ABSTRACT
The Cold War may be over, but the debates over its origins and evolution persist. The arguments between traditionalists, realists, and revisionists still simmer, and they have been enriched and refined by new interpretations such as those referred to as “postrevisionist,” “corporatist,” and “world systems.” Historians want to know how the Cold War got started and why. Not content to look only at the personalities of Stalin, Roosevelt, Truman, and Churchill, they are studying the bureaucratic and political institutions as well as examining the impact of economics, ideology, geopolitics and strategy. Historians of US foreign relations now use not only the documents of the State Department and the personal manuscript collections of key officials but also the records of the Department of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Army, Navy, and Air Force, the Treasury Department and the Economic Cooperation Administration, the business community and labor unions, Congressional committees and political parties.
