RORY: You ready for this? … Even with the Cold War?
LORELAI: That’s been going on for thirty-four years? I can manage.
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term cold war is used because there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two superpowers, but they each supported major regional conflicts known as proxy wars.
The conflict was based around the ideological and geopolitical struggle for global influence by these two superpowers, following their temporary alliance and victory against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in 1945. Aside from nuclear development and military deployment, the struggle for dominance was expressed via indirect means such as psychological warfare, propaganda campaigns, espionage, embargoes, rivalry at sports events, and technological competitions such as the Space Race.
The end of the Cold War is dated to the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. President George H.W. Bush claimed that America therefore “won the Cold War”.
According to Lorelai, the “cold war” between she and her parents began almost at birth!
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 