The End of the Cold War and a New World Order

For over forty years two superpowers divided the globe into rival camps.

After 1945 the world was bipolar: the United States led the capitalist, democratic West through NATO, while the Soviet Union led the communist East through the Warsaw Pact. Europe was split by what Churchill called an Iron Curtain, symbolised by the Berlin Wall (built 1961).

• Competition took the form of an arms race, a space race and proxy wars (Korea, Vietnam, Angola).
• Both blocs sought allies across Africa, Asia and Latin America.
• The threat of nuclear war made direct superpower conflict too dangerous - hence a 'cold' war.

By the mid-1980s deep structural weaknesses had built up inside the USSR.

The reforms meant to save the Soviet Union ended up hastening its collapse.

Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party in March 1985. To modernise a failing system he launched two reforms: glasnost ('openness' - more free speech and criticism) and perestroika ('restructuring' - limited market reforms).

• Glasnost allowed people to voice grievances the state had long silenced.
• Perestroika loosened central control but disrupted the economy further.
• Gorbachev also ended the Brezhnev Doctrine, signalling the USSR would no longer use force to prop up Eastern European communist governments.

Once Moscow would no longer intervene, communist governments fell one after another.

In 1989 a wave of largely peaceful revolutions swept Eastern Europe. Poland held partly free elections won by Solidarity; Hungary opened its border; and on 9 November 1989 the Berlin Wall fell, its checkpoints overwhelmed by crowds.

• Czechoslovakia's peaceful 'Velvet Revolution' ended communist rule.
• In Romania the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was overthrown and executed.
• The images of ordinary people breaking down the Berlin Wall became the symbol of the Cold War's end.

1. June 1989 Solidarity wins partly free elections in Poland
2. 9 Nov 1989 The Berlin Wall falls
3. Dec 1989 Revolutions across Eastern Europe; Malta Summit
4. Oct 1990 Germany is reunified
5. July 1991 The Warsaw Pact is dissolved
6. Aug 1991 A hardline coup against Gorbachev fails
7. 26 Dec 1991 The Soviet Union is formally dissolved

As the outer empire fell, the USSR itself broke apart into fifteen independent states.

Glasnost had also awakened nationalism inside the USSR. The Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia) and others demanded independence. In August 1991 communist hardliners staged a coup against Gorbachev; it collapsed within days, largely discredited when crowds and Boris Yeltsin resisted it.

• The failed coup shattered the authority of both the Communist Party and Gorbachev.
• One by one the Soviet republics declared independence.
• On 26 December 1991 the USSR was formally dissolved and Gorbachev resigned; the Cold War was over.

With the USSR gone, the United States stood as the world's only superpower - a 'unipolar moment'.

A new world order... freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace. US President George H. W. Bush, address to Congress, 11 September 1990

Leaders spoke of a new world order in which nations would cooperate through the United Nations rather than divide into hostile blocs. Some thinkers even declared the triumph of liberal democracy and free markets as the model for the future.

• The USA became the dominant military, economic and cultural power.
• Old certainties disappeared and new conflicts (ethnic, regional) emerged.
• Critics argued the 'new order' mostly served Western interests.

The end of the Cold War accelerated the integration of the world economy and culture.

The collapse of the Soviet bloc reshaped the politics of apartheid's final years.

The apartheid government had long justified repression as a defence against the rooi gevaar ('red danger') of communism. As the Cold War ended, this argument lost much of its force, and pressure for negotiation grew. On 2 February 1990 F. W. de Klerk unbanned the ANC, PAC and SACP, and on 11 February 1990 Nelson Mandela was released.

• The Soviet Union had been an important backer of the ANC and SACP.
• Its collapse weakened the ANC's external support but also removed the West's fear of a 'communist takeover' in South Africa.
• Many historians see the end of the Cold War as one factor that helped make a negotiated settlement possible.

Historians disagree about what mattered most - a strong analysis weighs both.

The events of 1989-1991 reshaped politics, economics and daily life across the globe.

The end of the Cold War closed a defining chapter of the twentieth century. It ended the nuclear stand-off between the superpowers, opened former communist states to democracy and markets, and accelerated globalisation - but it did not bring the lasting peace many had hoped for.

• New conflicts emerged, including ethnic wars in the former Yugoslavia.
• The United States became the dominant world power, at least for a time.
• Debates over inequality, migration and identity still shape today's globalised world.

Use these CAPS-style questions to test causation, source analysis and extended writing.

Summary: Between 1989 and 1991 the Soviet bloc collapsed - driven by economic weakness, Gorbachev's reforms and popular revolutions - ending the Cold War. The result was a single-superpower, globalising world, and, in South Africa, part of the changing context of the transition to democracy.