Revisiting La Guerre Froide

"Similarly, David Engerman writes in his chapter that the Cold War was 'at its root a battle of ideas.' He traces American liberalism and Soviet communism back to their origins, noting that after World War I, both Woodrow Wilson and Vladimir Lenin made premature claims of victory over the old order. The eventual demise of capitalism was the fundamental message of communism, and vice versa. 'No other value system is so wholly irreconcilable with ours,' NSC-68, the April 1950 manifesto issued by hard-liners in the Truman administration, said of communism. 'With such broad aspirations,' Engerman argues, 'permanent coexistence was impossible.' The manner of the Cold War's end only confirms the point. When Mikhail Gorbachev tried to recast the doctrinaire and sclerotic Soviet system, it simply broke."

Lawrence D. Freedman in Foreign Affairs reviews The Cambridge History of the Cold War, edited by Melvyn Leffler and Odd Arne Westad.