Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-31T19:44:03.793Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

24 - An ‘incredibly swift transition’: reflections on the end of the Cold War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2010

By
Adam Roberts
Edited by
Melvyn P. Leffler  and
Odd Arne Westad
Melvyn P. Leffler
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
Odd Arne Westad
Affiliation:
London School of Economics and Political Science
Get access

Summary

The end was dramatic, decisive, and remarkably peaceful: a rapid succession of extraordinary events, symbolised above all by the opening of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the end of the USSR in December 1991. It provokes the question: what factors caused this conclusion of the long-drawn-out and fateful rivalry of the Cold War; and how did interpretations of these events impinge on international relations in the post-Cold War era?

Since these events, some beguilingly simple answers have been offered, always linked with simple policy prescriptions. This tendency, while by no means unique to the United States, has been particularly prevalent there. Some have seen the wave of democratisation around the world, of which the end of the Soviet empire was an important part, as leading towards a secure future thanks to the beneficent workings of the democratic peace. Some have seen the end of the Cold War as a triumph of American values and might, leading to the conclusion that US power could be freely used as an instrument for world-historical change. Some, having previously seen the Cold War as the problem of international relations, believed that its ending must mean that the future of world order would be completely different from its past. Such views exerted a pull on policy-makers after the end of the Cold War and shaped their actions.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the Cold War , pp. 513 - 534
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Campbell, Kurt M., ‘Prospects and Consequences of Soviet Decline’, in Nye, Joseph S., Allison, Graham T., and Carnesale, Albert (eds.), Fateful Visions: Avoiding Nuclear Catastrophe (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1988).Google Scholar
Connelly’s, Matthew chapter in this volume. 4 Philip Windsor, City on Leave: A History of Berlin 1945–1962 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1963) and 257.Google Scholar
Davy, Richard, ‘The Strain on Moscow of Keeping a Grip on its European Empire’, The Times, London, 18 December 1980.Google Scholar
Diggins, John Patrick, Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007).Google Scholar
Dobrynin, Anatoly, In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to America’s Six Cold War Presidents, 1962–1986 (New York: Random House, 1995).Google Scholar
,European Community in ‘Anatoly Chernyaev’s Notes from the Politburo Session, 21 January 1989’, Cold War International History Project Bulletin, issue 12/13, ‘The End of the Cold War’ (Fall/Winter 2001).
Gaddis, John Lewis, ‘International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold War’, International Studies, 17, 3 (Winter 1992/1993).Google Scholar
Kennan], X [George, ‘The Sources of Soviet Conduct’, Foreign Affairs, 25 (July 1947) –79.Google Scholar
Kirkpatrick, Jeane J., Dictatorships and Double Standards: Rationalism and Reason in Politics (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982).Google Scholar
Kissinger, Henry, Observations: Selected Speeches and Essays, 1982–1984 (London: Michael Joseph and Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1985).Google Scholar
Kramer, Mark, ‘The Collapse of East European Communism and the Repercussions within the Soviet Union’, Journal of Cold War Studies, 5, 6, and 7 (2003–2005), 3–64, and 3–96.Google Scholar
Lenin, V. I., Pol’noe sobranie sochinenii [Complete Collected Works], 5th ed., vol. XXXI (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1962).Google Scholar
Matlock, Jack, Autopsy on an Empire: An American Ambassador’s Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union (New York: Random House, 1995)Google Scholar
Menges, Constantine, The Twilight Struggle: The Soviet Union v. the United States Today (Washington, DC: AEI Press, 1990).Google Scholar
Péczynski, Z. A., ‘Poland: The Road From Communism’, Special R. B. McCallum Lecture (Oxford: Pembroke College, [1982]);Google Scholar
Reagan, Ronald, 1982 (hereafter PPP: Reagan, plus year) (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1983) –47.Google Scholar
English, Robert D. trans., Chernyaev, My Six Years with Gorbachev, (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2000).Google Scholar
Shultz, George P., Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York: Scribner’s, 1993) –71 and 527–38.Google Scholar
Trotsky, Leon, The Russian Revolution: The Overthrow of Tzarism and the Triumph of the Soviets, trans. by Max Eastman (New York: Doubleday, 1959).Google Scholar
Waltz, Kenneth, ‘The Origins of War in Neorealist Theory’, in Rotberg, Robert I. and Rabb, Theodore K. (eds.), The Origins and Prevention of Major Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).Google Scholar
Weinberger, Caspar W., ‘Arms Reductions and Deterrence’, Foreign Affairs, 66 (Spring 1988).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
,Western Europe in Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World (London: Collins, 1987), ch.,
Wiseman, Geoffrey, Concepts of Non-Provocative Defence: Ideas and Practices in International Security (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×