There have been reconstruction successes, such as rebuilding a national highway loop left crumbling after decades of war, constructing or improving thousands of schools, and creating a network of health clinics.
The Cold War, he emphasized, was many wars, constructed in many different models, fought in many different ways: a nuclear standoff between the superpowers, insurgencies in developing countries, a struggle of ideas in Europe.
"You sit down with people, and you constantly see behavior patterns and words that reflect a cold-war construct.
Noble Conflict (Doubleday £12.99) is a powerful thriller embracing a thoughtful examination of propaganda and how concepts such as heroism, terrorism, sacrifice and a just war are constructed.
From his experience in the Spanish Civil War, Malraux constructed his most pessimistic political novel, L'Espoir (1937; Man's Hope, or Days of Hope).
During the war, Hitler constructed an enormous complex near Nuremberg; it included a vast "Congress Hall" and a series of rallying grounds, famous the world over as the site of Hitler's terrifying mass speeches.
Fort Randolph, the second Confederate stronghold in the area during the Civil War, was constructed only months after Fort Wright, in Fall 1861.
He was known for so-called war gaming, constructing somehow cynical scenarios about the likely consequences of nuclear war.
The first was to remove the causes of war by constructing a new social and international order based on justice and freedom.
Basing his staunch president on Georges Clemenceau, who saw France through the last year of the first world war, Simenon constructs a meticulous and astute psychological portrait of a public figure struggling to come to terms with his own mortality.
