>There is no way to compare the 'cold war' between Russia and the USA with a war that is rooted in religion that's been going on for..ummm lets see here - what day is it? yeah about 3,000 years.

If you take it that way (and I'm not saying you're off the mark with the idea), it's only 1700 years or thereabouts... since the time Roman Empire was split into Rome and Constantinople. They pretty soon developed their own brands of christianity, which still lived in tentative piece for another six centuries or so.

Just think of all the ramifications of this split over the centuries. Why is "byzantine" carrying a negative connotation in english language?

And, belive me, the division line is zigzagging through Europe, where catholic-protestant is the west, and orthodox is the east, and that line also went through my previous country. In the then SFRY, Croatia and Slovenia were catholic, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia orthodox, Kosovo and Methohija were mostly muslim with some catholic Albanians and orthodox Serbs; Bosnia and Herzegovina is a mix of all three (unmixed recently), and actually Macedonia was discovered to be partially muslim (lots of Albanians there), Vojvodina a general mix of everything imaginable.

Look at the other countries on this border: Poland catholic, Czech republic and Slovakia - protestant, Hungary officially catholic but actually lots of protestants and orthodox; Romania, Bulgaria and Greece orthodox. Now after WWII they ended on different sides for various reasons; those bordering with USSR went into the eastern bloc, while Greece would have been a socialist country had it not been for some behind the scenes dealing between east and west - basically, it was an exchange: Yugoslavia was supposed to be split 50:50 between east and west and Greece to go east, but Yugoslavia turned out too independent so Stalin gave up on Markos's partisans so Greece went west and Yugoslavia was left whole.

This dividing line stays - note that it was Slovenia and the next day Croatia who announced independence, endorsed immediately by Germany and Austria; nowadays only these two countries are EU members, of all the six ex-Yu countries.

We could go on and on with this... not only listing geopolitical events, but also the cultural, economic and whatnot.