Cold warrior

Cold warrior is a phrase used to describe the men and women involved in the shaping and executing of American and Soviet policy during the Cold War.

Since the end of the Cold War, the term has sometimes been used pejoratively to imply that a person's views are obsolete. For example, a politician who is unfriendly to a Communist state might be labeled a cold warrior and accused by his or her critics for viewing the world in terms of Communist and non-Communist states and treating a potential trading partner as an enemy. Alternatively, a general who advocates missile defense might be called a cold warrior and attacked by his critics for not focusing on anti-terrorist measures instead.

Cold warriors include both shapers of the Cold War and those who oversaw the decline of the Soviet Union. Notable figures include:

• Dean Acheson
• Richard M. Bissell, Jr.
• Leonid Brezhnev
• Zbigniew Brzezinski
• Patrick J. Buchanan
• William F. Buckley, Jr.
• George H. W. Bush
• Jimmy Carter
• John Foster Dulles
• Ho Chi Minh
• Chalmers Johnson
• Lyndon B. Johnson
• Mikhail Gorbachev
• George F. Kennan
• John F. Kennedy
• Nikita Khrushchev
• Kim Il-sung
• Jeane Kirkpatrick
• Henry Kissinger
• William Lederer
• Curtis LeMay
• Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.
• George Marshall
• Robert McNamara
• Richard Nixon
• Ronald Reagan - Notable for the Reykjavík Summit, & the Strategic Defense Initiative.
• Syngman Rhee
• Adlai Stevenson
• Maxwell D. Taylor
• Margaret Thatcher
• Harry Truman - Notably for the Truman Doctrine and the Korean War

References

• Brands, H. W. Cold Warriors. Eisenhower's Generation and American Foreign Policy (1988).