The Cold War and its Ending in “Long-Duration” International History

Abstract

This essay is a kind of flight forward (fuite en avant). Contributors to the Festschrift in which this was originally published were asked to discuss the most significant development in international relations in the twentieth century and its likely implications for the twenty first. My choice, an obvious one, was the end of the Cold War. Yet since my serious study of international history begins with the seventeenth century but hardly extends much beyond 1945 I am not well equipped to analyze the Cold War and its outcome. I could meet the problem by claiming, as historians often do, that only a longrange comparative historical perspective enables us to understand so recent a development, and then provide that perspective by comparing the end of the Cold War to supposedly analogous historical events or developments over several centuries (for example, the termination of other enduring rivalries). This essay may look like just such an exercise in historical comparison.