Learning from the Cold War

An ingenious look at the Cold War—and how it can help America move forward

Adding a fresh perspective to the debate about America’s options in the war on terror, this lucid retrospective by one of the most admired voices in the national security arena answers an important and largely ignored question: How can the brilliance and energy of the great Cold War thinkers be recaptured and applied to the strategic challenges posed by transnational terrorism? In recounting the failures and successes of American strategists during the Cold War, Jonathan Stevenson synthesizes a massive amount of information from past and present to remind us that protecting the United States today will take more than good intelligence—it will also require exceptional imagination.