"The Cold War really began with the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917; and it triggered a hot war in 1939 as soon as the British and French squandered the chance to secure a firm military alliance with the Soviet Union." Michael Jabara Carley. 1939: The Alliance That Never Was and the Coming of World War II. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1999.
"Our Cold War foreign policy truly began with George F. Kennan's famous article, signed "X," published in Foreign Affairs in July of 1947, in which Kennan argued for a "firm and vigilant containment" of a Soviet Union that was imperially, rather than ideologically, motivated. " The Coming Anarchy, by Robert D. Kaplan, February 1994 Atlantic