ABSTRACT
The costs of World War II were even more staggering than those of the Great War twenty-five years earlier. Estimates of deaths, both military and civilian, run as high as 55 million. Some parts of the world, such as Europe and Korea, were divided into hostile camps by what became known as the Cold War. The Congress, which had grudgingly knuckled under to the executive branch's domination of foreign policy during the war, began flexing its muscles. Events beginning in 1948 escalated the Cold War to yet another level. More and more, the Cold War was defined as a kind of zero-sum game in which every square mile of territory around the globe had to be contested lest it "fall" to international communism. The collapse of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, Germany's reunification, and the profound changes that are taking place within the Soviet Union herald a new era in international relations, the precise outlines of which are not yet clear.
