Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it.

Immediately after emergence of the United States and the Soviet Union as super powers at the end of the Second World War, the world witnessed a different type of struggle for the position of supremacy between them. Great Britain had lost its major colonies, Germany was partitioned and Japan was the first casualty of Atomic weapons; therefore, none of them were capable enough to stamp their authority and compete with the United States and the Soviet Union for global supremacy.

These developments left the United States and the Soviet Union, with monopoly of surplus power to take charge of shaping a new world order in the post World War II period. But due to ideological differences and ambitions to dominate the world through their respective ideologies, the relations between the two became strained and soon took the shape of a long and tensed era known as the Cold War.

This further resulted in the polarisation of the world into two rival blocks, formation of a number of new military alliances and counter alliances such as NATO, Warsaw Pact etc. Their rival ideologies and ambition to overpower each other soon created an atmosphere of mistrust between the two rival blocks. Ultimately, the Cold War was ended with the disintegration of Soviet Union in 1991.