ABSTRACT
That the Cold War was constitutive of American self-identity rather than a threat to it has now become quite clear in the clamor to find an alternative source of danger against which to define the boundaries of the USA. America’s Cold War goal of containing the USSR can be understood in terms of a moving frontier between the USA and its alter ego, not unlike the frontier that characterized narratives of the country’s initial western expansion. If there is a story about the nation’s origins at the origin of every nation (Bennington 1990: 121), then for America this originary story is of the Frontier; the apparent closure of this narrative at the end of the Cold War must have profound effects on US identity.
