5th Edition
The United States emerged from World War II possessing economic and military power unprecedented in world history. Henry Luce, publisher of Time Magazine, saw the period as the beginning of the "American Century" - an era in which the United States could shape events and promote American values throughout the world. Within a few short years, however, the predicted "Pax Americana" had been displaced by an emerging bipolar international system. Increasingly the United States was locked in an ideological, economic, political, and, at times, military struggle with a new world power, the Soviet Union.

While most historians agree that some sort of U.S.-Soviet rivalry was likely after the common enemies had been defeated, few insist that the Cold War, in the particular form that it took, was inevitable. Contrary to the typical textbook presentation of the 1945-47 period as a sequence of predictable Soviet actions and U.S. responses, U.S. perceptions of the Soviet Union at the time were confused and the policies being discussed ranged along a wide continuum of possibilities.The Origins of the Cold War: U.S. Choices After World War II brings students back into this formative period to experience the conflicting perceptions and participate in the process through which U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union was shaped.