Relative to the Cold War, the period is characterized by stabilization and disarmament. Both the United States and Russia significantly reduced their nuclear stockpiles. The former Eastern Bloc became democratic and was integrated into world economy. Most of former Soviet satellites and three former Baltic Republics were integrated into the European Union and NATO. In the first two decades of the period, NATO underwent three series of enlargement and France reintegrated into the NATO command.
Russia formed CSTO to replace the dissolved Warsaw Pact, established strategic partnership with China and several other countries, and entered the non-military organizations SCO and BRICS. Both latter organizations included China, which is a fast rising power. Reacting on the rise of China, the Obama administration rebalanced strategic forces to the Asia-Pacific region.
With the coming to power of Vladimir Putin, Russia gradually became more authoritarian and its foreign policy more aggressive. This resulted in deterioration of relations with the Western world. The deterioration culminated with sanctions, military aid to Ukraine, international isolation, and a prospect of further NATO enlargement.
Faced with the threat of growing German and Italian fascism, Japanese Shōwa statism, and a world war, the Western Allies and the Soviet Union formed an alliance of necessity during World War II.[1] After the Axis powers were defeated, the two most powerful states in the world became the Soviet Union and the United States. Both federations were called the world's superpowers.[1] The underlying geopolitical and ideological differences between the recent allies led to mutual suspicions and shortly afterward, they led to confrontation between the two, known as the Cold War, which lasted from about 1947 to 1991. It began with the second Red Scare and it ended with the fall of the Soviet Union, but some historians date the end of the Cold War to the Revolutions of 1989 or they date it to the signing of the world's first nuclear disarmament treaty, which occurred in 1987.
Ronald Reagan's campaign for the U.S. presidency in 1980 was focused on the rebuilding of the country. Over the next couple of years, the economy was recovering, new foreign policies were implemented, and the market was booming with independence. By contrast, the Soviet Union's economy was declining, its military power was declining, and the Soviet leaders overestimated the amount of influence which they had in the world. The United States' newfound superpower status allowed American authorities to better engage in negotiations with the Soviet, including terms that would favor the U.S. According to Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme SovietLeonid Brezhnev (in office 16 June 1977 – 10 November 1982), reducing the tension between the US and USSR was necessary in order to focus on fixing economic issues in the USSR. He theorized that rebuilding the USSR would ensure greater economic competition with the US.[2]
At the dawn of the post–Cold War era, the Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis wrote that the characteristics of the new era are not yet certain but he was certain that the characteristics of it would be very different from the characteristics of the Cold War era, which meant that a turning point of world-historical significance took place:
The new world of the post–Cold War era is likely to have few, if any, of these [Cold War] characteristics: that is an indication of how much things have already changed since the Cold War ended. We are at one of those rare points of 'punctuation' in history at which old patterns of stability have broken up and new ones have not yet emerged to take their place. Historians will certainly regard the years 1989–1991 as a turning point comparable in importance to the years 1789–1794, or 1917–1918, or 1945–1947; precisely what has 'turned,' however, is much less certain. We know that a series of geopolitical earthquakes have taken place, but it is not yet clear how these upheavals have rearranged the landscape that lies before us.[3]
During the Cold War, much of the policy and the infrastructure of the Western world and the Eastern Bloc had revolved around the capitalist and communist ideologies, respectively, and the possibility of a nuclear warfare. The end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union caused profound changes in nearly every society in the world. It enabled renewed attention to be paid to matters that were ignored during the Cold War and has paved the way for greater international cooperation, international organizations,[4] and nationalist movements.[2] The European Union expanded and further integrated, and power shifted from the G7 to the larger G20 economies.
The outcome symbolized a victory of democracy and capitalism which became a manner of collective self-validation for countries hoping to gain international respect. With democracy being seen as an important value, more countries began adopting that value.[2] Communism ended also in Mongolia, Congo, Albania, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Angola. As of 2023, only five countries in the world are still ruled as communist states: China, Cuba, North Korea, Laos, and Vietnam.
The United States, having become the only global superpower, used that ideological victory to reinforce its leadership position in the new world order. It claimed "the United States and its allies are on the right side of history."[5] This new world order is referred to as "liberal hegemony" in international relations theory. Using the peace dividend, the United States military was able to cut much of its expenditure, but the level rose again to comparable heights after the September 11 attacks and the initiation of the War on Terror in 2001.[6] Accompanying NATO expansion, Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) systems were installed in Eastern Europe.[7] However, from a relatively-weak developing country, China appeared as a fledgling emerging superpower. That created new potential for worldwide conflict.[7] In response to the rise of China, the United States has strategically "rebalanced" to the Asia-Pacific region, though at the same time, began to retreat from international commitments.[8]
Government, economic, and military institutions
The end of the Cold War also coincided with the end of apartheid in South Africa. Declining Cold War tensions in the later years of the 1980s meant that the apartheid regime was no longer supported by the West because of its anticommunism, but it was now condemned with an embargo. In 1990, Nelson Mandela was freed from prison and the regime began steps to end apartheid. This culminated in the first democratic elections in 1994, which resulted in Mandela being elected as President of South Africa.
Many other Third World countries had seen involvement from the United States and/or the Soviet Union, but solved their political conflicts because of the removal of the ideological interests of those superpowers.[13] As a result of the apparent victory of democracy and capitalism in the Cold War, many more countries adapted these systems, which also allowed them access to the benefits of global trade, as economic power became more prominent than military power in the international arena.[13] However, as the United States maintained global power, its role in many regime changes during the Cold War went mostly officially unacknowledged, even when some, such as El Salvador and Argentina, resulted in extensive human rights violations.[14]
Technology
The end of the Cold War allowed many technologies that had been off limits to the public to be declassified. The most important of these is the Internet, which was created as ARPANET by the Pentagon as a system to keep in touch after an impending nuclear war. The last restrictions on commercial enterprise online were lifted in 1995.[15] The commercialization of the Internet and the growth of the mobile phone system increased globalization (as well as nationalism and populism in reaction).
In the years since then, the Internet's population and usefulness have grown immensely. Only about 20 million people (less than 0.5 percent of the world's population at the time) were online in 1995, mostly in the United States and several other Western countries. By the mid-2010s, more than a third of the world's population was online.[16]
^"The Cold War, the Long Peace, and the Future," Diplomatic History, 16/2, (1992): p 235.
^Mohapatra, J. K., & Panigrahi, P. K. (1998). "The Post–Cold War Period: New Configurations". India Quarterly. 54 (1–2): 129–140. doi:10.1177/097492849805400111. S2CID157453375.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Condoleezza Rice, "Promoting the National Interest," Foreign Affairs, 79/1, (January/February 2000): p 45.
Aziz, Nusrate, and M. Niaz Asadullah. "Military spending, armed conflict and economic growth in developing countries in the post–Cold War era." Journal of Economic Studies 44.1 (2017): 47-68.