Political Institutions and German Unification

Abstract

The fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, marks a truly secular break in modern history. It was the first step in a series of events that entailed a profound redrawing of the global political map. Arguably, the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991 was the single most important consequence of the fall of the Wall. It ended the Cold War between the then two superpowers and their allies, which had dominated politics, economics, and cultural discourses for more than four decades after the end of World War II. With the end of Soviet rule, the dissolution of the European empires ended in principle. The world of nation-states based upon the principle of sovereign equality as it had been designed by the United Nations was now completed, including within it the new states emerging from the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Thus, an originally European political construct, the “Westphalian System,” was finally established in the postimperial area and legitimized by the United Nations.