V o L u m e I : a d

In December 1991, the presidents of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus cre-

ated a loose confederation known as the Commonwealth of Independent

States (CIS). Eight other republics subsequently joined, and the CIS for-

mally came into being that same month. Gorbachev resigned as president on

31 December, and the Soviet Union was officially dissolved.

The Cold War ended—fortunately—with a whimper rather than a bang.

Few knowledgeable observers predicted that it would occur as it did. Most

assumed that the Soviet Union was incapable of reforming itself and saw the

Cold War ending only after the military defeat of the Soviet Union or if some

sort of internal, violent revolution were to occur in the USSR. Almost no

one  had perceived the fragility and weakness of the economic and social

structures in one of the world’s superpowers that ultimately led to its demise.

Different dates have been advanced as the end of the Cold War. One

is November 1990, when the Conference on Security and Cooperation in

Europe (CSCE) met in Paris and signed the Conventional Forces in Europe

Treaty. All European states were represented at the conference, save Alba-

nia. In July 1991 the Warsaw Pact officially disbanded. Another possible end-

ing date for the Cold War is 1991 in general, when events in the Soviet

Union, including the failed August 1991 coup in Moscow and the December

dissolution of the Soviet Union, destroyed the political structures of Soviet

communism. Finally, an argument can also be made for a date of November

1992, when William J. Clinton defeated George H. W. Bush, the last Cold

War president, in the U.S. presidential election. Clinton’s elevation to the

presidency marked a political shift in emphasis away from foreign affairs to

the resolution of domestic problems.

One of the great ironies of the Cold War was the rapid rebuilding of

Japan and Germany. These two well-disciplined, hardworking peoples prof-

ited handsomely from the Cold War in the sense that the Western powers

needed them as allies against the Soviet Union and therefore encouraged

their rapid economic development. In West Germany’s case, this need was so

great as to allow the rearmament of that nation in 1955, which would have

been considered far-fetched in 1945. By the end of the Cold War, Germany

was the dominant economic power in Europe, while Japan occupied the

same position in Asia.

Of course, the end of the Cold War did not extinguish international ten-

sions and bloodshed. Problems in the Middle East remained unresolved;

Yugoslavia broke apart in bloodshed that threatened to erupt into wider con-

flict and eventually triggered armed NATO intervention; Iran and Iraq were

continuing concerns; civil war and famine remained endemic on the African

continent already being ravaged by AIDS; nuclear proliferation widened,

especially with the breakup of the Soviet Union, and the danger of terrorists

securing nuclear weapons intensified; violence continued to plague Sri Lanka;

and dalliance with nuclear weapons by the Democratic People’s Republic of

Korea remained an ongoing source of concern for the West. If anything, the

breakup of the bipolar world increased, rather than lessened, challenges fac-

ing the world’s diplomats.

Spencer C. Tucker

Course of the Cold War (1950–1991)

47

---

See also

Acheson, Dean Gooderham; Afghanistan War; Bay of Pigs; Berlin Crises; Berlin Wall;

Brezhnev Doctrine; Carter, James Earl, Jr.; Carter Doctrine; Castro, Fidel; China,

People’s Republic of; Cuban Missile Crisis; De Gaulle, Charles; Détente;

Dubchek, Alexander; Dulles, John Foster; Eden, Sir Anthony, 1st Earl of Avon;

Eisenhower, Dwight David; European Defense Community; European Eco-

nomic Community; Geneva Conference (1954); Geneva Conference (1955);

German Democratic Republic; Germany, Federal Republic of; Glasnost; Gor-

bachev, Mikhail; Hungarian Revolution; Indochina War; Kennedy, John Fitz-

gerald; Khrushchev, Nikita; Kim Il Sung; Korean War; MacArthur, Douglas;

Mao Zedong; McCarthyism; Nagy, Imre; Nasser, Gamal Abdel; Nehru, Jawa-

harlal; Nixon, Richard Milhous; Nixon Doctrine; Ostpolitik; Perestroika; Powers,

Francis Gary; Prague Spring; Reagan, Ronald Wilson; Rhee, Syngman; Sino-

Soviet Split; Soviet Union; Sputnik; Stalin, Josef; Strategic Defense Initiative;

Suez Crisis; Tito, Josip Broz; Truman, Harry S.; U-2 Incident; United Nations;

United States; Vietnam War; Warsaw Pact; Yeltsin, Boris

References

Ball, Simon J. The Cold War: An International History, 1947–1991. New York: St. Mar-

tin’s, 1998.

Beschloss, Micahel R., and Strobe Talbott. At the Highest Levels: The Inside Story of the

End of the Cold War. Boston: Little, Brown, 1993.

Crockatt, Richard. The Fifty Years’ War: The United States and the Soviet Union in World

Politics, 1941–1991. New York: Routledge, 1995.

Fontaine, Andre. History of the Cold War, 1917–1966. 2 vols. New York: Pantheon, 1968.

Gaddis, John Lewis. The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War. New York:

Oxford University Press, 1989.

———.  We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. New York: Oxford University

Press, 1997.

McCormick, Thomas J. America’s Half-Century: United States Foreign Policy in the Cold

War and After. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.

Painter, David S. The Cold War: An International History. New York: Routledge, 1999.

Seton-Watson, Hugh. Neither War nor Peace: The Struggle for Power in the Postwar World.

New York: Praeger, 1960.

Walker, Martin. The Cold War: A History. New York: Henry Holt, 1994.

Zubok, Vladislav, and Constantine Pieshakov. Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From

Stalin to Khrushchev. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996.

48

Course of the Cold War (1950–1991)

---