Cold War, The
The term is widely accepted in historical
writings. It refers to the epoch between 1947-8
and 1989-90. The nature of the Cold War, its
causes and effects, and the reasons for its long
duration are, however, controversial. Its
meaning would exclude Asia because of the
outbreak of wars there; the wars in Korea,
Vietnam, and Afghanistan made a difference
to how the United States (US) and the Soviet
Union (USSR), the two superpowers, waged
their global contest in Europe. The situation in
Europe resembled neither peace nor war; EastWest Conflict: Confrontation and Détente expresses the ambiguity, but this label is less
eyecatching.
1. The Concept and its Salience
The persistent central features of the Cold War
are the global contest between the US and the
USSR, the dependence of the allies on the
security guarantee of their respective superpower, and bipolarity. The latter was reinforced in the core area, the arms race, due to
the widening gap between the extensive and
highly diversified weapons systems of the
superpowers and the arsenals of Britain,
France, and the Peoples' Republic of China
(PRCh), the other three established nuclear
powers. This explains that American and Russian writings hold to Cold War as a concept
fitting the entire epoch. It allows for distinguishing between moments of imminent war–
Cuba, October 1962, and Yom Kippur war,
October 1973–times of high tensions and war
outside Europe–Korea, 1950-53; Vietnam,
1964-75; Afghanistan, 1979-88–long intervals
of détente, and even moments of concerted
crisis management (June 1967 Near East war)
or collaboration (during the Laos crisis and
Vietnam war in the 1960s and ending wars in
Africa in the late 1980s).
This version pays less attention to the fact
that throughout the four decades not all parties
to the Cold War were involved on the same
issue-at-stake and at the same time. France
joined Britain (UK) and the US in 1948 in
founding the West German state as the Western allies' response to Stalin's anchoring of
Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and
Czechoslovakia firmly into the Soviet security-zone, and maintained staunch opposition
to proposals for a neutralized, but nationally
rearmed united Germany (Hitchcock 1998).
Since the mid-1960s, France became the
spokesman for a Europe less dependent on the
US and discussing terms of settlement with
'Russia.' The Federal Republic of Germany
(FRG) converted Cold War into cold peace
with the ratification of Ost- und Deutschlandverträge (1970-3). Both governments cooperated in defending détente in and for Europe; by
implication, this aspiration for a European
peace-zone rejected the American concept of
the indivisibility of the global contest between
East and West. The PRCh, the only principal
ally the USSR ever had (1950-58/9), made its
peace with the US in 1972 on Pejing's term of
'One China.' While the PRCh had provoked
the US during the 1950s to continuous nuclear
sabre-rattling, it turned its anti-hegemonic
posture throughout the 1970s and 1980s
against the USSR.
1.1 The Components of the Term
The definition refers to four aspects of the
conflict: (a) the ideological antagonism between the Western concept of freedom of
choice for the people of the domestic regime
and external alignments of their state and the
Soviet-imposed monopoly of the 'workers' and
land-labor party and subjugation to the community of socialist states; (b) the geostrategic
struggle for bases of power-projection; (c) the
domestic political contest, but almost exclusively within Western countries, about commitments to the military alliance or equidistance to both of the superpowers; (d) the dispute about where to draw the line between
permissible and noncompatible elements in the
policy mix of market-oriented and government-controlled economies. Of these four
components, the last became least important
for refueling the confrontation; the convergence of the mixed economies rather promoted
the idea that Osthandel, credit facilities, and
technology transfer might enhance not only
'liberalization' in the East European economies, but also generate transformation of the
political system.
1.2 The Ideological Antagonism
The ideological antagonism was the first impulse for confrontation, but it was also subject
to changing threat perceptions and shifts of
emphasis in the balance between confrontation
and détente in the overall relationship. The
wider notion of East-West Conflict posits the
Cold War as a distinctive period into the
ideological struggle, originated in 1917-18,
between the Wilsonian Impulse and Lenin's
urge for peoples' democracy as the basis for
securing peace (Link 1980). From this perspective, Stalin and Truman likewise took the
lead in splitting the world along 'alternative
ways of life.' Western leaders argued that the
West had to learn its lessons from the vain
hope to appease an expansionist regime. 'No
more Munichs' informed the confrontation
stance of containment as the West's answer to
the external threat. The concomitant stance at
the home-front is based on the thesis that
authoritarian regimes abuse state-power
against large parts of their own population;
therefore Communists must not be given a
chance to occupy crucial positions of government such as Interior, Public Transport, or
Justice.
Conversely, Communist ideology maintained that capitalism on the one hand inspires
the state to prosecute the working-class and
thus breeds fascism, and on the other hand is
inherently expansionist and therefore knows
no boundary to its domination. The belief,
however, that capitalist nations are bound to
fight for defeating rivals, made Stalin expect
that Britain would resist the US' aspiration to
become heir to the British Empire. The new
feature of the post- World War II international
system is that the US and the UK were competitive partners in founding the International
Organizations destined to develop and monitor
rules of conduct for international trade, cur-
rency exchange, and development aid
(Gardner 1969). The UK and France, but also
Italy, expected the up-to-then reluctant US
government to come to the rescue and infuse
capital into the European economics as the
only strategy which could render support to
the parties willing to exclude Communists
from governments (Lundestad 1986). The
formation of Western-oriented governing coalitions ensured that the European allies, as well
as Japan, cooperated with the US in the evolution of the International Economy, to which
the USSR and the PRCh were not negotiating
parties after the outbreak of the Cold War.
Most allies did not comply, however, with the
American demand to restrict 'trading with the
communist enemy,' except in conspicious
moments of Soviet war activities.
The ideological component became a
wasted asset after its overexploitation during
the first phase (1947-53). Khrushchev's condemnation of Stalin's death toll in February
1956 and the NATO allies' perception that the
Kremlin was unlikely to launch a general war
on European territory (1956/7) put a break on
the momentum of ideology as a driving force
in the East-West conflict. But it was on the
Kremlin to end the system conflict. In 1987
Gorbachev rescinded the Breshnev doctrine
and made it known that hardliners in Eastern
European governments should not reckon with
Moscow calling on the Red Army to back up
unpopular communist regimes (Adomeit
1998).
1.3 The Long Duration of the Cold War
For explaining the longevity of the Cold War,
the account therefore has to focus on the other
two factors: the structures which emerged with
the consolidation and reaffirmation of the divisions of Europe and of Germany, and the peculiarities of the military- geostrategic balance
between the two sides.
1.3.1 The divisions of Europe and Germany.
The key feature is the hinge between the two
divisions. The stark contrast between Stalin's
refusal to consider concessions on Poland,
Bulgaria, and Romania in exchange for
American economic assistance and his demand
to have a say on questions concerning primarily intra-West relations, e.g., the status of the
Ruhr area or of Norway, provoked the US and
the UK to tie their zones firmly to Western
institutions (Deighton 1990). The implementation of this basic strategy was, however,
complicated by clashes of interest between the
US, France, and Britain. These tensions prevented them from advancing as far as the
USSR had with incorporating its German state,
the GDR, into the Soviet Empire. Hence they
could not, as wanted, negotiate from a position
of strength, but expected to be asked to give
away on what 'the West' did not yet have,
whereas the USSR would persist in its refusal
to put its reign over Eastern Europe on the
agenda. The stalemate was compounded, when
the reimposition of the Ulbricht regime in
1953 revealed that the Kremlin considered the
GDR as its west-side lever for control over
Poland and Czechoslovakia.
The structural impediment to a negotiated
settlement disappeared when Moscow tacitly
bowed to Germany's entry into NATO (1955)
and when the 'West' acknowledged the fact
that the USSR was strong enough to prevail in
Eastern Europe (1956). German Ostpolitik put
the final stamp to the 'normativity of the facts.'
On this platform, the so-called Helsinki process, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), lingered on throughout
the 1973-89 period. Neither side was ready to
proceed towards peace-making.
The Cold War might have ended earlier if
Gorbachev's predecessors had responded to the
US view that Germany's double-bind into a
US-centered NATO and European integrated
structures would prevent Germany from positing a threat to the security of the USSR
(Schmidt 1993-5). Instead, Moscow's attempts
to push the divisiveness of nuclear diplomacy
within NATO rather than wait for the outcome
of such conflicts provoked the 'Atlanticists' to
close ranks and reiterate the standard thesis
that the West could prevent the USSR from
winning the Cold War if its members resisted
the temptation to court Moscow and make
separate deals with the USSR. The Soviet
leadership's 'stupidity' is said to have saved the
US or NATO to get rearmament projects –
such as NSC-68 or the 1979 dual-track decision – through.
1.3.2 The peculiarities of the militarygeostrategic balance. The key feature is the
fundamental asymmetry between the nature of
America's and Russia's predominance in their
respective sphere. This asymmetry is reinforced by the imbalance of military forces
between NATO-Europe and the USSR's forward deployed forces (Kugler 1993). The advantage of the US in its global contest with the
USSR was that all other principal powers,
including Germany and Japan, were allied to
the US. This helped in the build-up of the international economy, but not necessarily in
defense. Consequently, US diplomacy was
absorbed as much in intra- West crisis management as in the context of East-West relations. The allies wanted to be assured that
there were no long-term security risks involved for them in America's option for sponsoring the resurgence of the enemies and occupiers of World War II as strongholds of the
West. Having imposed limits on Germany's
and Japan's military status, the US could not
reckon with a defense contribution for some
years to come; both were prohibited to engage
in 'out-of-area' defense activities (Schmidt and
Doran 1996).
By contrast, the USSR gained a formidable
ally in the PRCh, who was keen to test the
credibility of the American commitment to
South Korea and Taiwan. Although the USSR
copied the West's community building by setting up COMECON (1949) and the Warsaw
Treaty Organisation 1955, the Kremlin relied
for exerting influence de facto on the penetration of the bloc partners' central agencies: the
State Party, Secret Service, and top military
echelon. The USSR also made sure through
logistic measures that the Soviet military could
operate from its allies' territory independently,
and if need be without the consent of the incumbent governments (Wolfe 1970).
The military imbalance between NATOEurope and the USSR existed throughout 1947
until the mid- 1980s. The US found no takers–
except the FRG from 1961 onwards–for its
concept of balanced collective forces in the
sense that the US were the sole provider of
strategic forces, that is, weaponry projected to
hitting targets located in the USSR, whereas
the allies would recruit the ground forces and
tactical air forces required for the defense of
the region against infiltration or surprise attacks. Britain and France preferred to duplicate
the US strategic role, albeit on a much minor
scale, and took the relaxation of tensions in
Europe and their entanglement in the legacies
of their imperial rule as the rationale for reducing their force assignments to NATO.
2. The Intersection of Economic and Strategic
Decisions: The European Structure
The failure of the 'Big Four' to cooperate on a
German Peace Treaty is identified as a crucial
turning point towards the Cold War (Leffler
1992). Stalin did not want to give the impression that the US, thanks to the atomic bomb
and its economic wealth, could impose its will
on the USSR; he therefore pressed his claims
on Iran, Turkey, during the Peace Conferences
with Germany's war-time allies and in the Allied Control Council. This in turn was taken in
Washington as a signal that hope of Russian
cooperation must be abandoned. Truman and
Byrnes had been reluctant to confront the
USSR when the Cold War started over the fate
of Eastern European nations (1944-7). Now, in
view of the havoc the 1946-7 crisis wreaked
on the economies of Britain and France, the
US government conceived that Western
Europe could not save itself (Hogan 1992).
From there on, the 'West' displayed a dynamic of its own. The first act was that the
economic recovery of Europe was said to require the inclusion of (West) Germany; the
price for getting France to change its German
policy was the assurance that the US and the
UK would back up the French quest for security against a resurgent Germany. The second
act followed: Britain and France pleaded with
Washington that the Marshall Plan initiative
would not suffice to attain stability without an
American security guarantee. Against the
background of the Berlin blockade, Truman in
October 1948 ordered that the US provide the
major counterbalance to the 'ever-present
threat of the Soviet military power.' In September 1948, the Brussels Treaty Organization
(BTO) had already resolved that the defense of
Western Europe should be as far to the east (of
West Germany) as possible. Because this was
beyond the means available to the BTO and
not yet compatible with the military strategy of
American and British defense planning, it was
only a question of developments in the Cold
War that the third issue be placed on the
agenda: German rearmament. The logic behind
the build-up of conventional forces sounded
compelling: why do the old allies expect the
US to provide ground and air forces and the
Supreme Allied Commander to NATO's integrated forces with a view to realize the concept
of forward defense when they deny the indispensibility of a sensible German defense contribution, on whose territory the French in
particular wanted to stop the enemy's offensive? At that time, however, all the US military could offer was an air offensive to deter
the USSR; they did not yet want to rely on 'the
bomb' (Ross), and the USSR had acquired by
then (Fall 1949) an atomic capability.
The outbreak of the Korean War generated
the fear of a similar war-by-proxy in divided
Germany. The US did not only reverse its
stance on what countries were of absolute importance to US security by now declaring Korea the test case of what became the domino
syndrome, that no US ally should fall prey to a
Communist invader, but also designated the
National Security Paper NSC-68 as the platform for a massive conventional rearmament
of the US, adequate force deployment abroad
and military aid to upgrade the defense capabilities of its European and Asian allies (May
1993).
The issue of German rearmament was divisive, but the US compromised with France on
the understanding that German forces be integrated into a European Defense Community
(EDC), whereas the EDC would delegate
strategic planning and fixing force requirements to NATO. The project became the victim of French domestic politics; the US and
the UK had to comply with the French request
that no German soldier be officially recruited
until France had ratified the EDC and German
Contractual Agreements. The demise of the
EDC meant that Washington had to forego the
hope that US force deployment would be a
temporary stop-gap until the European allies,
and especially the FRG, were able to do more
towards meeting NATO's minimum force requirements.
The parallel staged fourth act (1952-4) produced the definitive structure of the Cold War
in Europe: the NATO, to which the FRG was
finally admitted, had made itself dependent on
the credibility of the US (and UK) strategic
deterrent. This provoked the issue how the
USSR would react to the logic that NATO's
new member would have to be equipped with
the same weaponry as the allied forces into
which the German divisions were to be incorporated. Chancellor Adenauer made it clear
that the FRG did not want to provoke Moscow
unnecessarily by dislocating medium-range
ballistic missiles on German soil, whose later
replacements might be able to hit targets in
Russia, but he and his successors insisted on
having at least a crucial German vote in all
decisions on the use of nonstrategic weapons
in NATO's custody in case deterrence to all
types of war failed (Heuser 1998, Trachtenberg 1999).
This final act of incorporating the two
German states into alliances dominated by the
nuclear-strategic superpowers had a farreaching effect: plastering the 'front-line' states
with short-range atomic weapons was the best
insurance premium that the Germans would
not launch war from their soil (Ullman 1991).
As long as the US and USSR stationed troops
there and resolved to maintain control over the
warheads, the danger of accidental war could
be excluded. The parallel to the military factor
written into the strategic landscape is the interest of the Western nuclear powers in confirming the status quo and discuss on that territorial basis the questions of putting ceilings on
rearmament. Separately, the two German
states relaunched their rivalry and demanded
(1955-73) allies and Third World countries
alike to subscribe to the Alleinvertretungsan-
spruch of the Western democratic or peoples'
democratic German republic.
3. The History of the Concept, Major
Developments, and Empirical Results
The invention of the term is accredited to
Walter Lippmann who took issue with G. F.
Kennan's 'X'-article 'Sources of Soviet Conduct.' Kennan's long telegram of February 22,
1946 molded the agenda of America's containment policy. His arguments were selectively used by top officials in Washington to
assert that the 'Soviets' will develop all means
and methods ranging from threat of military
aggression via propaganda warfare to clandestine activities to a degree without precedent in
history. Therefore, the US had to strengthen its
executive branch, introduce a national security
policy, establish a professional intelligence
agency, and develop an unassailable military industrial base (Leffler 1992, Paterson 1979).
The opposite Communist view emphasizes
three aspects: the economic aggressiveness of
the longstanding hegemonic US project to
attain a 'one-world market' and abuse of the
open-door doctrine for penetrating other nations' economy; the manipulation of anticommunism as a club to suppress claims for
social justice and equality of rights within the
American and other Western capitalist systems; and America's acquisition of bases bordering on the USSR for purposes of encirclement and monitoring inside the USSR. In
geostrategic terms the US became a direct
neighbor of the USSR, whereas the USSR required long-distance bombers (it introduced
such jets by 1955) and Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM) to show the US its vulnerability. The strong engagement of the US in
the post-1990 contests about Caucasian and
Middle East oil and gas concessions and pipeline routes indicates that the US-USSR rivalry
did not end with the Cold War.
The 'Revisionists' (LaFeber 1991, Paterson
1979) disclaim that Stalin pursued an
offensive strategy aiming at extending Soviet
rule; they discern rather the US' responsibility
for causing the Cold War. The postrevisionist
approach accounts for the Soviet aspect of the
fundamental change in the Cold War since
about 1954-5, and explains the US interest in
détente, i.e., the coinciding interest in Long
Peace (Gaddis 1987). Moscow settled the
Austrian question, tolerated the FRG's entry
into NATO, and opted for reconciliation with
Tito, the only East European leader who had
got away with breaking ranks with Stalin. The
cumulation point was the declaration of the
doctrine of peaceful co-existence. The Western
allies' match was tacit satisfaction with consolidating the status quo after they had absorbed the FRG. Stability in Europe turned the
UK's, US's, and France's attention to the Third
World. In reaction to Communist China's
revolutionary foreign policy, the Soviet leadership in 1960 declared wars of liberation from
colonial rule legitimate and thus distinguished
peaceful co-existence in the developed world
from just wars in the 'southern' part of the
globe. In this sense, the East-West conflict was
exported to the Third World.
The US resolved on noninterference in the
internal affairs of the Soviet bloc and relaxation of tensions. The US was somewhat dependent on Russia's resistance to become the
air and nuclear strategic arm of Pejing's violent
anti-American activities in the Far East. The
emerging picture is that the US, in parallel
with the Berlin and Cuba crises (1958-62),
wanted to concert the superpowers' activities
in China's 'hinterland' (former 'Indochina') in
the sense that both exert pressure on the
parties to a conflict amenable to their
respective influence and through such
agreement attain the neutralization of the
conflict area, including the installment of allparty or power-sharing coalition governments,
however unstable (Nelson 1995).
3.1 European Perspectives on the Cold War
A different strand in the history of the concept
is the perception of the impact of the other
Western powers, especially Britain and
France, on how the struggle was waged
(Greenwood 2000, Bozo 1991). The contribution is twofold: (a) the Cold War is viewed as
a new stage in great power rivalry. These
studies stress the Europeans' interest in devoting resources to restoring or preserving their
assets and commitments overseas (Kent 1993,
Bossuat 1992). (b) The second contribution
takes a different direction: it challenges the
assumption that Western Europe by 1947-8
was in such a critical state that the leading
nations had to 'invite' the US to reconstruct
and protect Western Europe. Examining the
economic potential of the European nations
and how their governments used the financial
means provided under the Marshall Plan,
Milward (1984) presents the thesis of the rescue of the nation-state. His complex argument
also draws on the observation that at that time
the West did not reckon with an immediate
Soviet threat. The implication is that an
unwarranted haste was imposed on a process
which in any case depended on what the
European countries did to and for another,
formally, US assistance was tied to the Uniting
of (Western) Europe and to parallel bilateral
agreements between the US and the recipient
country.
3.2 Competitive Cooperation Between the
Superpowers
By the end of the 1960s, researchers discerned
the convergence of five developments which
demonstrated the continuing relevance of the
'competitive cooperation' between the superpowers for the changing structures of the Cold
War: (a) Soviet policy shifted towards accepting the US's and Canada's presence in Germany; (b) German Ostpolitik presumed the
engagement of the US in NATO; (c) de Gaulle
realized in the context of the Prague 1968 crisis that Breshnev's Russia was no party to his
vision that dissolving Cold War structures in
the West, i.e., France's disengagement from
NATO's military organization, might induce
'Russia' to allow for more evolution of national
communist and then independent states in
Eastern Europe; (d) the US embroilment in the
Vietnam war caused a change in the intellectual climate; the abuse of the USSR being the
cause of every evil became obsolete; instead
the US became the villain in the piece; (e) new
developments in arms technology –e.g., highprecision weaponry as a substitute for atomic
weapons; MIRV-technique; antiballistic missiles – were beyond Britain's and France's capability to follow on; this reinforced NATO
Europe's self-elected dependency on the US
with respect to security and defense (Hanrieder
1989).
Renewed US pressures on its allies to extend their conventional military capabilities
and share the burdens for the 'Defense of the
West' more evenly, the reescalation of the
strategic arms race between the superpowers
under the aegis of limitation treaties, and the
evidence presented by German Ostpolitik that
negotiations with Russia generate tolerable
results, combined to raise the basic questions:
what are the costs of the ongoing Cold War?
on what terms could the conflict be ended and
converted into politico-economic competition?
(Garthoff 1985).
3.3 From the Second Cold War to the End of
the Cold War
The USSR, after getting Germany's pledge to
observe the invulnerability of the territorial
status quo in Europe, revived the global contest with the US, which was immersed in domestic turbulences and disputes with all its
allies about oil and the dollar. The Kremlin
demonstrated its self-confidence by expanding
Soviet naval forces and establishing bases,
however short-lived, stretching from Vietnam
via Mozambique, Somalia, and Angola to
Central America. In contrast to the 1950-3
period, the US catchword 'arch of crises' did
not resonate well with its allies. The latter
wanted to develop détente, notwithstanding
the fear, expressed by German Chancellor
Helmut Schmidt in 1977, that the Soviets' new
equipment (Backfire bombers; SS-20) made
NATO Europe hostage to the Kremlin's whip
of the will. This raised the question whether
the USSR was about to win the Cold War or
whether the Kremlin was overstretching the
country's resources and would thus expose the
USSR sooner rather than later to the need for
radical changes in her system. The wishful
thinking that the USSR would fall victim to its
inability of continuous adaptation worked out
after three decades of aspiring military strategic and political parity with the US. Some
authors argue that Reagan's defence build-up
deliberately forced the Soviet leadership to
acknowledge the failure of its domestic system
and hence the USSR's inability to persist in the
contest and sustain bipolarity. (Adomeit 1998,
Gaddis 1987,Wells' article in Hogan 1992).
The way the global contest ended invited
Americans to believe that they had won the
Cold War.
4. Methodological Problems
The immersion of the concept Cold War in the
perpetual clash of interests between East and
West and within each 'bloc' subjects the interpretator on the one hand to the political climate of his own times, and may thus reload or
de-emphasize the contentions of the past; on
the other hand, access to newly available
rec??ords reveals new insights into previous
phases of the Cold War and thus demands
rethinking the past but in a different way.
Getting the balance right between these two
operations is difficult when knowledge about
one party to the conflict is the result of
generations of research, whereas the more
recent presentations of findings from Soviet,
GRD, Czech, or Polish sources are both less
systematic or structured and more exposed to
be taken instantly as evidence for one
interpretation e.g., of Stalin or Krushchev or
another. The task to study the records
comprehensively, but also be prepared to
modify one's assessments in response to newly
available empirical evidence is prone to collide
with the other obligation, namely to explain
what were the basic causes of a conflict and
which causes – meaning in politics: sins of
commission and omission – are accountable
for what developments.
A second main problem is the exact phaseby-phase and overall intersection between the
interpretation of the collaboration leading to
the evolution of 'Western' structures in the
economic sphere and the assessment of the
concomitant events in the politico-strategic
(military) sphere, where the USSR appeared to
be the winner, but then ended the Cold War on
western terms.
5. Future Direction of Research
'East' and 'West' waged the struggle by all
means and methods except 'hot' war in the area
stretching from Vancouver to Wladivostok.
Hence, research must attend to different subject areas and to the expertise developed in the
many scholarly communities. Some areas of
research, e.g., diplomatic or intellectual history
and biography, are more established than others. The impact of intelligence on policy-makers is a relatively new area of systematic research. International cooperation projects have
done much to promote nuclear history and
strategic studies, but the history of the military
alliances and of national defense organizations
and policies depend still on the authorities'
grant of access as well as clearance and permission for publishing inspected material. The
studied ambiguity of the political leaderships
and the top military echelon about the worth of
strategic nuclear weapons in case deterrence
should fail and about the use of short-range
atomic weapons deserves further study in order to know the implications of nuclear weaponry on the conduct of Cold War diplomacy
and governmental guidance to their military.
Future research should be more systematic
in the sense of extending the conceptualization
beyond the national and bilateral focus to the
regional context and intensifying the approach
by addressing the fundamental questions about
the changing nature of the struggle, its costs,
the persistence or recreation of patterns of
conflict, and above all the question whether
the Cold War structure affected all other bilateral or intraregional conflicts or whether reemerging older conflicts pervaded the EastWest conflict, so that the parties to such conflicts used the Cold War for the purpose of
engaging wealthy allies on their side.
See also: Arms Control; Communism, History
of; Contemporary History; Diplomacy;
Eastern European Studies: History; Eastern
European Studies: Politics; International
Relations, History of; Military and Politics;
National Security Studies and War Potential of
Nations; Peacemaking in History; Revolutions
of 1989-90 in Eastern Central Europe; Second
World War, The; Soviet Studies: Politics;
War, Sociology of; Warfare in History
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