Victory in the Postwar Era: Despite the Cold War or Because of It?

Abstract

It is natural to analyze war in terms of victory and defeat, and so it is almost inevitable that the end of the Cold War will be analyzed in these terms. But is the concept of victory and defeat an appropriate analytical framework for understanding the outcome of the Cold War? What state can possibly claim victory in the Cold War—certainly not the Soviet Union. But can the United States be considered the victor either? It seems unlikely that either superpower "won" the Cold War when one compares their relative positions in the world prior to the Cold War with their positions afterward. In 1945 the United States had a monopoly on atomic weapons and was virtually invulnerable to attack. By the end of the Cold War both superpowers had massive atomic arsenals and shared equal insecurity under the regime of Mutual Assured Destruction, a situation that left the Soviet Union no better off than before and that clearly marked a decline in American power.