The "Cold War" is making a comeback. Or at least the phrase is. Russia's actions in Crimea have brought relations with the West to their lowest point since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, dusting off a term that fell out of use more than 20 years ago.

The Cold War generally refers to the 40-odd years after World War II, when the Soviet Union and its eastern allies and the U.S. and its western allies competed for ideological and military influence over the globe, with no large-scale fighting directly between the two sides.

But the chilly phrase had been used before that era of nuclear one-upmanship. "The term had been used a good bit in the 1930s," says