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Cold War, The
The term is widely accepted in historical writings. It
refers to the epoch between 1947–8 and 1989–90. The
nature of the Cold War, its causes and effects, and the
reasons for its long duration are, however, contro-
versial. Its meaning would exclude Asia because of the
outbreak of wars there; the wars in Korea, Vietnam,
and Afghanistan made a difference to how the United
States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR), the two
superpowers, waged their global contest in Europe.
The situation in Europe resembled neither peace nor
2194
war; East–West Conflict: Confrontation and DeT tente
expresses the ambiguity, but this label is less eye-
catching.
1. The Concept and its Salience
The persistent central features of the Cold War are the
global contest between the US and the USSR, the
dependence of the allies on the security guarantee of
their respective superpower, and bipolarity. The latter
was reinforced in the core area, the arms race, due to
the widening gap between the extensive and highly
diversified weapons systems of the superpowers and
the arsenals of Britain, France, and the Peoples’
Republic of China (PRCh), the other three established
nuclear powers. This explains that American and
Russian writings hold to Cold War as a concept fitting
the entire epoch. It allows for distinguishing between
moments of imminent war—Cuba, October 1962, and
Yom Kippur war, October 1973—times of high
tensions and war outside Europe—Korea, 1950–53;
Vietnam, 1964–75; Afghanistan, 1979–88—long inter-
vals of deT tente, and even moments of concerted crisis
management (June 1967 Near East war) or collab-
oration (during the Laos crisis and Vietnam war in the
1960s and ending wars in Africa in the late 1980s).
This version pays less attention to the fact that
throughout the four decades not all parties to the Cold
War were involved on the same issue-at-stake and at
the same time. France joined Britain (UK) and the US
in 1948 in founding the West German state as the
Western allies’ response to Stalin’s anchoring of
Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and Czecho-
slovakia firmly into the Soviet security-zone, and
maintained staunch opposition to proposals for a
neutralized, but nationally rearmed united Germany
(Hitchcock 1998). Since the mid-1960s, France became
the spokesman for a Europe less dependent on the US
and discussing terms of settlement with ‘Russia.’ The
Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) converted Cold
War into cold peace with the ratification of Ost- und
Deutschland
ertraW ge (1970–3). Both governments co-
operated in defending deT tente in and for Europe; by
implication, this aspiration for a European peace-zone
rejected the American concept of the indivisibility of
the global contest between East and West. The PRCh,
the only principal ally the USSR ever had (1950–58\9),
made its peace with the US in 1972 on Pejing’s term of
‘One China.’ While the PRCh had provoked the US
during the 1950s to continuous nuclear sabre-rattling,
it turned its antihegemonic posture throughout the
1970s and 1980s against the USSR.
1.1 The Components of the Term
The definition refers to four aspects of the conflict: (a)
the ideological antagonism between the Western con-
cept of freedom of choice for the people of the domestic

regime and external alignments of their state and the
Soviet-imposed monopoly of the ‘workers’ and land-
labor party and subjugation to the community of
socialist states; (b) the geostrategic struggle for bases
of power-projection; (c) the domestic political contest,
but almost exclusively within Western countries, about
commitments to the military alliance or equidistance
to both of the superpowers; (d) the dispute about
where to draw the line between permissible and
noncompatible elements in the policy mix of market-
oriented and government-controlled economies. Of
these four components, the last became least im-
portant for refueling the confrontation; the conver-
gence of the mixed economies rather promoted the
idea that Osthandel, credit facilities, and technology
transfer might enhance not only ‘liberalization’ in the
East European economies, but also generate trans-
formation of the political system.
1.2 The Ideological Antagonism
The ideological antagonism was the first impulse for
confrontation, but it was also subject to changing
threat perceptions and shifts of emphasis in the
balance between confrontation and deT tente in the
overall relationship. The wider notion of East–West
Conflict posits the Cold War as a distinctive period
into the ideological struggle, originated in 1917–18,
between the Wilsonian Impulse and Lenin’s urge for
peoples’ democracy as the basis for securing peace
(Link 1980). From this perspective, Stalin and Truman
likewise took the lead in splitting the world along
‘alternative ways of life.’ Western leaders argued that
the West had to learn its lessons from the vain hope to
appease an expansionist regime. ‘No more Munichs’
informed the confrontation stance of containment as
the West’s answer to the external threat. The con-
comitant stance at the home-front is based on the
thesis that authoritarian regimes abuse state-power
against large parts of their own population; therefore
Communists must not be given a chance to occupy
crucial positions of government such as Interior,
Public Transport, or Justice.
Conversely, Communist ideology maintained that
capitalism on the one hand inspires the state to
prosecute the working-class and thus breeds fascism,
and on the other hand is inherently expansionist and
therefore knows no boundary to its domination. The
belief, however, that capitalist nations are bound to
fight for defeating rivals, made Stalin expect that
Britain would resist the US’ aspiration to become heir
to the British Empire. The new feature of the post-
World War II international system is that the US and
the UK were competitive partners in founding the
International Organizations destined to develop and
monitor rules of conduct for international trade,
currency exchange, and development aid (Gardner
1969). The UK and France, but also Italy, expected
the up-to-then reluctant US government to come to
Cold War, The
the rescue and infuse capital into the European
economics as the only strategy which could render
support to the parties willing to exclude Communists
from governments (Lundestad 1986). The formation
of Western-oriented governing coalitions ensured that
the European allies, as well as Japan, cooperated with
the US in the evolution of the International Economy,
to which the USSR and the PRCh were not negotiating
parties after the outbreak of the Cold War. Most allies
did not comply, however, with the American demand
to restrict ‘trading with the communist enemy,’ except
in conspicious moments of Soviet war activities.
The ideological component became a wasted asset
after its overexploitation during the first phase (1947–
53). Khrushchev’s condemnation of Stalin’s death toll
in February 1956 and the NATO allies’ perception
that the Kremlin was unlikely to launch a general war
on European territory (1956\7) put a break on the
momentum of ideology as a driving force in the
East–West conflict. But it was on the Kremlin to end
the system conflict. In 1987 Gorbachev rescinded the
Breshnev doctrine and made it known that hardliners
in Eastern European governments should not reckon
with Moscow calling on the Red Army to back up
unpopular communist regimes (Adomeit 1998).
1.3 The Long Duration of the Cold War
For explaining the longevity of the Cold War, the
account therefore has to focus on the other two factors:
the structures which emerged with the consolidation
and reaffirmation of the divisions of Europe and of
Germany, and the pecularities of the military–
geostrategic balance between the two sides.
1.3.1 The di
isions of Europe and Germany. The
key feature is the hinge between the two di
isions.
The stark contrast between Stalin’s refusal to con-
sider concessions on Poland, Bulgaria, and Romania
in exchange for American economic assistance and
his demand to have a say on questions concerning
primarily intra-West relations, e.g., the status of the
Ruhr area or of Norway, provoked the US and the
UK to tie their zones firmly to Western institutions
(Deighton 1990). The implementation of this basic
strategy was, however, complicated by clashes of
interest between the US, France, and Britain. These
tensions prevented them from advancing as far as the
USSR had with incorporating its German state, the
GDR, into the Soviet Empire. Hence they could not,
as wanted, negotiate from a position of strength, but
expected to be asked to give away on what ‘the West’
did not yet have, whereas the USSR would persist in
its refusal to put its reign over Eastern Europe on the
agenda. The stalemate was compounded, when the
reimposition of the Ulbricht regime in 1953 revealed
that the Kremlin considered the GDR as its west-side
lever for control over Poland and Czechoslovakia.
2195
Cold War, The
The structural impediment to a negotiated settle-
ment disappeared when Moscow tacitly bowed to
Germany’s entry into NATO (1955) and when the
‘West’ acknowledged the fact that the USSR was
strong enough to prevail in Eastern Europe (1956).
German Ostpolitik put the final stamp to the ‘norma-
tivity of the facts.’ On this platform, the so-called
Helsinki process, the Conference on Security and
Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), lingered on through-
out the 1973–89 period. Neither side was ready to
proceed towards peace-making.
The Cold War might have ended earlier if
Gorbachev’s predecessors had responded to the US
view that Germany’s double-bind into a US-centered
NATO and European integrated structures would
prevent Germany from positing a threat to the security
of the USSR (Schmidt 1993–5). Instead, Moscow’s
attempts to push the divisiveness of nuclear diplomacy
within NATO rather than wait for the outcome of
such conflicts provoked the ‘Atlanticists’ to close ranks
and reiterate the standard thesis that the West could
prevent the USSR from winning the Cold War if its
members resisted the temptation to court Moscow and
make separate deals with the USSR. The Soviet
leadership’s ‘stupidity’ is said to have saved the US or
NATO to get rearmament projects—such as NSC-68
or the 1979 dual-track decision—through.
1.3.2 The peculiarities of the military–geostrategic
balance. The key feature is the fundamental asym-
metry between the nature of America’s and Russia’s
predominance in their respective sphere. This asym-
metry is reinforced by the imbalance of military
forces between NATO-Europe and the USSR’s
forward deployed forces (Kugler 1993).
The advantage of the US in its global contest with
the USSR was that all other principal powers, in-
cluding Germany and Japan, were allied to the US.
This helped in the build-up of the international
economy, but not necessarily in defense. Conse-
quently, US diplomacy was absorbed as much in intra-
West crisis management as in the context of East–West
relations. The allies wanted to be assured that there
were no long-term security risks involved for them in
America’s option for sponsoring the resurgence of the
enemies and occupiers of World War II as strongholds
of the West. Having imposed limits on Germany’s and
Japan’s military status, the US could not reckon with
a defense contribution for some years to come; both
were prohibited to engage in ‘out-of-area’ defense
activities (Schmidt and Doran 1996).
By contrast, the USSR gained a formidable ally in
the PRCh, who was keen to test the credibility of the
American commitment to South Korea and Taiwan.
Although the USSR copied the West’s community
building by setting up COMECON (1949) and the
Warsaw Treaty Organisation 1955, the Kremlin relied
for exerting influence de facto on the penetration of the
2196
bloc partners’ central agencies: the State Party, Secret
Service, and top military echelon. The USSR also
made sure through logistic measures that the Soviet
military could operate from its allies’ territory inde-
pendently, and if need be without the consent of the
incumbent governments (Wolfe 1970).
The military imbalance between NATO-Europe and
the USSR existed throughout 1947 until the mid-
1980s. The US found no takers—except the FRG
from 1961 onwards—for its concept of balanced
collective forces in the sense that the US were the sole
provider of strategic forces, that is, weaponry pro-
jected to hitting targets located in the USSR, whereas
the allies would recruit the ground forces and tactical
air forces required for the defense of the region against
infiltration or surprise attacks. Britain and France
preferred to duplicate the US strategic role, albeit on a
much minor scale, and took the relaxation of tensions
in Europe and their entanglement in the legacies of
their imperial rule as the rationale for reducing their
force assignments to NATO.
2. The Intersection of Economic and Strategic
Decisions: The European Structure
The failure of the ‘Big Four’ to cooperate on a German
Peace Treaty is identified as a crucial turning point
towards the Cold War (Leffler 1992). Stalin did not
want to give the impression that the US, thanks to the
atomic bomb and its economic wealth, could impose
its will on the USSR; he therefore pressed his claims on
Iran, Turkey, during the Peace Conferences with
Germany’s war-time allies and in the Allied Control
Council. This in turn was taken in Washington as a
signal that hope of Russian cooperation must be
abandoned. Truman and Byrnes had been reluctant to
confront the USSR when the Cold War started over
the fate of Eastern European nations (1944–7). Now,
in view of the havoc the 1946–7 crisis wreaked on the
economies of Britain and France, the US government
conceived that Western Europe could not save itself
(Hogan 1992).
From there on, the ‘West’ displayed a dynamic of its
own. The first act was that the economic recovery of
Europe was said to require the inclusion of (West)
Germany; the price for getting France to change its
German policy was the assurance that the US and the
UK would back up the French quest for security
against a resurgent Germany. The second act followed:
Britain and France pleaded with Washington that the
Marshall Plan initiative would not suffice to attain
stability without an American security guarantee.
Against the background of the Berlin blockade,
Truman in October 1948 ordered that the US provide
the major counterbalance to the ‘ever-present threat of
the Soviet military power.’ In September 1948, the
Brussels Treaty Organization (BTO) had already
resolved that the defense of Western Europe should be

as far to the east (of West Germany) as possible.
Because this was beyond the means available to the
BTO and not yet compatible with the military strategy
of American and British defense planning, it was only
a question of developments in the Cold War that the
third issue be placed on the agenda: German re-
armament. The logic behind the build-up of con-
ventional forces sounded compelling: why do the old
allies expect the US to provide ground and air forces
and the Supreme Allied Commander to NATO’s
integrated forces with a view to realize the concept of
forward defense when they deny the indispensibility of
a sensible German defense contribution, on whose
territory the French in particular wanted to stop the
enemy’s offensive? At that time, however, all the US
military could offer was an air offensive to deter the
USSR; they did not yet want to rely on ‘the bomb’
(Ross), and the USSR had acquired by then (Fall
1949) an atomic capability.
The outbreak of the Korean War generated the fear
of a similar war-by-proxy in divided Germany. The
US did not only reverse its stance on what countries
were of absolute importance to US security by now
declaring Korea the test case of what became the
domino syndrome, that no US ally should fall prey to
a Communist invader, but also designated the
National Security Paper NSC-68 as the platform for a
massive conventional rearmament of the US, adequate
force deployment abroad and military aid to upgrade
the defense capabilities of its European and Asian
allies (May 1993).
The issue of German rearmament was divisive, but
the US compromised with France on the understand-
ing that German forces be integrated into a European
Defense Community (EDC), whereas the EDC would
delegate strategic planning and fixing force require-
ments to NATO. The project became the victim of
French domestic politics; the US and the UK had to
comply with the French request that no German
soldier be officially recruited until France had ratified
the EDC and German Contractual Agreements. The
demise of the EDC meant that Washington had to
forego the hope that US force deployment would be a
temporary stop-gap until the European allies, and
especially the FRG, were able to do more towards
meeting NATO’s minimum force requirements.
The parallel staged fourth act (1952–4) produced
the definiti
e structure of the Cold War in Europe: the
NATO, to which the FRG was finally admitted, had
made itself dependent on the credibility of the US (and
UK) strategic deterrent. This provoked the issue how
the USSR would react to the logic that NATO’s new
member would have to be equipped with the same
weaponry as the allied forces into which the Ger-
man divisions were to be incorporated. Chancellor
Adenauer made it clear that the FRG did not want
to provoke Moscow unnecessarily by dislocating
medium-range ballistic missiles on German soil, whose
later replacements might be able to hit targets in
Cold War, The
Russia, but he and his successors insisted on having at
least a crucial German vote in all decisions on the use
of nonstrategic weapons in NATO’s custody in case
deterrence to all types of war failed (Heuser 1998,
Trachtenberg 1999).
This final act of incorporating the two German
states into alliances dominated by the nuclear-strategic
superpowers had a far-reaching effect: plastering the
‘front-line’ states with short-range atomic weapons
was the best insurance premium that the Germans
would not launch war from their soil (Ullman 1991). As
long as the US and USSR stationed troops there and
resolved to maintain control over the warheads, the
danger of accidental war could be excluded. The
parallel to the military factor written into the strategic
landscape is the interest of the Western nuclear powers
in confirming the status quo and discuss on that
territorial basis the questions of putting ceilings on
rearmament. Separately, the two German states re-
launched their rivalry and demanded (1955–73) allies
and Third World countries alike to subscribe to the
Allein
ertretungsanspruch of the Western democratic
or peoples’ democratic German republic.
3. The History of the Concept, Major
De
elopments, and Empirical Results
The invention of the term is accredited to Walter
Lippmann who took issue with G. F. Kennan’s ‘X’-
article ‘Sources of Soviet Conduct.’ Kennan’s long
telegram of February 22, 1946 molded the agenda of
America’s containment policy. His arguments were
selectively used by top officials in Washington to assert
that the ‘Soviets’ will develop all means and methods
ranging from threat of military aggression via propa-
ganda warfare to clandestine activities to a degree
without precedent in history. Therefore, the US had
to strengthen its executive branch, introduce a
national security policy, establish a professional
intelligence agency, and develop an unassailable mili-
tary–industrial base (Leffler 1992, Paterson 1979).
The opposite Communist view emphasizes three
aspects: the economic aggressiveness of the long-
standing hegemonic US project to attain a ‘one-world
market’ and abuse of the open-door doctrine for
penetrating other nations’ economy; the manipulation
of anti-communism as a club to suppress claims for
social justice and equality of rights within the Ameri-
can and other Western capitalist systems; and
America’s acquisition of bases bordering on the USSR
for purposes of encirclement and monitoring inside
the USSR. In geostrategic terms the US became a direct
neighbor of the USSR, whereas the USSR required
long-distance bombers (it introduced such jets by
1955) and Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM)
to show the US its vulnerability. The strong engage-
ment of the US in the post-1990 contests about
Caucasian and Middle East oil and gas concessions
2197
Cold War, The

and pipeline routes indicates that the US–USSR financial means provided under the Marshall Plan,
rivalry did not end with the Cold War. Milward (1984) presents the thesis of the rescue of the
The ‘Revisionists’ (LaFeber 1991, Paterson 1979) nation-state. His complex argument also draws on the
disclaim that Stalin pursued an offensive strategy observation that at that time the West did not reckon
aiming at extending Soviet rule; they discern rather the with an immediate Soviet threat. The implication is
US’ responsibility for causing the Cold War. The that an unwarranted haste was imposed on a process
postrevisionist approach accounts for the Soviet as- which in any case depended on what the European
pect of the fundamental change in the Cold War since countries did to and for another, formally, US
about 1954–5, and explains the US interest in deT tente, assistance was tied to the Uniting of (Western) Europe
i.e., the coinciding interest in Long Peace (Gaddis and to parallel bilateral agreements between the US
1987). Moscow settled the Austrian question, tolerated and the recipient country.
the FRG’s entry into NATO, and opted for rec-
onciliation with Tito, the only East European leader
who had got away with breaking ranks with Stalin. 3.2 Competiti
e Cooperation Between the
The cumulation point was the declaration of the Superpowers
doctrine of peaceful co-existence. The Western allies’
By the end of the 1960s, researchers discerned the
match was tacit satisfaction with consolidating the
convergence of five developments which demonstrated
status quo after they had absorbed the FRG. Stability
the continuing relevance of the ‘competitive coop-
in Europe turned the UK’s, US’s, and France’s
eration’ between the superpowers for the changing
attention to the Third World. In reaction to Com-
structures of the Cold War: (a) Soviet policy shifted
munist China’s revolutionary foreign policy, the
towards accepting the US’s and Canada’s presence in
Soviet leadership in 1960 declared wars of liberation
Germany; (b) German Ostpolitik presumed the en-
from colonial rule legitimate and thus distinguished
gagement of the US in NATO; (c) de Gaulle realized in
peaceful co-existence in the developed world from just
the context of the Prague 1968 crisis that Breshnev’s
wars in the ‘southern’ part of the globe. In this sense,
Russia was no party to his vision that dissolving Cold
the East–West conflict was exported to the Third
War structures in the West, i.e., France’s disengage-
World.
ment from NATO’s military organization, might
The US resolved on noninterference in the internal
induce ‘Russia’ to allow for more evolution of national
affairs of the Soviet bloc and relaxation of tensions.
communist and then independent states in Eastern
The US was somewhat dependent on Russia’s re-
Europe; (d) the US embroilment in the Vietnam war
sistance to become the air and nuclear strategic arm of
caused a change in the intellectual climate; the abuse
Pejing’s violent anti-American activities in the Far
of the USSR being the cause of every evil became
East. The emerging picture is that the US, in parallel
obsolete; instead the US became the villain in the
with the Berlin and Cuba crises (1958–62), wanted to
piece; (e) new developments in arms technology—e.g.,
concert the superpowers’ activities in China’s ‘hin-
high-precision weaponry as a substitute for atomic
terland’ (former ‘Indochina’) in the sense that both
weapons; MIRV-technique; antiballistic missiles—
exert pressure on the parties to a conflict amenable to
were beyond Britain’s and France’s capability to
their respective influence and through such agreement
follow on; this reinforced NATO Europe’s self-elected
attain the neutralization of the conflict area, including
dependency on the US with respect to security and
the instalment of all-party or power-sharing coalition
defense (Hanrieder 1989).
governments, however unstable (Nelson 1995).
Renewed US pressures on its allies to extend their
conventional military capabilities and share the bur-
3.1 European Perspecti
es on the Cold War dens for the ‘Defense of the West’ more evenly, the re-
escalation of the strategic arms race between the
A different strand in the history of the concept is the
superpowers under the aegis of limitation treaties, and
perception of the impact of the other Western powers,
the evidence presented by German Ostpolitik that
especially Britain and France, on how the struggle was
negotiations with Russia generate tolerable results,
waged (Greenwood 2000, Bozo 1991). The contri-
combined to raise the basic questions: what are the
bution is twofold: (a) the Cold War is viewed as a new
costs of the ongoing Cold War? on what terms could
stage in great power rivalry. These studies stress the
the conflict be ended and converted into politico-
Europeans’ interest in devoting resources to restoring
economic competition? (Garthoff 1985).
or preserving their assets and commitments overseas
(Kent 1993, Bossuat 1992). (b) The second contri-
bution takes a different direction: it challenges the
3.3 From the Second Cold War to the End of the
assumption that Western Europe by 1947–8 was in
Cold War
such a critical state that the leading nations had to
‘invite’ the US to reconstruct and protect Western The USSR, after getting Germany’s pledge to observe
Europe. Examining the economic potential of the the invulnerability of the territorial status quo in
European nations and how their governments used the Europe, revived the global contest with the US, which

2198

was immersed in domestic turbulences and disputes
with all its allies about oil and the dollar. The Kremlin
demonstrated its self-confidence by expanding Soviet
naval forces and establishing bases, however short-
lived, stretching from Vietnam via Mozambique,
Somalia, and Angola to Central America. In contrast
to the 1950–3 period, the US catchword ‘arch of crises’
did not resonate well with its allies. The latter wanted
to develop deT tente, notwithstanding the fear, expressed
by German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in 1977, that
the Soviets’ new equipment (Backfire bombers; SS-20)
made NATO Europe hostage to the Kremlin’s whip of
the will. This raised the question whether the USSR
was about to win the Cold War or whether the Kremlin
was overstretching the country’s resources and would
thus expose the USSR sooner rather than later to the
need for radical changes in her system. The wishful
thinking that the USSR would fall victim to its
inability of continuous adaptation worked out after
three decades of aspiring military strategic and pol-
itical parity with the US. Some authors argue that
Reagan’s defence build-up deliberately forced the
Soviet leadership to acknowledge the failure of its
domestic system and hence the USSR’s inability to
persist in the contest and sustain bipolarity. (Adomeit
1998, Gaddis 1987, Wells’ article in Hogan 1992). The
way the global contest ended invited Americans to
believe that they had won the Cold War.
4. Methodological Problems
The immersion of the concept Cold War in the
perpetual clash of interests between East and West and
within each ‘bloc’ subjects the interpretator on the one
hand to the political climate of his own times, and may
thus reload or de-emphasize the contentions of the
past; on the other hand, access to newly available
records reveals new insights into previous phases of
the Cold War and thus demands rethinking the past
but in a different way. Getting the balance right
between these two operations is difficult when knowl-
edge about one party to the conflict is the result of
generations of research, whereas the more recent
presentations of findings from Soviet, GRD, Czech, or
Polish sources are both less systematic or structured
and more exposed to be taken instantly as evidence for
one interpretation e.g., of Stalin or Krushchev or
another. The task to study the records compre-
hensively, but also be prepared to modify one’s
assessments in response to newly available empirical
evidence is prone to collide with the other obligation,
namely to explain what were the basic causes of a
conflict and which causes—meaning in politics: sins of
commission and omission—are accountable for what
developments.
A second main problem is the exact phase-by-phase
and overall intersection between the interpretation of
the collaboration leading to the evolution of ‘Western’
structures in the economic sphere and the assessment
Cold War, The
of the concomitant events in the politico-strategic
(military) sphere, where the USSR appeared to be the
winner, but then ended the Cold War on western
terms.
5. Future Direction of Research
‘East’ and ‘West’ waged the struggle by all means and
methods except ‘hot’ war in the area stretching from
Vancouver to Wladivostok. Hence, research must
attend to different subject areas and to the expertise
developed in the many scholarly communities. Some
areas of research, e.g., diplomatic or intellectual
history and biography, are more established than
others. The impact of intelligence on policy-makers is
a relatively new area of systematic research. Inter-
national cooperation projects have done much to
promote nuclear history and strategic studies, but the
history of the military alliances and of national defense
organizations and policies depend still on the auth-
orities’ grant of access as well as clearance and
permission for publishing inspected material. The
studied ambiguity of the political leaderships and the
top military echelon about the worth of strategic
nuclear weapons in case deterrence should fail and
about the use of short-range atomic weapons deserves
further study in order to know the implications of
nuclear weaponry on the conduct of Cold War
diplomacy and governmental guidance to their mili-
tary.
Future research should be more systematic in the
sense of extending the conceptualization beyond the
national and bilateral focus to the regional context
and intensifying the approach by addressing the
fundamental questions about the changing nature of
the struggle, its costs, the persistence or recreation of
patterns of conflict, and above all the question whether
the Cold War structure affected all other bilateral or
intraregional conflicts or whether re-emerging older
conflicts pervaded the East–West conflict, so that the
parties to such conflicts used the Cold War for the
purpose of engaging wealthy allies on their side.
See also: Arms Control; Communism, History of;
Contemporary History; Diplomacy; Eastern Euro-
pean Studies: History; Eastern European Studies:
Politics; International Relations, History of; Military
and Politics; National Security Studies and War
Potential of Nations; Peacemaking in History;
Revolutions of 1989–90 in Eastern Central Europe;
Second World War, The; Soviet Studies: Politics;
War, Sociology of; Warfare in History
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Copyright # 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd.
All rights reserved.
Coleman, James Samuel (1926–95)
James S. Coleman was born on May 12, 1926 in
Bedford, Indiana. He died on March 25, 1995 in
Chicago, Illinois. Coleman was among the most im-
portant American sociologists of his generation. By
importantly influencing both intellectual and policy
debate, Coleman was unique among sociologists. By
making important contributions to a large range of
areas of scholarly concern, including mathematical
sociology, sociology of education, and social theory,
Coleman was unique among social scientists.
1. Life
James Samuel Coleman was born into a family of
teachers, with roots in the landed gentry of the South
on his father’s side, and in various places in the Mid-
West on his mother’s side. His grandfather, Samuel,
was a minister. The family moved frequently in
Coleman’s youth between places in Ohio, Arkansas,
and Kentucky to settle, finally, in Louisville, Ken-
tucky, where Coleman graduated from Manual High
School in 1941. The origin is important for his basic
sociological interests and positions. The marginality
from moving around between southern and northern
American cultures and the diversity of his origins
instilled a strong curiosity about social relations. The
teacher occupations of both parents created a strong
interest in schools and education. Samuel, the minister
grandfather, and the mother were important for
Coleman’s preoccupation with moral issues that pro-
foundly influenced his work.
Coleman’s choice of sociology as a vocation came
quite late. He graduated from Purdue University in
1949, with a degree in Chemical Engineering, and his
first job was as a chemist with Eastman Kodak. He
had almost no undergraduate education in any social
science. Nonetheless, in 1951 he began graduate study
in sociology at Columbia University. Coleman’s dual
attraction to science and moral engagement made
sociology an impeccable choice, or so it would seem in
1951. He had found industry frustrating and a likely
eventual career in management unappealing. He
wanted to devote his life to discovery and concluded it
could only be about people, their relationships, and
their social organization.
Columbia’s sociology department gave Coleman
four intense years and three important teachers: Paul
ISBN: 0-08-043076-7