Read the passage

(a) War between the two nations or group of nations with active military participation is called a Hot war.

Example: World War 1 was a hot war.

(b) The Soviet Union wanted to convert Cuba into Russian Military base. In 1962 it placed nuclear missiles in Cuba, this angered the US and it ordered its warships to intercept any Soviet ships near Cuba. This is called a Cuban Missile Crisis

The crisis also later came to be known as the Cold war as it created tensions worldwide.

(c) Cold war was not just showcase of military power by it was more like an ideological war. The Western allies were headed by the US, professed liberal democracy and capitalism as their ideology but the eastern alliance under the Soviet Union remained intact to the ideology of Socialism and Communism.

Hence the two major blocs were joined by the smaller nations which more or less was of similar ideology.

So we can say that the Cold war was an ideological conflict.