What enables the wise sovereign and good general to strike and conquer, and achieve things beyond the reach of ordinary men, is foreknowledge.
Sun Tzu, On the Art of War (500 B.C.)
A century hence, if the world has not reverted to savagery, students of history may learn that the year of Dwight Eisenhower's inauguration and Joseph Stalin's death was a significant milestone. In midsummer 1953, however, the shape of the new era was not yet apparent. In Washington and Moscow, men unaccustomed to the exercise of national power were still groping...