This first truly international history of the Korean War argues that its timing, its course, and its outcome made it in effect a substitute for World War III. Stueck draws on recently available materials from seven countries, plus the archives of the United Nations, presenting a detailed narrative of the diplomacy of the conflict and a broad assessment of its critical role in the Cold War.

In Stueck's view, contributors to the UN cause in Korea provided support not out of any abstract commitment to a universal system of collective security but because they saw an opportunity to influence U.S. policy. At the moment of Chinese intervention in Korea in the fall of 1950, as in other instances prior to the armistice in July 1953, NATO allies and Third World neutrals succeeded in curbing American adventurism and so in blocking the spread of hostilities to other parts of the world.

While conceding the tragic and brutal nature of the war, Stueck suggests that it helped to prevent the occurrence of an even more destructive conflict in Europe.