Exiting the Cold War, Entering a New World

Examines the collapse of the Cold War order in 1989 through memoirs and scholarly insights from key officials and newly declassified sources.

This book explores how and why the dangerous yet seemingly durable and stable world order forged during the Cold War collapsed in 1989, and how a new order was improvised out of its ruins. It is an unusual blend of memoir and scholarship that takes us back to the years when the East-West conflict came to a sudden end and a new world was born.

In this book, senior officials and opinion leaders from the United States, Russia, Western and Eastern Europe who were directly involved in the decisions of that time describe their considerations, concerns, and pressures. They are joined by scholars who have been able to draw on newly declassified archival sources to revisit this challenging period.

Daniel S. Hamilton is the Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation Professor and Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. He was the Founding Director of the SAIS Center for Transatlantic Relations and for 15 years he served as Executive Director of the American Consortium on EU Studies.

Kristina Spohr is a specialist in the International History of Germany since 1945 and interested in the theory and practice of Contemporary History. She is now researching and writing on the global exit from the Cold War 1989-1992 with the financial support of The Leverhulme Trust.