The Cold War: A Very Short Introduction

Citation

McMahon, R. J. (2021). The Cold War: A Very Short Introduction (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. Very Short Introductions.

Chapter Summary

The second edition has about 160 pages of text in eight chapters, with illustrations, maps, text boxes on key figures and documents, further reading arranged by chapter, and an index. Seven chapters follow the chronology from the Second World War to 1990; one thematic chapter looks at the Cold War's effects within societies. McMahon, a historian of American foreign relations, argues that perceived security needs and fears shaped American and Soviet decisions far more than economic or territorial ambitions, and the publisher notes that the new edition uses recent scholarship and newly available documents to give fuller treatment of the Vietnam War, the global politics of the 1970s and the end of the Cold War.

Chapter 1: The Second World War and the destruction of the old order

The opening chapter describes the devastation of 1945 and the collapse of the pre-war international system, and explains the lessons each future superpower drew from the war. For American policy-makers, McMahon argues, the war taught that national security had to be defined broadly and globally, and that the United States could never again allow hostile states to threaten it as the Axis had; the Soviet outlook was shaped by the war's devastation, by Stalin's rule and by Marxist-Leninist ideology.

Chapter 2: The origins of the Cold War in Europe, 1945–50

This chapter follows the breakdown of the wartime alliance: disputes over Eastern Europe and Germany, the containment strategy of 1947, the Marshall Plan and the Soviet response that the world was now divided into two camps, the confrontation over West Berlin, the Brussels Pact and the North Atlantic Treaty. McMahon distinguishes a Soviet empire largely imposed on Eastern Europe from an American "empire by invitation" based on a partnership born of common security concerns.

Chapter 3: Towards "Hot War" in Asia, 1945–50

The Cold War's spread to Asia is traced through the American occupation and recovery of Japan, the Chinese communist victory in 1949, the beginnings of the Vietnamese struggle against French rule with support from Mao's China, and the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, the first direct military clash between American and communist forces. A text box introduces Ho Chi Minh.

Chapter 4: A global Cold War, 1950–8

The Korean War intensified and geographically expanded the conflict. The chapter examines the militarization of containment and West German rearmament, superpower competition for influence in the newly independent nations of the Third World, the Middle East (including the Baghdad Pact and the Suez crisis), Indochina after the French defeat, and the Soviet bloc after Stalin, from Khrushchev's secret speech to the Warsaw Pact and the Hungarian revolt.

Chapter 5: From confrontation to détente, 1958–68

McMahon calls the years 1958–62 the most hazardous phase of the Cold War: the Taiwan Strait crisis, the U-2 incident, the Berlin crisis and the Vienna summit, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, whose resolution and consequences for the Soviet nuclear build-up and for the Western alliance are examined in detail. The chapter then follows the deepening American war in Vietnam and the first moves towards arms control, ending with the Tet offensive of 1968.

Chapter 6: Cold wars at home

The only thematic chapter has two parts. The first treats decolonization, state formation and Cold War geopolitics in the Third World, stressing the agency of Third World actors who tried to use the superpower conflict for their own ends, and the human cost of wars made deadlier when the Cold War was superimposed on them. The second examines the Cold War's domestic impact, including anti-communist politics in the United States, defence spending, consumerism, and the Vietnam War's role in exposing the costs of American hegemony.

Chapter 7: The rise and fall of superpower détente, 1968–79

The chapter explains why the United States under Nixon and Kissinger and the Soviet leadership sought détente, and follows its achievements, including the SALT negotiations, agreements on Berlin and the Helsinki Final Act of 1975 (summarized in a box on its three "baskets"). It then shows how détente came under siege through competition in the Third World, from Angola to the 1973 Middle East crisis, and ended with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Chapter 8: The final phase, 1980–90

The last chapter covers Reagan's military build-up, the Strategic Defense Initiative, the shooting down of a Korean airliner in 1983, support for anti-communist insurgents from Afghanistan to Nicaragua, and tensions within the Western alliance over Poland and sanctions. McMahon presents Gorbachev's accession in 1985 as the most critical turning point of the final phase, credits Reagan's willingness to abandon deeply held convictions, and ends with the fall of the Berlin Wall and German unification inside NATO in 1990.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–3: Origins

• Security and fear: McMahon's emphasis on perceived security needs and fears, rather than economic or territorial ambition, as the driver of superpower policy.
• Containment: the American strategy, from 1947, of limiting Soviet power through aid, alliances and military strength.
• Empire by invitation: the idea that American hegemony in Western Europe rested on partnership, in contrast with the imposed Soviet sphere in the east.

Chapters 4–6: Globalization of the Conflict

• Third World: the newly independent states over which the superpowers competed, and whose leaders sought to turn that competition to their advantage.
• Peaceful coexistence: Khrushchev's 1956 formula for relations with the capitalist powers.
• Cold wars at home: the domestic political, economic and cultural effects of the conflict.

Chapters 7–8: Détente and the End

• Détente: the easing of superpower tensions in the late 1960s and 1970s through negotiation and arms control.
• Helsinki Final Act: the 1975 accords on European borders, cooperation and human rights.
• Strategic Defense Initiative: Reagan's 1983 programme to develop defences against nuclear missiles.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A clear interpretive thesis. The argument that security fears, conditioned by different cultures, ideologies and historical experiences, drove both superpowers gives the narrative a unifying explanation that students can test chapter by chapter.
• International rather than bilateral. The publisher describes it as a truly international history, and the structure bears this out: Asia has its own chapter, the Third World is treated both in the global chapters and in Chapter 6, and Western European allies appear as actors rather than bystanders.
• Current scholarship in a short space. The second edition draws on recent work and new documents, and the further reading, arranged by chapter, includes studies from the 2000s and 2010s on topics such as Stalin's strategy in Europe, Mao's China and the end of the Cold War.
• Helpful apparatus. Maps of Korea, the Middle East and other theatres, photographs and text boxes on figures such as Ho Chi Minh and documents such as the Helsinki Final Act support readers new to the period.

Limitations

• Mainly diplomatic and political history. Most chapters follow decisions by leaders in Washington and Moscow; social and cultural history is concentrated in a single thematic chapter.
• Stops in 1990. The publisher states that the book covers 1945–1990; the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the post-Cold War world are outside its narrative.

Where It Fits in the Course

McMahon is the shortest route into the Cold War in a course on twentieth-century history and is best read before the longer books. Odd Arne Westad's The Global Cold War is a much fuller study that puts interventions in the Third World at the centre; McMahon's Chapter 6 and his treatment of Asia prepare the ground for it. William Keylor's The Twentieth-Century World and Beyond is an international history since 1900 that provides the wider diplomatic context before 1945 and after 1990, beyond McMahon's dates.

Eric Hobsbawm's The Age of Extremes interprets the whole short twentieth century from 1914 to the collapse of the Soviet Union, so it frames the Cold War within a longer story; McMahon himself cites Hobsbawm in his discussion of the Third World. Mark Mazower's Dark Continent reads Europe's twentieth century as a contest between liberal democracy, fascism and communism, and so sets the division of the continent described in McMahon's Chapter 2 in a longer European perspective, and William Duiker's Contemporary World History is a broad textbook survey in which the Cold War is one strand among many.

How to Use This Book

No specialist knowledge is needed beyond a general awareness of the Second World War; the book suits first-year history and international relations students and anyone preparing for a module on the post-war world.

• Read in order. The chronological chapters build on one another; Chapter 6 can be read at any point after Chapter 4.
• Core chapters: Chapters 1–2 for origins and McMahon's thesis, Chapter 5 for the crises of 1958–62, and Chapter 8 for the end of the Cold War.
• Make a timeline while reading, marking each crisis and agreement, and note for each whether McMahon explains it mainly by security fears.
• Test the thesis. Choose one episode, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and ask whether security, ideology or economic interest best explains it, using the chapter's further reading.
• Move on to depth. Use Westad for the Third World, Mazower for Europe and Keylor for the wider international system.