The name for the existential conflict between the capitalists in the west and the Soviet Union and its allies in the east is the Cold War. The term was coined by Bernard Baruch on 16 April, 1947-- so more than a year before the blockade of Berlin. That means the term the Cold War (in stark contrast to the term the Second World War for example) was being used almost the moment the conflict (or rather long series of conflicts) broke out.

Baruch used the term in the context of speech to the House of Representatives in South Carolina:

Let us not be deceived, we are today in the midst of a Cold War. Our enemies are to be found abroad and at home. Let us never forget this: Our unrest is the heart of their success. [1]

Within months, journalists, Walter Lippmann most famously, had latched onto the term out of its stark utility to describe the nature of the struggle against the Soviet Union. George Orwell used the term in quotes and with lowercase letters to describe his feared coming world order-- which he would outline later in his seminal work 1984 (1948):

[F]ew people have yet considered its ideological implications – that is, the kind of world-view, the kind of beliefs, and the social structure that would probably prevail in a state which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of 'cold war' with its neighbours. [2]

The end of the Cold War in 1991 coincided with the dissolution of the Soviet Union as an entity and in the eyes of political scientist Francis Fukuyama:

[W]hat we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such. [3]