Cold War
For other uses, please see Cold War (disambiguation).The
Cold War (
Russian:
Холодная 'ойна Kholodnaya Voina) was the protracted
geopolitical,
ideological, and
economic struggle that emerged after
World War II between
capitalism and
communism, centering around the global
superpowers of the
Soviet Union and the
United States, and their
military alliance partners. It lasted from about 1947 to the period leading to the dissolution of the Soviet Union on
December 25,
1991. Between 1985 and 1991 Cold War rivalries first eased and then ended.
The global contest was popularly termed
The Cold War because direct hostilities never occurred between the United States and the Soviet Union. Instead, the "war" took the form of an
arms race involving
nuclear and conventional weapons, networks of military alliances, economic warfare and trade
embargos,
propaganda,
espionage and
proxy wars, especially those involving superpower support for opposing sides within civil wars. The
Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 was the most important direct confrontation, together with a series of confrontations over the
Berlin Blockade and the
Berlin Wall. The major civil wars polarized along Cold War lines were the
Greek Civil War,
Korean War,
Vietnam War and the
Soviet-Afghan War, along with more peripheral conflicts in
Angola,
El Salvador, and
Nicaragua.
The greatest fear during the Cold War was the risk it would escalate into a full nuclear exchange with hundreds of millions killed. Both sides developed a
deterrence policy that prevented problems from escalating beyond limited localities.
Nuclear weapons were never employed as weapons during the Cold War.
The Cold War cycled through a series of high and low tension years (the latter called
Détente). It ended in the period between 1989 and 1991, with the dissolution of the
Warsaw Pact and later the Soviet Union. Historians continue to debate the causes in the 1940s, and the reasons for the Soviet collapse in the 1980s.
Origins
Main article: Origins of the Cold War (—1947).
Tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States resumed after the
Second World War ended in August 1945. They escalated in 1945–1947. Historians differ, but the usual starting year is 1947 for the Cold War that lasted until the fall of the Berlin Wall (
Nov 11,
1989) or the end of the Soviet Union on
December 25,
1991.
Historians looking at the Soviet perspective take two approaches, one emphasizing the primacy of Communist ideology, the other emphasizing the historical goals of the Russian state, specifically hegemony over Eastern Europe, access to warm water
seaports, and the defense of the
Orthodox Christians and
Slavic peoples. The roots of the ideological clashes can be seen in
Lenin's seizure of power in Russia (the
Bolshevik Revolution of October-November 1917).
Walter LaFeber stresses Russia's historic interests, going back to the Czarist years when the U.S. and Russia became rivals. From 1933 to 1939 the United States and the Soviet Union had a sort of détente, but relations were not friendly. After the USSR and
Germany became belligerents in 1941, Roosevelt made a personal commitment to help the Soviets (Congress never voted to approve any sort of alliance). The wartime cooperation was never friendly. For example, Stalin was reluctant to allow American forces to use Soviet bases. Cooperation became increasingly strained by February 1945 at the
Yalta Conference, as it was becoming clear that Stalin intended to spread communism to Eastern Europe (which he succeeded in doing) and then, perhaps, to spread communism to France and Italy.
Some historians such as
William Appleman Williams also cite American economic expansionism as the roots of the Cold War. These historians use the
Marshall Plan and its terms and conditions as evidence to back up their claims.
These geopolitical and ideological rivalries were accompanied by a third factor that had just emerged from
World War II as a new problem in world affairs: the problem of effective international control of
nuclear energy. In 1946 the Soviet Union rejected a United States proposal for such control, which had been formulated by
Bernard Baruch on the basis of an earlier report authored by
Dean Acheson and
David Lilienthal, with the objection that such an agreement would undermine the principle of national
sovereignty. The end of the Cold War did not resolve the problem of international control of nuclear energy, and it reemerged as a factor in the beginning of the
Long War declared by the United States in 2006 as its official military doctrine.
Global Realignments
In this period began the Cold War, in 1947, and continued until the change in leadership for both superpowers in 1953 - from Presidents
Truman to
Eisenhower for the United States and from
Stalin to
Khrushchev in the
Soviet Union.
Events include the
Truman Doctrine, the
Marshall Plan, the
Berlin Blockade and
Berlin Airlift, the
Soviet Union's detonation of its first
atomic bomb, the formation of
NATO and (later) the
Warsaw Pact, the formation of
West Germany and
East Germany, the
Stalin Note for
German reunification and
superpower disengagement from
Central Europe, the
Chinese Civil War and the
Korean War.
The American Marshall Plan intended to rebuild the European economy after the devastation incured by the Second World War in order to thwart the political appeal of the radical left. For Western Europe,
economic aid ended the dollar shortage, stimulated private investment for
postwar reconstruction and, most importantly, introduced new managerial techniques. For the U.S., the plan rejected the isolationism of the 1920s and integrated the North American and Western European economies.
Escalation and Crisis
|
Two opposing geopolitical blocs had developed by 1959 as a result of the Cold War. Consult the legend on the map for more details. |
This period existed between the change in leadership for both superpowers in 1953 to the
Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
Events included the
1956 Hungarian Revolution, the erection of the
Berlin Wall in 1961, the
Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and the
Prague Spring in 1968. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, in particular, the world was closest to a third (nuclear) world war.
Thaw and Détente, 1962-1979
The
Détente period of the Cold War was marked by mediation and comparative peace. At its most reconciliatory, German Chancellor
Willy Brandt forwarded the foreign policy of
Ostpolitik during his tenure in the
Federal Republic of Germany.
Egon Bahr, its architect and advisor to Brandt, framed this policy (translated literally as "eastern politics") as "change through rapprochement".
These initiatives led to the
7 December,
1970 Warsaw Treaty between
Poland and
West Germany, the
3 September,
1971 Quadripartite or
Four-Powers Agreement between the Soviet Union, United States,
France and
Great Britain, and a few east-west German agreements including the
Basic Treaty of
21 December,
1972.
Limitations to reconciliation did exist, evinced by the deposition of
Walter Ulbricht by
Erich Honecker as East German General Secretary on
3 May,
1971.
Second Cold War
|
The diversified state of the Cold War relations in 1980. Consult the legend on the map for more details. |
The period between the
Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and the rise of
Mikhail Gorbachev as
Soviet leader in 1985 was characterized by a marked "freeze" in relations between the superpowers after the "thaw" of the Détente period of the 1970s. As a result of this re-intensification, the period is sometimes referred to as the "
Second Cold War".
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 in support of an embryonic communist regime in that country led to international outcries and the widespread boycotting of the
1980 Moscow Olympic Games by many Western countries in protest at Soviet actions. The Soviet invasion led to a protracted conflict, which involved
Pakistan, an erstwhile US ally, in locked horns with the Soviet military might for over 12 years.
Worried by Soviet deployment of nuclear
SS-20 missiles (commenced in 1977), NATO allies agreed in 1979 to continued
Strategic Arms Limitation Talks to constrain the number of nuclear missiles for battlefield targets, while threatening to deploy some 500
cruise missiles and
Pershing II missiles in
West Germany and the
Netherlands if negotiations were unsuccessful. The negotiations were bound to fail. The planned deployment of
Pershing II met intense and widespread opposition from public opinion across Europe, which became the site of the largest demonstrations ever seen in several countries.[
1]
Pershing II missiles were deployed in Europe from January 1984. They were withdrawn beginning in October 1988.
The "new conservatives" or "
neoconservatives" rebelled against both the Nixon-era policies and the similar position of
Jimmy Carter toward the Soviet Union. Many clustered around hawkish Senator
Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a Democrat, and pressured President Carter into a more confrontational stance. Eventually they aligned themselves with
Ronald Reagan and the conservative wing of the Republicans, who promised to end Soviet expansionism.
The election, first of
Margaret Thatcher as
British Prime Minister in 1979, followed by that of
Ronald Reagan to the
American Presidency in 1980, saw the elevation of two hardline Cold Warriors to the leadership of the Western World.
Other events included the
Strategic Defense Initiative and
Solidarity.
End of the Cold War
|
Changes in borders in Europe and Central Asia with the end of the Cold War. 24 new countries were formed. |
This period began at the rise of
Mikhail Gorbachev as
Soviet leader in 1985 and continued until the collapse of the
Soviet Union in 1991.
Events included the
Chernobyl accident in 1986, the
Autumn of Nations (which includes the famous
fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989), the
Soviet coup attempt of 1991 and the
collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Others include the implementation of the policies of
glasnost and
perestroika, public discontent over the Soviet Union's war in
Afghanistan, and the socio-political effects of the
Chernobyl accident in 1986. East-West tensions eased rapidly after the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev. After the deaths of three elderly Soviet leaders in a row since 1982, the Politburo elected Gorbachev Soviet Communist Party chief in 1985, marking the rise of a new generation of leadership. Under Gorbachev, relatively young reform-oriented technocrats rapidly consolidated power, providing new momentum for political and economic liberalization and the impetus for cultivating warmer relations and trade with the West.
Meanwhile, in his second term Reagan surprised the neoconservatives by meeting with Gorbachev in
Geneva, Switzerland in 1985 and
Reykjavík, Iceland in 1986, the latter to continue discussions about scaling back their intermediate missile arsenals in Europe. The talks broke down in failure. Afterwards, Soviet policymakers increasingly accepted Reagan's administration warnings that the U.S. would make the arms race a huge burden for them. The twin burdens of the Cold War arms race on one hand and the provision of large sums of foreign and military aid, which their socialist allies had grown to expect, left Gorbachev's efforts to boost production of consumer goods and reform the stagnating economy in an extremely precarious state. The result was a dual approach of cooperation with the west and economic restructuring (perestroika) and democratization (glasnost) domestically, which eventually made it impossible for Gorbachev to reassert central control over
Warsaw Pact member states.
Thus, in 1989 Eastern Europe's Communist governments toppled one after another. In
Poland,
Hungary, and
Bulgaria reforms in the government, in the case of Poland under pressure from
Solidarity, prompted a peaceful end to Communist rule and democratization. Elsewhere, mass-demonstrations succeeded in ousting the Communists from
Czechoslovakia and
East Germany, where the
Berlin Wall was opened and subsequently brought down in November. In
Romania a popular uprising deposed the Ceauşescu regime during December and led to his execution on Christmas Day.
Western historians often argue that one major cause of death of the
Soviet Union was the massive fiscal spending on military technology that the Soviets saw as necessary in response to
NATO's increased armament of the 1980s. They insist that
Soviet efforts to keep up with
NATO military expenditures resulted in massive economic disruption and the effective bankruptcy of the Soviet economy, which had always labored to keep up with its western counterparts. It was estimated that the Soviets were a decade behind the West in computers and falling further behind every year. The critics of the USSR state that computerized military technology was advancing at such a pace that the Soviets were simply incapable of keeping up, even by sacrificing more of the already weak civilian economy. According to the critics, the
arms race, both nuclear and conventional, was too much for the underdeveloped Soviet economy of the time. In fact, Gorbachev himself states that defense spending was a major reason in forcing Soviet reforms, quote "I think we all lost the Cold War, particularly the Soviet Union. We each lost $10 trillion". For this reason, President
Ronald Reagan is seen by many conservatives as the man who 'won' the Cold War indirectly through his escalation of the arms race and then diplomacy with Gorbachev.
The Soviet Union provided little infrastructure help for its Eastern European satellites, but they did receive substantial military assistance in the form of funds, material and control. Their integration into the inefficient military-oriented economy of the Soviet Union caused severe readjustment problems after the fall of Communism.
Research shows that the fall of the USSR was accompanied by a sudden and dramatic decline in total warfare, interstate wars, ethnic wars, revolutionary wars, the number of refugees and displaced persons and an increase in the number of democratic states. The opposite pattern was seen before the end.
[ Peace and Conflict 2005: A Global Survey of Armed Conflicts, Self-Determination Movements, and Democracy [2][3]]Technology
A major feature of the Cold War was the arms race between the member states of the
Warsaw Pact and those of
NATO. This resulted in substantial scientific discoveries in many technological and military fields.
Some particularly revolutionary advances were made in the field of
nuclear weapons and
rocketry, which led to the
space race (many of the rockets used to launch humans and satellites into orbit were originally based on military designs formulated during this period).
Other fields in which arms races occurred include:
jet fighters,
bombers,
chemical weapons,
biological weapons,
anti-aircraft warfare,
surface-to-surface missiles (including
SRBMs and
cruise missiles),
inter-continental ballistic missiles (as well as
IRBMs),
anti-ballistic missiles,
anti-tank weapons,
submarines and
anti-submarine warfare,
submarine-launched ballistic missiles,
electronic intelligence,
signals intelligence,
reconnaissance aircraft and
spy satellites.
Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)
One prominent feature of the nuclear arms race, especially following the massed deployment of nuclear
ICBMs due to the flawed assumption that the manned bomber was fatally vulnerable to
SAMs, was the concept of deterrence via
assured destruction, later,
mutually assured destruction or "MAD". The idea was that the Western bloc would not attack the Eastern bloc or vice versa, because both sides had more than enough nuclear weapons to reduce each other out of existence and to make the entire planet uninhabitable. Therefore, launching an attack on either party would be suicidal and so neither would attempt it. With increasing numbers and accuracy of delivery systems, particularly in the closing stages of the Cold War, the possibility of a
first strike doctrine weakened the deterrence theory. A first strike would aim to degrade the enemy's nuclear forces to such an extent that the retalitatory response would involve "acceptable" losses.
Military forces from the countries involved, rarely had much direct participation in the Cold War—the war was primarily fought by
intelligence agencies like the
CIA (United States),
MI6 (Britain),
BND (West Germany),
Stasi (East Germany) and the
KGB (Soviet Union).
The abilities of
ECHELON, a U.S.-UK intelligence sharing organization that was created during World War II, were used against the USSR, China and their allies.
According to the
CIA, much of the technology in the
Communist states consisted simply of copies of Western products that had been legally purchased or gained through a massive espionage program.[https://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/96unclass/farewell.htm] Stricter Western control of the export of technology through
COCOM and providing defective technology to Communist agents after the discovery of the
Farewell Dossier contributed to the fall of Communism.
The origins of the term "Cold War" are debated. The term was used hypothetically by
George Orwell in 1945, though not in reference to the struggle between the USA and the Soviet Union, which had not yet been initiated. American politician
Bernard Baruch began using the term in April 1947 but it first came into general use in September 1947 when journalist
Walter Lippmann published a series of newspaper columns (and books) on US-Soviet tensions entitled
The Cold War.
Three distinct periods have existed in the Western scholarship of the Cold War: the traditionalist, the revisionist, and the post-revisionist. For more than a decade after the end of
World War II, few American historians saw any reason to challenge the conventional "traditionalist" interpretation of the beginning of the Cold War: that the breakdown of relations was a direct result of
Stalin's violation of the accords of the
Yalta conference, the imposition of Soviet-dominated governments on an unwilling Eastern Europe, Soviet intransigence and aggressive Soviet expansionism. They would point out that
Marxist theory rejected
liberal democracy, while prescribing a worldwide
proletarian revolution and argue that this stance made conflict inevitable. Organizations such as the
Comintern were regarded as actively working for the overthrow of all Western governments.
Later
New Left revisionist historians were influenced by Marxist theory.
William Appleman Williams in his 1959
The Tragedy of American Diplomacy and
Walter LaFeber in his 1967
America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945–1966 argued that the Cold War was an inevitable outgrowth of conflicting American and Russian economic interests. Some New Left revisionist historians have argued that U.S. policy of containment as expressed in the
Truman Doctrine was at least equally responsible, if not more so, than Soviet seizure of Poland and other states. Some date the onset of the Cold War to the
Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, regarding the U.S. use of nuclear weapons as a warning to the Soviet Union, which was about to join the war against the nearly defeated Japan. In short, historians have disagreed as to who was responsible for the breakdown of U.S.-Soviet relations and whether the conflict between the two superpowers was inevitable. This revisionist approach reached its height during the
Vietnam War when many began to view the U.S. and U.S.S.R. as morally comparable empires.
In the later years of the Cold War, there were attempts to forge a "post-revisionist"
synthesis by historians. Prominent post-revisionist historians include
John Lewis Gaddis. Rather than attribute the beginning of the Cold War to the actions of either superpower, post-revisionist historians have focused on mutual misperception, mutual reactivity and shared responsibility between the leaders of the superpowers. Gaddis perceives the origins of the conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union less as the lone fault of one side or the other and more as the result of a plethora of conflicting interests and misperceptions between the two superpowers, propelled by domestic politics and bureaucratic inertia.
Melvyn Leffler contends that
Truman and
Eisenhower acted, on the whole, thoughtfully in meeting what was understandably perceived to be a potentially serious threat from a totalitarian communist regime that was ruthless at home and that might be threatening abroad. Borrowing from the
realist school of international relations, the post-revisionists essentially accepted U.S. European policy in Europe, such as aid to Greece in 1947 and the
Marshall Plan. According to this synthesis, "Communist activity" was not the root of the difficulties of Europe, but rather a consequence of the disruptive effects of the
Second World War on the economic, political and social structure of Europe, which threatened to drastically alter the balance of power in a manner favorable to the U.S.S.R.
The end of the Cold War opened many of the archives of the Communist states, providing documentation which has increased the support for the traditionalist position. Gaddis has written that
Stalin's "authoritarian, paranoid and narcissistic predisposition" locked the Cold War into place. "Stalin alone pursued personal security by depriving everyone else of it: no Western leader relied on terror to the extent that he did. He alone had transformed his country into an extension of himself: no Western leader could have succeeded at such a feat and none attempted it. He alone saw war and revolution as acceptable means with which to pursue ultimate ends: no Western leader associated violence with progress to the extent that he did."[
4]
Overviews
* Ball, S. J. The Cold War: An International History, 1947–1991 (1998), British perspective
* Brzezinski, Zbigniew. The Grand Failure: The Birth and Death of Communism in the Twentieth Century (1989)
* Clarke, Bob. Four Minute Warning (2005), Tempus Publishing
* Flory, Harriette and Jenike, Samual. The Modern World 16th century to present. (1992)
* Friedman, Norman. The Fifty Year War: Conflict and Strategy in the Cold War. (2000)
* Gaddis, John Lewis. The Cold War: A New History (2005), recent overview
* Gaddis, John Lewis. Russia, the Soviet Union and the United States. An Interpretative History 2nd ed. (1990)
* Gaddis, John Lewis. Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (1987)
* Gaddis, John Lewis. Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (1982)
* LaFeber, Walter. America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945–1992 7th ed. (1993)
* Lundestad, Geir. East, West, North, South : Major Developments in International Politics since 1945 (1999). USA: Oxford University Press
* Mitchell, George. The Iron Curtain: The Cold War in Europe (2004)
* Ninkovich, Frank. Germany and the United States: The Transformation of the German Question since 1945 (1988)
* Paterson, Thomas G. Meeting the Communist Threat: Truman to Reagan (1988)
* Powaski, Ronald E. The Cold War: The United States and the Soviet Union, 1917–1991 (1998)
* Sivachev, Nikolai and Nikolai Yakolev, Russia and the United States (1979), by Soviet historians
* Ulam, Adam B. Expansion and Coexistence: Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917–1973, 2nd ed. (1974)
* Westad, Odd Arne The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of our Times (2006)
;Historiography
* Fitzpatrick, Sheila. "Russia's Twentieth Century in History and Historiography,"
The Australian Journal of Politics and History, Vol. 46, 2000
* Gaddis, John Lewis.
We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (1998)
* Kort, Michael.
The Columbia Guide to the Cold War (1998)
* Matlock, Jack E. "The End of the Cold War"
Harvard International Review, Vol. 23 (2001)
* Walker, J. Samuel. "Historians and Cold War Origins: The New Consensus", in Gerald K. Haines and J. Samuel Walker, eds.,
American Foreign Relations: A Historiographical Review (1981), 207–236.
* White, Timothy J. "Cold War Historiography: New Evidence Behind Traditional Typographies"
International Social Science Review, (2000)
* William Appleman Williams The Tragedy of American Diplomacy
(1958) (1988 edition: ISBN 0-393-30493-0)
** Berger, Henry W. ed. A William Appleman Williams Reader
(1992)
** Redefining the Past: Essays in Diplomatic History in Honor of William Appleman Williams
. Lloyd C. Gardner (ed.) (1986)
* Westad, Odd Arne (ed.) Reviewing the Cold War: Approaches, Interpretations, Theory'' (2000)
;Origins: to 1950
* Chen Jian, China's Road to the Korean War: Making of the Sino-American Confrontation (2004)
* Cumings, Bruce The Origins of the Korean War (2 vols., 1981–90), friendly to North Korea and hostile to US
* Gaddis, John Lewis. The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941–1947 (1972)
* Holloway, David . Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1959–1956 (1994)
* Goncharov, Sergei, John Lewis and Xue Litai , Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao and the Korean War (1993)
* Leffler, Melvyn. A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration and the Cold War (1992).
* Mastny, Vojtech. Russia's Road to the Cold War: Diplomacy, Warfare, and the Politics of Communism, 1941–1945 (1979)
* Levering, Ralph, Vladamir Pechatnov, Verena Botzenhart-Viehe, and C. Earl Edmondson. Debating the Origins of the Cold War (2001)
* Trachtenberg, Marc. A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945–1963 (1999) (ISBN 0691002738)
;Intelligence
* Aldrich, Richard J. The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence (2002).
* Ambrose, Stephen E. Ike's Spies: Eisenhower and the Intelligence Establishment (1981).
* Andrew, Christopher and Vasili Mitrokhin. The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (1999)
** Mitrokhin. Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin. The Mitrokhin Archive (1999). vol 1, on KGB
* Andrew, Christopher, and Oleg Gordievsky. KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev (1990).
* Bogle, Lori, ed. Cold War Espionage and Spying (2001), essays
* Dorril, Stephen. MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service (2000).
* Gates, Robert M. From The Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story Of Five Presidents And How They Won The Cold War (1997)
* Haynes, John Earl, and Harvey Klehr. Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (1999).
* Helms, Richard. A Look over My Shoulder: A Life in the Central Intelligence Agency (2003)
* Koehler, John O. Stasi: The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police (1999)
* Murphy, David E., Sergei A. Kondrashev, and George Bailey. Battleground Berlin: CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War (1997).
* Prados, John. Presidents' Secret Wars: CIA and Pentagon Covert Operations Since World War II (1996)
* Rositzke, Harry. The CIA's Secret Operations: Espionage, Counterespionage, and Covert Action (1988)
* Trahair, Richard C. S. Encyclopedia of Cold War Espionage, Spies and Secret Operations (2004), by an Australian scholar; contains historiographical introduction
* Weinstein, Allen, and Alexander Vassiliev. The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America"The Stalin Era (1999).
;1950s and 1960s
* Beschloss, Michael. Kennedy v. Khrushchev: The Crisis Years, 1960–63 (1991)
* Brands, H. W. Cold Warriors. Eisenhower's Generation and American Foreign Policy (1988).
* Brands, H. W. The Wages of Globalism: Lyndon Johnson and the Limits of American Power (1997)
* Brzezinski, Zbigniew. Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict, New York: Praeger (1961), ISBN 0674825454
* Chen Jian, Mao's China and the Cold War (2001)
* Divine, Robert A. Eisenhower and the Cold War (1981)
* Divine, Robert A. ed., The Cuban Missile Crisis 2nd ed. (1988)
* Freedman, Lawrence. Kennedy's Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam (2000)
* Fursenko, Aleksandr and Timothy Naftali. One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–1964 (1997)
* Kunz, Diane B. The Diplomacy of the Crucial Decade: American foreign Relations during the 1960s (1994)
* Navratil, Jaromir. The Prague Spring 68´ (1998)
* Mastny, Vojtech. The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years (1998)
* Melanson, Richard A. and David Mayers, eds., Reevaluating Eisenhower. American Foreign Policy in the 1950s (1986)
* Paterson, Thomas G. ed., Kennedy's Quest for Victory: American Foreign Policy, 1961–1963 (1989).
* Reynolds, David, ed. The Origins of the Cold War in Europe: International Perspectives (1994)
* Stueck, Jr. William W. The Korean War: An International History (1995)
* Vandiver, Frank E. Shadows of Vietnam: Lyndon Johnson's Wars (1997)
* Williams, Kirrian. The Prague Spring and its Aftermath : Czechoslovak Politics, 1968–1970'' (1997)
;Detente: 1969–1979
* Edmonds, Robin. Soviet Foreign Policy: The Brezhnev Years (1983)
* Garthoff, Raymond. Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan 2nd ed (1994), detailed narrative
* Isaacson, Walter. Kissinger (1992);
* Kissinger, Henry. White House Years (1979) and Years of Upheaval (1982)
* Nixon, Richard. Memoirs (1981)
* Ulam, Adam B. Dangerous Relations. The Soviet Union in World Politics, 1970–1982 (1983).
;Second Cold War: 1979–1986
* Brzezinski, Zbigniew. Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977–1981 (1983);
* Edmonds, Robin. Soviet Foreign Policy: The Brezhnev Years (1983)
* Mower, A. Glenn Jr. Human Rights and American Foreign Policy: The Carter and Reagan Experiences ( 1987),
* Smith, Gaddis. Morality, Reason and Power:American Diplomacy in the Carter Years (1986).
;End of Cold War: 1986–1991
* Beschloss, Michael, and Strobe Talbott. At the Highest Levels:The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War (1993)
* Bialer, Seweryn and Michael Mandelbaum, eds. Gorbachev's Russia and American Foreign Policy (1988).
* Gaddis, John Lewis. The United States and the End of the Cold War: Implications, Reconsiderations, Provocations (1992)
* Garthoff, Raymond. The Great Transition:American-Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold War (1994), detailed narrative
* Hogan, Michael ed. The End of the Cold War. Its Meaning and Implications (1992) articles from Diplomatic History online at JSTOR
* Kyvig, David ed. Reagan and the World (1990)
* Matlock, Jack F. Autopsy of an Empire (1995) by US ambassador to Moscow
* Shultz, George P. Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (1993).
;Economics and Internal Forces
* Heiss, Mary Ann. "The Economic Cold War: America, Britain, and East-West Trade, 1948–63" The Historian, Vol. 65, (2003)
* Hogan, Michael J. The Marshall Plan: America, Britain and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1947–1952 (1989)
* Keohane, Robert O. and Joseph S. Nye. Power and Interdependence (3rd Edition) (2000)
* Kunz, Diane B. Butter and Guns: America's Cold War Economic Diplomacy (1997)
* Morgan, Patrick M. and Keith L. Nelson (eds); Re-Viewing the Cold War: Domestic Factors and Foreign Policy in the East-West Confrontation (1997)
;Popular culture
* Boyer, Paul S. By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (1994)
* Mulvihill, Jason. "James Bond's Cold War Part I" Journal of Instructional Media, Vol. 28, (2001)
* Schwartz, Richard Alan. Cold War Culture: Media and the Arts, 1945–1990 (2000)
* Zeman, Scott C. "I Was a Cold War Monster: Horror Films, Eroticism and the Cold War Imagination"
* Shapiro Jerome F. Atomic Bomb Cinema: The Apocalyptic Imagination on Film (2001)
* Whitfield, Stephen J. The Culture of the Cold War (1996)
* Burdick, Eugene, Harvey Wheeler. Fail-Safe (1962)
;Primary sources: Documents and memoirs
* Acheson, Dean. Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (1992).
* Baruch, Bernard. The Public Years (1960).
* Etzold, Thomas and John Lewis Gaddis , eds., Containment: Documents on American Policy and Strategy, 1945–1950 (1978)
* Chang, Laurence and Peter Kornbluh , eds., The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1952 (1985)
* Khrushchev, Nikita. Memoirs:
** Khrushchev Remembers ed. Strobe Talbott (1991)
** Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament ed. Strobe Talbott (1987)
*** Khrushchev Remembers: The Glasnost Tapes ed. Jerrold Schechter (1989)
* Kissinger, Henry
** vol 1 White House Years (1979)
** vol 2 Years of Upheaval (1982)
** vol 3 Years of Renewal (1999), 1974–1976
* Nixon, Richard. Memoirs (1981)
* Shultz, George P. Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (1993)
* Westad and Hanhimaki (eds.) The Cold War: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts (2004)
*
under ground bunker *
The Cold War International History Project (CWIHP)*
The Cold War Files*
CNN Cold War Knowledge Bank comparison of articles on Cold War topics in the Western and the Soviet press between 1945 and 1991
*
People, states and agencies figuring in the Cold War*
The Reagan/Gorbachev Summits*
Cold War Veterans Association*
History of the Western allies in Berlin during the Cold War*
Russian Threat Perceptions and Plans for Sabotage Against the United States: Hearing before the Military Research and Development Subcommittee of the Committee on Armed Services held at the
House of Representatives of the
US Congress on October 26, 1999
*
The Cold War Museum*
People's history: The cultural cold war Information on the cultural element of the conflict
*
Video and audio news reports from during the cold war*
Annotated bibliography for the arms race from the Alsos Digital Library*
Twilight Struggle, a game on the Cold War*
WWW-VL: History: The Cold War 1945-1991*
CBC Digital Archives - Cold War Culture: The Nuclear Fear of the 1950s and 1960s
