Perhaps the most important point to be apprehended by the student of the history of international relations in the Cold War era is that the documentary record is incomplete, that American and British archival material is being released thirty years after the events at best. Moreover, there is evidence indicating that the integrity of the American record has been compromised. Other materials, Chinese and Soviet for example, are being released very selectively, often to privileged nationals. Little was seen by Western scholars before the mid-1980s — and not much more has been seen since. Finally, most of what we know about the late 1960s and thereafter is provided by participants who are never disinterested, journalists, and those who write "contemporary history," an oxymoron if there ever was one.

A second point worth noting is that enormously important work, much of it theoretical, has been done by political scientists and political economists. In particular the work of Robert Gilpin, Robert Jervis, Peter J. Katzenstein, Robert O. Keohane, Stephen D. Krasner, and Jack Snyder provides valuable guides to an understanding of what happened and why — and what is likely to happen tomorrow. See, for example, Gilpin, The Political Economy of International Relations (Princeton, 1987); Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, 1976); Katzenstein, ed., Between Power and Plenty (Madison, 1978); Keohane, After Hegemony (Princeton, 1984); Krasner, ed., International Regimes (Ithaca, 1983); Snyder, Myths of Empire (Ithaca, 1991).