The Cold War describes the situation in international relations that lasted from the end of the Second World War in 1945 until 1989/90. It was characterized by an ideological conflict between communism and capitalism, and between the two dominant economic and military powers at the time, the Soviet Union (USSR) and the USA. The era of the Cold War is described as bipolar since during that time many states aligned themselves with the political and economic ideologies of one or the other of the two opposing blocs.
The continent of Europe was split in two by the Cold War. Already by 1946 Winston Churchill described an ‘iron curtain’ dividing Europe. Broadly, the continent was divided between the capitalist states of Western Europe, which were allied to the USA, and the communist Central and Eastern Europe Countries (CEECs), which were referred to as satellite states of the USSR. More drastically, Germany was divided in 1949–90 into two ideologically distinct states: the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG—West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR—East Germany). The Berlin Wall and the closed border between the two states became an iconic symbol of the Cold War in Europe.
Western Europe’s response to the perceived threat of communism was, economically, to pool resources through the process of European integration into what is now the European Union (EU), and militarily to participate in the western alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). However, during the Cold War a number of neutral states remained outside of the EU (e.g. Austria, Finland, Sweden) and NATO (e.g. Austria, Ireland, Finland and Sweden).
The Cold War ended in the late 1980s following a change in policy by the communist regime in the USSR under Mikhail Gorbachev. This brought change domestically, through the policies of perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness), and also in terms of foreign policy as the USSR decided to no longer intervene in the domestic conflicts of satellite states (the Brezhnev Doctrine). In Europe, the end of the Cold War was marked by a series of revolutions in 1989 in Central and Eastern Europe, symbolized by the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989. The communist regimes of many CEEC states were rapidly transformed into capitalist liberal democracies, and the GDR unified with the FRG on 3 October 1990.
In the post-Cold War era the continent of Europe has been both reunited and divided by conflict. Following the end of the ideological conflict three neutral western European states joined the EU and eight former communist states of Central and Eastern Europe became members on 1 May 2004. However, in south-eastern Europe, the break-up of communist Yugoslavia led to widespread conflict and ethnic cleansing. In the post-Cold War era a new conflict in international relations is emerging between freedom and security, whereby liberal democracies feel justified in defending their values against the threat—perceived or real—of conflict, terrorism and ‘rogue’ states. For example, NATO dispatched troops to defend human rights during the Kosovo crisis in 1999, and the USA led a war against Iraq in 2003, having accused that country of possessing weapons of mass destruction.
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