This work provides a critique of existing understandings of the Cold War prevalent in International Relations, and offers an alternative perspective on the Cold War founded on a historical materialist approach. The focus of the text's argument is an analysis of what we mean by politics and international relations, and how such assumptions have come to determine our understanding of the Cold War. The author focuses on the relationship between state and society. Viewed from this perspective, the state and modern conceptions of politics can be seen as products of a capitalist modernity, in which politics is based on the separation of the spheres of politics in the state and economics in civil society. What follows from this is that politics and international relations of the USA and the USSR were based on a different domestic constitution of politics. The text develops this argument by discussing the nature of the state, military power and social revolution. This analysis is followed by an account of Soviet and American relations towards the Cuban and Vietnamese Revolution. These provide not only historical examples of particular types of revolutionary state, but also an argument for why these events and their political consequences led to the military involvement of the superpowers and international crises.