlift, and varied kinds of diplomatic and military pressure, which resulted in the lifting of the blockade after a year or so.

The Cuban Missile Crisis occured in October 1962, about the middle of the Cold War, and began when the Kennedy Administration discovered (through aerial reconnaissance) missile sites in Cuba built by the Soviets that could accomodate nuclear-armed missiles that could reach the continential United States in 10 minutse or less. After a naval blockade of Cuba, as well as a secret deal for the US to remove simlar short-range missiles from Turkey, the Soviets dismantled the Cuban missile sites.

The Space Race wasn't a direct conflict at all, but more of a competition. The Soviets launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, in 1957 if I recall correctly, and greatly alarmed the United States because of the possibility of espionage and/or weapons deployment over the continential United States. The US was unable to launch a satellite until about 1959 or 1960. The apparent superiority of the Soviet Union in rocket and missile technology was used by the Kennedy campaign in 1960 to argue that the Eisenhower Administration had been too lax in national defense and put the nation at risk of nuclear annihilation by the Soviets. This "missile gap" fear helped elect John Kennedy, and helped propel his Administration's strong emphasis on rocket and missile development -- an important component of the arms race aspects of the Cold War.