With all the "flashpoints" during the Cold War era, why was there never a major, "hot" war? Listen in to a debate on that subject, as featured on the weekly CNN program "Postscript" -- which accompanies the COLD WAR series.

CNN World Affairs Correspondent Ralph Begleiter, Russian historian Vladislav Zubok and American scholars Jim Hershberg and John Bolton consider whether the world is at threat from another global conflict in the post-Cold War era.

Zubok is one of the leading historians of the Soviet side of the Cold War and the author of "Inside the Kremlin's Cold War." He has studied extensively in Soviet and American archives and has taught classes on the Cold War at Amherst College, Ohio University in Athens and Stamford University. In 1993, Zubok was employed by the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies in Washington, and since then has worked at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo and is now a fellow at the National Security Archive in Washington.

Hershberg is an assistant professor of history and international affairs at George Washington University. He is the former director of the Cold War International History Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington and author of several books on Cold War history, including "James B. Conant: Harvard To Hiroshima And The Making Of The Nuclear Age."

Bolton is senior vice president of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. He was assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs in the Bush administration, during which he formulated Washington's U.N. policy for the Middle East, Central America and other trouble spots.