The term "brinkmanship" was originally coined by United States Secretary of State John Foster Dulles during the height of the Cold War.[citation needed] The term came from the political Hungarian theory of pushing the military to the brink of war in order to convince another nation to follow your demands. In an article written in Life Magazine, Dulles defined his policy of brinkmanship as "The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art." During the Cold War, this was used as a policy by the United States to coerce the Soviet Union into backing down militarily.