Introduction

Abstract

For much of the post-war era, the nature and scope of international security was defined by the parameters of the Cold War. This term was used to describe a climate of hostility and rivalry that developed between the Western (non-communist) and Eastern (communist) blocs shortly after the Second World War. A pervasive sense of threat meant that the hegemonic bloc leaders, the US and the USSR, engaged in a political competition, not only with each other, but also for the allegiance of the world at large.¹ No continent was spared from the effects of the Cold War. This global struggle was waged through ideological means, economic rivalry, arms races, propaganda, diplomatic outbursts, threats of force and the use of client states to promote each side’s course. While the Cold War contained many of the features of traditional great power rivalries, it fell short of direct armed conflict between the two main antagonists. It was a condition of ‘neither peace nor war’. Such an uneasy mix was upheld by nuclear weapons and the superpower fear of mutual assured destruction.²