This collection of papers all have broad assumptions underpinning them. The Cold War has been used all too often to set the parameters of what is important to explain in international affairs in the postwar period. While not denying the importance of the sequence of events that is drawn together by the colligation, all the authors challenge the adequacy of the Cold War as a framework for explaining international relations. The authors point to relationships, events and policy developments that do not fit in the framework, raise questions about the nature of explanation offered by the use of the concept of the Cold War, and demonstrate the one dimensional understandings that adherence to a Cold War structuring of the events of the postwar period produces.