The Cold War in the 1950s

A study of the domestic and external conditions that shaped the interaction between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1950s.

The Cold War in the 1950s describes the domestic and external conditions that shaped the interaction between the United States and the Soviet Union during the 1950s. It claims that the United States and the Soviet Union attained mastery of the international order by projecting universalist values that responded to the particularist markers of the domestic order that was generated in the 1950s. The geopolitical orientation adopted by the superpowers in the 1950s was shaped by the way in which their societies developed politically, socially and economically in the decade. The main argument of the book is that the quest for the mastery of the international order that informed superpower relations in the 1950s was guided by the need to respond to the local circumstances that emerged in the United States and the Soviet Union. The particularist markers that arose in the 1950s led to the establishment of a geopolitical project underpinned by certain universalist values that could be applied in order to build the superpowers’ sphere of influence.