THE COLD WAR did not culminate in World War III as so many in the 1950s and 1960s feared. Yet it spawned a host of military engagements that affected millions of lives. This book is the first comprehensive, multinational overview of military affairs during the early Cold War.

A major theme of this account is the relationship between government policy and military preparedness and strategy. Jonathan M. House tells of generals engaging in policy confrontations with their governments and political leaders—among them Anthony Eden, Nikita Khrushchev, and John F. Kennedy—many of whom made military decisions that hamstrung their own political goals. In the pressure-cooker atmosphere of atomic preparedness, politicians as well as soldiers seemed instinctively to prefer military solutions to political problems.

Now, more than fifty years after the events House describes, understanding the origins and trajectory of the Cold War is as important as ever. House's account of the complex relationship between diplomacy and military action directly relates to the insurgencies, counterinsurgencies, and confrontations that now occupy our attention across the globe.