Introduction: The Cold War as History

Abstract

The cold war dominated the international system for nearly 45 years, and exerted a significant influence over the nature and scope of the many military and political conflicts that occurred during those years. In retrospect, the cold war was the major theatre for the West’s struggle against communist ideas and about regime change in, and the democratisation of, the communist bloc. The cold war was fought very much on the assumption that ‘if your are not with us, you are against us’, an assumption that figured more prominently in American society than in its Western European counterparts. While the Soviet leadership in its final years accepted it would be impossible to create a non-Islamic Afghanistan, Mikhail Gorbachev nonetheless believed that a pro-US/Pakistan regime in Afghanistan would be ‘totally unacceptable’ both to India and to the USSR.1 Thus, the main tenet of the cold war can be seen as the East-West competition in ideas, arms and spheres of influence.KeywordsCentral Intelligence AgencyEastern BlocIron CurtainAmerican Foreign PolicyWarsaw PactThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.