Introduction

It is generally believed that for those born after the Second World War, few moments in history have appeared to offer the certainty and, in some respects, stability as the Cold War. This statement may be misleading because approximately 55 out of the 80 years since the end of hostilities in 1945 were years of the Cold War (1947– 1991). In hindsight, the Cold War was characterized by a high degree of uncertainty, as there were times when a nuclear war might have started, such as during the Cuban Missile Crisis; it was also the backdrop to much domestic instability and, aside from proxy wars, many covert and illegal operations aimed at supporting one or the other side of a conflict. Yet, the two blocs and the ideological confrontation made international affairs look simple:

Part of the problem was also a comparative one. The 1990s replaced the Cold War with a disorderly clash of civilizations, in which threats could come from many sources and parts of the world. Samuel Huntington, for instance, argued that ‘the fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future’ (Huntington 1993, 22). Zygmunt Bauman saw the world order from a diametrically opposed perspective to that of bipolarity, one he defined as ‘liquid modernity’ (2000, 2). Looking at the Cold War through this lens, according to Hanhimaki (2014, 674), was also a ‘poor – instrumentalist – reading of history’. Some might argue, however, that it was a necessary simplification, because intellectuals must ultimately provide a tangible synthesis of the complexity to fulfil their social mission of sharing knowledge.