Cold War Insights

This study provides a fresh assessment of the entire course of the Cold War, and is based on insights into the structure of postwar international politics revealed by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Drawing on newly released material and scholarly research from both the West and former communist states, it argues that the Cold War can only be understood by exploring the interplay between ideology, domestic politics, and military security–not only in the US and the Soviet Union, but in other states and movements with a capacity for significant military and political action.

The greatest threat to the Western alliance in the 1960s did not come from an enemy, but from an ally. France, led by its mercurial leader General Charles de Gaulle, launched a global and comprehensive challenge to the United State's leadership of the Free World, tackling not only the political but also the military, economic, and monetary spheres.