Before and after the fall : world politics and the end of the Cold War

As the Cold War came to a close in 1991, US President George H. W. Bush famously saw its shocking demise as the dawn of a 'new world order' that would prize peace and expand liberal democratic capitalism. Thirty years later, with China on the rise, Russia resurgent, and populism roiling the Western world, it is clear that Bush's declaration remains elusive. In this book, leading scholars of international affairs offer fresh insight into why the hopes of the early post-Cold War period have been dashed and the challenges ahead. As the world marks the thirtieth anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union, this book brings together historians and political scientists to examine the changes and continuities in world politics that emerged at the end of the Cold War and shaped the world we inhabit today. Cover Halftitle Title Copyright Dedication Epigraph Contents Figures Tables Contributors Preface Introduction Part I | Sources of Continuity and Change 1 | Overcoming Stagnation 2 | Mikhail Gorbachev 3 | Peace Through Strength and Quiet Diplomacy 4 | “Keeping Them Well Behind” 5 | Only One Way Forward Part II | Continuity and Change Across the 1989/1991 Divide 6 | The Nuclear Age 7 | Legitimating Primacy After the Cold War 8 | Russia’s Rejection of Liberal Politics 9 | Continuity and Change in Russian Grand Strategy 10 | The Stickiness of Strategy 11 | Avoiding the Limelight Part III | Toward a New World Order? 12 | Great Powers and the Spread of Autocracy Since the Cold War 13 | Seeds of Failure 14 | The United States and NATO After the End of the Cold War 15 | The Historical Legacy of 1989 16 | Requiem for a Cold War 17 | After Primacy 18 | World Order across the End of the Cold War Index "No theory of politics or reading of history anticipated the end of the Cold War. This has made it a particularly lively subject of academic debate in the three decades since its demise, as scholars have argued over why and how the Cold War ended, and what those explanations suggest about our theoretical understandings of international politics. Broadly speaking, the participants in these debates can be divided into two camps, materialists and ideationalists. The materialists, led by William Wohlforth and his co-authors, maintained that the Soviet Union's peaceful international retrenchment in the late 1980s accorded with its relative decline in the international balance of power, and that any ideational innovation that enabled this retreat was endogenous to changes in material power"-- Provided by publisher Leading historians and political scientists explore the changes and continuities in world politics that emerged from the end of the Cold War. Using history and theory, this volume highlights the complex ways in which the collapse of communism three decades ago continues to shape contemporary geopolitics.