|Should We Miss the
Evil Empire? A Cold War Retrospective
by Bruce L. Brager
||"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the
Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent."
Winston Churchill, March 5, 1946 
"Due to the situation which has evolved as a result of the formation of the
Commonwealth of Independent States, I hereby discontinue my activities at the
post of President of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics."
Mikhail Gorbachev, December 25, 1991 
The Cold War had bookends. The Cold War had a "declaration of war" and a
"statement of surrender". Winston Churchill, that master phrasemaker, provided
the declaration, not to mention the Cold War's chief catch phrase ("Iron
Curtain"), as almost a "throw-away" line in a speech at an obscure Missouri
college. The main theme of Churchill's speech was to call for close
cooperation, even a military alliance, between the United States and Western
Europe, to ensure that the Iron Curtain, which became the term for both the
symbolic and real dividing line between democratic Western Europe and Communist
Eastern Europe, moved no further to the west.
Forty years later Mikhail Gorbachev wanted to save, not abolish, the Soviet
Union. However, restructuring proved impossible. Openness led to people
realizing just how impossible it was to save a system not worth saving.
The Soviet Union is gone. More importantly than winning the Cold War, the
United States survived the Cold War. The United States still exists, still
thrives as either the last best hope of mankind on Earth, to paraphrase Abraham
Lincoln, or as the greatest threat to world peace today, in the recent words of
quite a number of non-Americans, or as something in between. The world out
there is still quite dangerous. Americans can be hurt, but the United States is
likely to be here for a while. The American political system, economy, and life
style remain strong, strong enough to survive many an unsure hand at the helm.
Things may not seem that way, but Americans are safer today then they were 50
For much of the period between the 1945 end of the Second World War and 1989
both sides had the power to obliterate civilization, if not life itself, on the
planet. However dangerous, though, the rivalry between the United States and
the Soviet Union ended up the only instance in world history where two such
deadly rivals did not directly fight a hot war.
We should not miss the "good old days" of the "evil empire." But, we can learn
from this period.
When trying to figure out "why we won" historical debate still tends to
parallel the policy debates at the time – much light and noise, little heat.
Showing the charm so much a part of modern American political discourse,
conservatives declare that those liberals who opposed a constant hard line
against the Soviets were not only wrong, but were traitors out to destroy the
American way of life. Many seem to forget that dissent, however tastelessly it
might be manifest, however poorly it might be timed, is a fundamental American
value. Dissent is the American way.
Burning Dixie Chicks CDs, however, ranting on the radio, attacking the
motivation of widows of firemen killed on the job, and the rest of the nonsense
of much conservative policy discourse these days – which fails to make liberals
think -- pales in comparison to the behavior of Senator Joe McCarthy, and many
others, in the early 1950s. McCarthy and his supporters were a menace to the
idea of dissent in this country, especially when they could cost dissenters
their jobs. They seemed to think that winning the struggle with our deadly
enemy required using the enemy's methods. McCarthy ruined lives, seemingly just
for his own pleasure.
Political atmosphere changes almost as much as the Earth's atmosphere.
McCarthy's extreme actions helped push the country back to more tolerance for
dissent. What is interesting, however, is the unintended damage McCarthy
caused. With very strong self-promotional elements, McCarthy seemed to be
seeking to discredit communism. There actually were communists in the State
Department. The Soviet Union was making an effort to infiltrate the American
government, though not to the degree it had done so before World War Two. But
any real communists McCarthy might have exposed, or persuaded to resign, were
sheer coincidence. McCarthy's methods were so extreme he did far more damage to
the idea of vigilant anti-communism and national security then to his intended
One might be forgiven for wondering if McCarthy was actually a Soviet agent,
expert at psy-war, tasked with discrediting anti-communist vigilance. Of
course, though, this may be crediting malevolence to what was more likely just
The liberals, and the left, (two terms surprisingly not totally synonymous)
also apply ideological illogic to what should be logical policy analyzing the
proposing. The left declares the right to have been a mob of deadly warmongers
barely prevented from blowing up the planet. They wonder if the right has
changed all that much, even with the Soviet Union long on the ash-heap of
history. And the right sometimes seems to oblige the left, with their words and
with their actions.
The left also plays into the rhetorical hands of the right. They don't bother
with such subtle issues as whether we should have fully trusted Joseph Stalin
or Mao Zedung, or Saddam Hussein. Our questionable war, and no weapons of mass
destruction, did not make Saddam Hussein a good guy.
And, as an aside, our policy mistakes did not make Saddam a smart guy. Was it
really a good idea to pretend to have weapons he did not have; the very weapons
likely to provoke, or provide the justification, for an attack? We were not the
only ones with intelligence failures.
Revisionist historians in the United States -- those who define their mission
as changing interpretations, usually putting the United States the other
Western cultures in as bad a light as possible, not just reexamining,
traditional interpretations and conventional wisdoms -- blame the Cold War on
the United States. (Interestingly, post Glasnost Russian historians tend to
blame it on the Soviet Union.)
Liberals have long called for an understanding of all cultures and societies.
Excellent idea -- understanding one's friends to keep them as friends,
understanding one's enemies to deter or defeat them, and understanding those
one seeks to influence to find ways to influence them. However, this idea
frequently morphs to the idea that one should not make value judgments at all.
The left continues to seem quite happy to judge American society. Arguably,
America should be held to higher standards, as it sets higher standards for
itself. Constructive criticism of a society can be as valuable as constructive
criticism of a person. This criticism would have been more constructive had it
looked at ways the Untied States was failing to live up to its principles, and
avoided declaring our society to fundamentally rotten to the core. This was not
the way to win friends and influence people, the first step, without exception,
in implementing any policy.
The right wing was awarded the undeserved high ground on moral issues, with
major and continuing political damage to the liberals, without the right having
to work to earn the high ground. If one does not respect a person's soul, one
will have problems respecting the person's mind, or seeing any value to
changing the mind. One will fail to perform a basic function of leadership –
changing the mainstream.
We stumbled through the Cold War. Despite the varied history of American policy
towards the Soviets, the basic outline of the correct way to handle them was
discovered quite early – containment. George Kennan, then a mid-level American
diplomat in Moscow, perhaps in spite of himself formulated this policy in his
"Long Telegram" in 1946 and in his famous "X" article, "The Sources of Soviet
Conduct," in 1947. Kennan later disavowed some of the applications of the
policy, but his original ideas worked. Oversimplified -- this policy focused on
the ruthlessly opportunistic aspects of Soviet motivation and policy. Don't
give them opportunities. Create such things as the Marshall Plan to strengthen
"at risk" nations and decrease the popular appeal of communism.
Counter Soviet measures, but do not pose, or seem to pose, an active threat to
Soviet national security. Avoid showing weakness that might tempt the Soviets
to a first strike. Do not scare them into thinking a first strike is necessary
for their own survival. Denied opportunity to expand, the inherent
contradictions in the Soviet system will destroy the system. Kennan was
The interesting lesson here in the idea of balance. American political
realities made it almost a given that American policy would bounce back and
forth, shifting to almost all extremes of the spectrum – fortunately stopping
short of surrendering major national interests or starting nuclear war –
averaging out to the correct policy. These shifts sometimes confused the
Soviets, with their lack of full understanding of our system. Similarly, Soviet
policy shifts, frequently motivated by their domestic politics, confused us.
Basic understanding of an adversary is as necessary as sophisticated
intelligence gathering and analysis. This provides context to the mass of
available information, a way of finding patterns and meaning to "mere" facts.
Fortunately, both sides' bouncing sometimes stopped at correct policies –
primarily over control of nuclear weapons and "confidence building" measures,
ways of avoiding panicking one's opponent into drastic or dangerous actions. In
the major area of nuclear weapons, both sides acted with strong doses of
At the very "creation" of the Cold War this country learned the lesson of
realism and limits. Almost immediately after the meetings at Yalta ended,
American and British leaders were accused of "selling out," of "giving" Eastern
Europe to Joseph Stalin at the January 1945 Yalta Conference. This complaint
ignored the reality that Stalin already controlled most of Eastern Europe, and
what he did not have the Soviet armies would soon give him. As Stalin himself
said, the presence of armies would arbitrarily decide the post-war local
The Western Allies could, and did, propose dramatic statements of how every
nation would be able to choose its form of government, and get Stalin to sign
these statements, but there was little they could to force the Soviets to keep
their promises. Stalin was not about to take any risk that the Eastern European
nations in close proximity to the Soviet Union's heartland would be anything
less than active allies. Stalin would act in what he saw as the Soviet Union's
interest, and his own interest, and had little compunctions about methods.
Some American political pundits later liked to complain that the Soviets would
never agree to anything not in their own interest. This is a curious complaint.
Leaders that do not at least pretend to act in their national interest do not
last long. Leaders can confuse their personal interest with that of their
nation. They may be wrong, but they have to at least pretend to act in the best
interest of their nation. Realistic diplomacy, dealing with the world the way
it is, recognizes self-interest and tries to bring about enlightened
self-interest – finding things good for all parties Don't necessarily accept
the world the way it is, that is not leadership, but deal with the world the
way it is.
President Franklin Roosevelt died in April 1945. His successor, Harry Truman,
faced major military and foreign policy issues at the last Big Three meeting,
starting July 17, 1945, in the Berlin suburb of Potsdam. Truman entered the
continuing debate on how to explain Soviet behavior and on how to deal with
this behavior. This debate continues, with Russian historians now able to
Some theorists blamed Soviet behavior on defensiveness, to the point of
paranoia. Russians have traditionally been defensive regarding the outside
world, bordering on xenophobic, fearing and hating those who are different. The
Soviet Union was, in this respect, very much the successor state to Imperial
Soviet/Russian paranoia was fact based. Virtually every great European dictator
in the last 400 years, with the exception of Louis XIV of France, has invaded
Russia, giving Russians a reason to fear and hate outsiders. The Soviet
experience in World War Two, with unbelievably high casualties and damage, only
contributed to this fear of foreigners.
When planning his 1941 attack on the Soviet Union, Hitler had told his generals
to wage a war of extermination, with no concern for the rules of "civilized"
warfare. Hitler got his wish. An estimated 20,000,000 million Soviets died in
World War Two, roughly half civilian, half military. The combat took on a
"no-quarter" aspect, where both sides fought to the death. What the Soviets had
suffered during the war made it inevitable that the first Soviet post-war goals
would be to safeguard their territory, by whatever means necessary. This
reality would have to be accepted by the Americans and the British.
A second theory of Soviet behavior blamed it on sheer imperial aggressiveness,
the Soviets taking over similar tendencies from Tsarist Russia, with Marxist
ideology providing an additional motivation for expansion. At the final two
"Big Three" meetings, Yalta and Potsdam, the British began to think that the
Soviets had inherited czarist Russian expansionism. They also noticed that
Stalin seemed to be picking up another imperial habit, trying to engage in some
frank horse-trading of areas of influence.
A third theory saw the Soviets as primarily ruthlessly opportunistic. Once the
security and control of what was later called the "outer empire" was ensured,
once Eastern Europe was under Soviet control, the Soviets would probe for
Western weakness, particularly outside the "central front" of Europe, but would
only make major moves when they detected an opening. No realistic theory had
the Soviet leadership waking up in the morning and saying, "Should we attack
today?" But the opportunistic theory did allow for the leadership to wake up
and say "What Western weakness can we exploit today?" Paranoia/Russian
xenophobia could have the leadership asking "Is the West going to attack us
today and do we have to preempt?"
Nuclear deterrence was designed to avoid providing the Soviets opportunity for
one final knock out blow against the United States. Even here, uncertainty
about when this country would launch nuclear retaliation -- when the first
incoming missiles were spotted, or when we saw the size of the attack -- may
have been as important as the size of our force. (Another small but significant
deterrent element was whether our submarines would launch missiles if ordered
to launch, or whether they would attack if communications telling them not to
launch were cut off.) Sometimes it is best not to be fully understood by one's
American foreign aid, starting with the Marshall Plan in 1947, focused on
denying the Soviets opportunities. Building up Western European economies was
seen as a way to avoid giving the Soviets openings to meddle with and subvert
democratic governments. Europeans would not have to choose between a decent
economy and democracy. The United States erred in the rest of the world,
however, when our government backed less democratic regimes just because they
All three theories can explain Soviet behavior, and all could operate to some
extent – with an unknown degree of actual belief in Communism thrown in. All
required similar Western responses – deterrence through the credible ability to
respond to Soviet aggression, active measures to avoid providing targets of
opportunity, setting a good example for the rest of the world, and, in perhaps
the weakest element for the country, a problem which still seems to exist,
effectively gathering and understanding information about our adversary. Even
with the increasing release of Soviet documents by the Russians, a single
"unified field theory" of Soviet behavior has not been created.
When Truman took office, American policy makers could not look back on a
successful Cold War. American policy makers had to react based on what they
knew at the time.
The American and British governments could not always tell whether a Soviet
move was a response to something the Western Allies did, intentionally or not,
signs of the start of a "Communist offensive," or a sheer mistake. American
policy makers even joked about these mistakes. Dean Acheson, who served in
major American foreign policy positions, including Secretary of State, later
wrote Harry Truman "We used to say that in a tight pinch we could generally
rely on some fool play of the Russians to pull us through."
The Soviets had the reverse problem. Their command society, with all decisions
from the top, lead them to be less likely to consider American and British
mistakes as just mistakes. In 1946, for example, the Soviets applied for a
reconstruction loan from the United States. When they did not hear, and
inquired, they were told the papers had been lost during an agency move in
Washington. This reason, perfectly believable to Americans, and likely
accurate, was not accepted in Moscow. Despite their ideological teaching about
the inherent weaknesses of capitalism, the Soviets seemed to have more respect
for the efficiency of the American and British governments than the Americans
and the British.
The United States got off to an excellent start in the Cold War with the
Marshall Plan, perhaps the most remarkable foreign policy initiative in world
history, and NATO -- though NATO was actually a British idea – shutting off
Soviet expansion opportunities in Europe. Then, in early 1950, Secretary of
State Acheson, who should have known better, described America's "sphere of
influence" in Asia. The North Koreans, and the Soviets, noticed it did not
include South Korea. They thought they saw an opportunity. The Korean War
started within weeks.
The war ended in 1953, after ending Truman's presidency. Dwight D. Eisenhower,
the new Republican president, came into office with the idea of "rolling back"
Communism. Spin-offs of this idea included taking over from the French in
Vietnam in 1954, though initially without sending troops. This also included
refusing to accept the idea that any nations could be non-aligned, a fault
shared by the Soviet Union, an inflexible attitude that would create problems
and lost opportunities.
One tactical error and missed opportunity for the West might have come in
Egypt. Egyptian leader Gamel Nasser, one of the early leaders of the "third
world," and never a communist, had been content playing off the great powers
for Egypt's benefit. He did, however, make a massive purchase of arms from
Czechoslovakia in late 1955. In July 1956, in response, the United States
refused to aid Egypt in building a dam at Aswan, on the Nile River. The Soviets
would eventually provide financing.
That same month, Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, seizing control from the
British/French consortium running the Canal. The British and French desire to
regain control of the Canal soon meshed with Israeli desire to end Egyptian
support of terrorist raids into Israel. This crisis played out in October and
early November, simultaneously with Soviet efforts in Hungary.
Joseph Stalin died in March 1953, not long after Eisenhower took office. The
Soviets, particularly when Nikita Khrushchev emerged as his successor,
liberalized domestically and in Eastern Europe – though not as much as the
Hungarians thought. Imre Nagy took power in Hungary on October 23, 1956. Six
days later, Israel invaded the Sinai Desert. Britain and France, by
pre-arrangement, called for both sides to withdraw. Israel agreed. Egypt
refused. Britain and France then staged air raids on Egyptian military bases.
Britain dispatched armored units -- by ship.
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev responded by threatening Paris and London with
missiles he did not have. Eisenhower also blustered, as the United States was
not about to defend what he saw as European imperial interests. On November 1,
with the British tanks still on their leisurely voyage, Israeli forces, moving
faster than expected, reached the Suez Canal. The same day, Nagy announced that
Hungary was withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact.
Khrushchev, unlike his successors who crushed the Prague Spring in 1968, might
have tolerated domestic liberalization. But withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact
was striking at what the Soviets perceived as their basic defense needs.
Khrushchev was already concerned about events in Hungary; both the practical
effects of letting the Hungarians go their own way and the image presented to
the West. He told Tito, the leader of Yugoslavia, "If we let things take their
course [in Hungary] then the West will say we are either stupid or weak and
that's one and the same thing."
On the November 4, at the urging of the Soviet ambassador to Hungary, Yuri
Andropov, Soviet troops attacked Budapest. Nagy was overthrown and took shelter
in the Yugoslavian embassy. Fighting took several days and killed an estimated
3,000 Hungarians. Many more fled the country. Nagy was eventually tricked out
of the embassy by promises of safe conduct, captured, and executed.
The Hungarians hoped for assistance from the West, consistent with the rollback
doctrine. On November 4, 1956, at the height of the Soviet attacks on Budapest,
a Hungarian cabinet minister broadcast "I appeal to the great powers of the
world for a wise and courageous decision in the interest of my enslaved nation
and of the liberty of all Eastern European nations." American aid, however,
was never a realistic possibility. Eisenhower knew this, and turned down CIA
requests to airdrop arms.
Failing to deliver on the promise of the rollback of Communism, a Republican
theme for many years, was cynical on Eisenhower's part, but it was also
realistic. Probably without even thinking about it, both sides had put in place
an effective freeze on conditions in Europe. This was safer than the potential
alternative. Both sides could console themselves with philosophical beliefs
that the other's system would eventually collapse. We were correct.
British and French paratroops landed in Egypt the same day the Soviets attacked
Budapest. Sea forces finally arrived the next day. On November sixth, British
and French finally gave in to sharp American criticism, and Soviet threats, and
agreed to withdraw. (Israel took several months to agree.) That same day,
Eisenhower overwhelmingly won reelection.
A day or so after his reelection, Eisenhower received a message from Nicolai
Bulganin, Chairman of the Presidium of the USSR Council of Ministers that "I
feel urged to state that the problem of withdrawal of Soviet troops from
Hungary . . . comes completely and entirely under the competence of the
Hungarian and Soviet governments." Eisenhower recognized the implications of
what Bulganin was saying; that the Iron Curtain had effectively divided Europe
into spheres of influence. Short of seriously risking a full-scale war, which
it was not prepared to do, the United States could not do anything.
The last crisis in Europe that might have provoked great power confrontation
occurred in Berlin in 1961. The Soviets decided to settle the issue of control
of the divided city, and to solve the heavy emigration of East Germans to the
West. Ironically, the most visible symbol of the Cold War, the Berlin Wall,
which the Soviets let the East Germans build in 1961, probably settled the
crisis without further escalation. Even the highly dangerous Cuban Missile
Crisis, 14 months latter, fit into the pattern of superpower confrontation
occurring outside of the "central front" in Europe. For the next 28 years, both
sides avoid confrontation in the most potentially dangerous area of the world.
No changes occurred in the area of the Iron Curtain, the main front, until the
fall of 1989, with the symbolic end of the Cold War, and fall of the Iron
Curtain, when the Berlin Wall was opened.
What Can We Learn – Why did we win?
One conclusion from the Cold War is clear. All reasonable theories of Soviet
behavior, which excluded them being suicidal, called for much the same
response. The United States had to remain firm in resisting expansionism, avoid
panicking the Soviet leadership, and do its best to avoid providing
opportunities – including, as we only belatedly realized, in world financial
markets -- for a ruthlessly opportunistic adversary.
Within a consistent overall strategy, flexibility as to method is a major
lesson of the Cold War. Massive retaliation, using our heavy nuclear arsenal,
might be credited with deterring a direct Soviet attack on the United States;
to the degree this was ever considered. But it was not a viable way to stop
lesser Soviet adventures. Miscalculation was always a danger. Massive
retaliation also implied giving the Soviets permission for a certain degree of
aggressiveness, as long as it stayed below limits. A line in the sand lets you
go up to the line.
The war on terrorism requires learning the lessons of flexibility; that we have
to adopt any method reasonably well thought out and likely to work – work in
the sense that it does the job, and minimizes the inevitable unexpected
consequences. These consequences include realizing that successful military
action, though clearly desirable, is not the end of the story.
Terrorists these days, in a vital difference from the Soviets, are often
suicidal. They are not going to be deterred by fear of death. They have to be
denied targets of opportunity, by making this country more secure, and by
helping to improve economic conditions in their countries. We also, bluntly,
have to seek them out and destroy them before they can come after us. And we
have to be persistent, as we were in the Cold War, in it for the long haul.
Staying the course includes a better approach to dealing with other nations,
our nominal allies and the people in the area of potential involvement. Allies
are highly useful tools. It is better to work with allies than without them.
But they do not determine American interest. Local people are also better to
have on our side, possibly decisively better. The best way to keep these people
on our side is to go in only when necessary, stay until the job is done, and
then get out as quickly as possible. As David (Davy) Crockett used to say, "Be
always sure you are right – THEN GO AHEAD."
Cold War policy makers required good intelligence on what our enemy was doing,
what our enemy planned to do, and what it could do. Frequently they did not
have this intelligence, and the results were unfortunate. Satellite
intelligence provided, and still provides, unparalleled indications of military
activity. But one has to question whether the United States ever had sufficient
"humint," ever had a really accurate understanding of what the Soviets were
The growing effectiveness of American signals and visual intelligence, to the
point today where intelligence agencies can tell what someone is reading, where
they are reading it, and what they say on the phone about it, is awesome. No
other nation approaches the American mastery of the technical aspects of
intelligence. But this is where our mastery stops.
There can be too much information. There is an old saying, perhaps from
Sherlock Holmes, that the best place to hide a needle is not in a haystack but
in a bunch of needles. Good information has to be separated from bad
information; true gems have to be mined from the mass of useless to downright
wrong information. Could the CIA, NSA and other analysts separate the good from
the bad? They made enough mistakes to make it clear this was not always
possible in the past. Can they do better now?
Can we assume this information will be properly interpreted and that it will
serve as the basis for fully considered and correct actions? One has to wonder
if the American leadership, and the American people, ever fully understood a
basic law of history, the law of unexpected consequences. Actions have
consequences, in history like in physics, but in left the consequences are
rarely equal or opposite. The way to deal with this law is not to fail to act –
inaction is a type of action – but to keep watch, to keep an eye on what
A vivid example is still in the news. The ill-advised 1979 Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan provided a "target of opportunity" for the United States to do some
damage to the Soviets, first by tying them down in an unwinnable war, then to
help them actually lose the war. Our efforts worked. However, was it really
good to assume, as William Casey, CIA director under Ronald Reagan, assumed
that particularly religious Mujahadeen fighters in Afghanistan made
particularly good allies of the Christian West in the war against godless
What did we think the Mujahadeen were going to do in 1989, once the Soviets
withdrew from Afghanistan? Maybe Cold War realities made it necessary first to
tie down the Soviets, and then to kick them out. But was it really a good idea
just to forget about that place once they left? We decided to let the
increasingly religious Muslim Pakistani intelligence service, with its own
agenda, run our policy. Not even benign neglect, but just neglect, was the
focus of our policy for the next several years.
We always had the power to deter the Soviet Union, if the power was properly
applied. And, with the perspective of up to half a century, most American
policy and operational errors seem to have been obvious, avoiding them equally
obvious. But they were not obvious at the time. Understanding, knowing what is
going on, and its real meaning and implications, may be the basic lesson of the
Cold War. The United States no longer plays for anywhere near as high the
stakes as we did. However, the Soviets never killed Americans by direct attacks
on American soil. Intelligence, in the sense of gathering and properly
interpreting information, is more important than ever. Intelligence, in the
sense of thinking, has always been vital.
Show Footnotes and
. Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat: Winston Churchill's Famous Speeches,
edited, with an introduction by David Cannidine, London: Cassell, 1989, page
. Quoted in Steven M. Gillon and Diane B. Kunz, America During the Cold War,
Fort Worth, Texas: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1993, page v.
. Quoted page 105, Vladimir Zubok, and Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the
Kremlin's Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev, Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1996.
. Quoted Zubok and Pleshakov, page 183.
. Quoted Time Magazine, January 7, 1957. Found web site
. Dwight David Eisenhower, Waging Peace, Garden City, New York:
Doubleday & Co., 1965, pages 94-95.
. Quoted William C. Davis, Three Roads to the Alamo, New York:
HarperCollins Publishers, 1998, page 313.
Beisner, Robert L., Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War, Oxford and New
York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Brager, Bruce L, The Iron Curtain: The Cold War in Europe, Foreword by
Senator George J. Mitchell, Introduction by Prof. James I Matray, Philadelphia:
Chelsea House, Publishers, 2004.
Gaddis, John Lewis, We Now Know, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press,
Leebaert, Derek, The Fifty Year Wound, Boston: Little, Brown and
Walker, Martin, The Cold War: A History, New York: Henry Holt and
Company, a John MacRae book, 1993.
Copyright © 2007 Bruce L. Brager.
Written by Bruce L. Brager. If you have questions or comments on this
article, please contact Bruce L. Brager at:
About the author:
Bruce Brager is a writer specializing in military history, defense and foreign
policy. He is the author of ten published books and over fifty
Published online: 06/24/2007.
* Views expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent
those of MHO.