ABSTRACT
The cold war dominated US foreign policy after World War II. The United States pursued a policy of “liberation” of countries from communism, but the Soviets and their eastern European allies quashed these efforts. A potential “thaw” in the cold war after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953 proved short lived. The division of Europe, the nuclear arms race, militarization of fore ign policy, and propaganda battles persisted. Absence of East–West diplomacy continued to characterize the cold war until the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which took the world to the brink of nuclear war in 1962.
