The end of the cold war exposed the tendency in the European state system for those ‘great powers’ which might have been expected to manage the system to become steadily more reluctant to accept the commitment this requires, in terms of responsibility for the security of other states. The West had not sought the collapse of European communism and was, in many ways, comfortable with the stable framework provided by the cold war.

The ‘contract of 1990’ is identified as the means of managing the transition, as Moscow was persuaded to tolerate German unification within NATO and retreat from its Empire in return for reassurances from the West that these changes would not be exploited. Many recent problems can be understood in terms of the need to renegotiate this contract.