Diplomacy Ends Here

The Cold War, the long standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union, ran from the late 1940s to 1991 and never became a direct war between the two. Most of it was conducted in rooms: summits, treaties, back channels.

In 1963, after the Cuban Missile Crisis showed how dangerous slow communication could be, Washington and Moscow set up a direct link, the hotline, which went into service on August 30. It was a teletype, not the red telephone of the movies.

The bear is one of the oldest shorthand figures in political cartooning. British cartoonists were drawing Russia as a bear in the late 1700s, and Russians have long used the bear themselves, as a sign of strength, as a mascot, and in logos.

The picture stages the standoff as an arm wrestle. A man in a cowboy hat and brown leather jacket, a revolver at his hip, locks hands over a tree stump with a large brown bear, both leaning in. Behind them a big American flag flies in an amber sky, jets cross the upper right trailing white contrails, and three books lettered COLD WAR are stacked at lower left. The caption, DIPLOMACY ENDS HERE, sits in gold capitals at the bottom right.