Fought on what to Westerners was a remote peninsula in northeast Asia, the Korean War was a defining moment of the Cold War. Here, William Stueck presents a fresh analysis of this war's major diplomatic and strategic issues. Drawing on a cache of newly available information from archives in the United States, China, and the former Soviet Union, he provides an interpretive synthesis for both scholars and general readers. Beginning with the decision to divide Korea in 1945, he analyzes first the origins and then the course of the conflict. He takes into account the balance between the international and internal factors that led to the war, and examines the difficulty in containing and eventually ending the fighting. Stueck's crisp yet in-depth analysis combines insightful treatment of past events with a suggestive appraisal of their significance for present and future.