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This chapter assesses the relationship between East Germany and Poland during the last phase of the Cold War. It explains how the historical legacy of German–Polish relations infused the relationship of both countries with mistrust, despite the officially proclaimed brotherhood of a “socialist community” mandated from Moscow. Personal enmity between communist leaders Walter Ulbricht and Władysław Gomułka, conceptual differences of notions of statehood, and rivaling foreign policy goals and ideas about tolerance for domestic opposition since the end of the 1970s only exacerbated these tensions, which not even successful military cooperation under the Warsaw Pact umbrella was able to alleviate. Held together by their relationship to the Soviet hegemon, the officially required “trust” between the two countries fully disintegrated in the second half of the 1980s.

Many expected the role of the US in Europe to shrink after the end of the Cold War and with the end of the Soviet–Communist threat: Western Europe presumably did not need the US in the same way it had during the Cold War; now, a strengthened EU could manage much more on its own. In some ways the American role in Western Europe did decline, but the surprise was how little it changed in the period under discussion (1993–2001): the unification of Germany and Western Europe's participation in the Gulf War under US leadership had set the pattern under Bush; now, under Clinton (who was elected in November 1992), America's lead was to be most clearly seen in the wars in ex‐Yugoslavia (discussed in the first section of the chapter) and in the process of NATO expansion (discussed in the second section). NATO did not collapse when its raison d’être, the Soviet Union, the enemy against which it had been directed, disappeared, and the Warsaw Pact was dissolved; on the contrary, NATO took in new members from among the former Pact members and some of the disputes that had plagued it for decades were now softened, so that France moved closer to NATO again. The third section of the chapter shows that, in return, the Clinton administration was showing a more open attitude than that of Bush to European integration (the EU), in the form of monetary and defence cooperation. The last section of the chapter makes the point that, with so many signs of change in Washington, European governments and publics were renewing their invitations to the US to stay involved in Europe: in Western Europe the invitations were weaker and more ambivalent now than in the early years after the Second World War, but in Central and Eastern Europe, finally free from Soviet control, the invitations were quite similar to those the Western Europeans had extended almost fifty years earlier.

This chapter discusses the tactics imposed by the DDR and the USSR to close the border. It explains that Khrushchev stopped the flight of refugees and the subversive work of the Western secret services. It narrates that the sectoral border in Berlin was closed using barbed wire. It discusses that the declaration of the Warsaw Pact states announcing the closure claimed that its purpose was to prevent ‘subversive activity’ against them. It narrates that Ulbricht told a summit of Warsaw Pact leaders that the migration of skilled workers to the west had caused grave economic difficulties. It explains that the closure of the wall had a profound impact on spying. It adds that as a solution, the West intensified their espionage. It also discusses that the MfS arrested many spies, but the West was able to recruit new ones.

This chapter outlines how Gorbachev encouraged the fraternal regimes of CEE to convene their respective conferences, so that these parties would align with CPSU perestroika and establish party unity as factionalism grew. By shedding new light on the role of the conference in Gorbachev's controlled liberalisation strategy, the chapter demonstrates that Gorbachev expected the fraternal parties to adopt this policy in the spirit of ‘socialist internationalism’. Archival documents suggest that Gorbachev intended to maintain the Soviet Union's ‘outer empire’ under proposed quasi-market conditions rather than democratisation and the severing of Soviet ties with these states. At the domestic level, the fraternal conferences were designed as a show of solidarity for Gorbachev's perestroika, and leadership renewal in these states was to cement perestroika in the fraternal parties. This process of modernisation was intended to make the one-party state more efficient and improve its image, both at home and abroad, which would in turn increase its appeal with the aim of preserving the socialist model.

This concluding chapter summarizes the preceding discussions, covering the Gulag's emergence as a mass social phenomenon in the 1920s to its collapse by the end of the 1950s. The system took a terrible toll on Soviet society, with victims numbering into the millions, and even those who survived often crushed by the experience. After Stalin, the Soviet state decisively moved away from the use of mass terror as a normal, permanent feature of the political system. However, it also engaged in numerous incidents of violence and political repression in its final thirty-five years, from the bloody suppression of uprisings within its borders and the countries of the Warsaw Pact, to the use of labor camps and psychoprisons to devastate the small but vocal human rights dissident movements of the Brezhnev years. Nonetheless, the Gulag never reemerged as the mammoth complex of its heyday.

This chapter centres on German Ostpolitik in its three phases and the reaction to it by the British government. Britain was a firm advocate of moves designed to improve East-West relations, and encouraged Germany away from the Hallstein doctrine, towards a position that was based on an improved détente with the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries as the best means of achieving a settlement in Europe. The discussion includes detail of a seemingly little-known British Ostpolitik initiative launched in 1966, which proposed a ‘Declaration on Europe’. Like the British reaction to the Peace Note, the Germans were lukewarm about the Declaration, but it was an indication of the state of relations at the time that neither country was prepared to express outright opposition.

This chapter tries to draw some general conclusions about the role of nuclear weapons in British–German relations. The British–German relationship was discussed in five phases. In the first phase, there was a great difference in British and West German interests with respect to nuclear weapons policy. The second phase started when West Germany changed their foreign policy in accordance to the realities of the nuclear age. The third phase of British–German relations was described by an intense crisis of legitimacy of nuclear defence in Europe. The fourth phase was marked by the increasing gap between Britain and Germany. The last phase was the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and Soviet power in Europe. This caused a dramatic shift of power in favour of the West in general and Germany in particular and also marked a shift from military power as a major indicator of Great Power status.

The arms race during the Cold War was determined not only by the nuclear-armed superpowers but also by their allies and other actors, as well by asymmetries of conventional forces. Its four stages evolved from unintended escalation in 1945–55, which created by 1968 the threat of nuclear proliferation, but led to deceptive stabilization during the next decade and a half, only to result in the race’s unexpected termination during the period from 1985 to 1991. As such, the Cold War arms race was happily anomalous, as the confluence of circumstances that made it prone to precipitate catastrophe, is all but certain never to recur. Coming to grips with its legacy thus means above all resisting the temptation to draw false analogies that could only make the very different problems of today’s world more difficult to deal with.

This chapter explains why politicians and generals in the six East European Warsaw Pact member states (Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania) and in China reacted to the upheavals and revolutions so differently. In particular, this chapter explains why senior officers in Poland and Hungary remained inactive during the transitions there, why the Bulgarian army leadership supported the “elite transfer” in Sofia, and how the top brass in Czechoslovakia and East Germany reacted to the mass demonstrations in their principal cities. The bulk of this chapter, however, is devoted to China and Romania, where bona fide uprisings—one failed, one successful—took place, and the armed forces did turn their guns against the people, albeit reluctantly and in very different circumstances.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 led, in rapid succession over the next two years, to German unification, Baltic state independence, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its replacement by Russia and other successor countries, the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe, and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. Capitalism, liberalised world trade and new electronics technology seemed to have carried the day. The hope of the countries concerned for a new Marshall Plan was not met, but a new European Bank for Reconstruction and Development was meant to fulfil a similar function. In 1993, the European Union (EU) concluded a European Economic Area agreement with various European Free Trade Association countries, tying them closer to it in the areas of trade and investment. The disintegration of Yugoslavia beginning in 1990, and the several wars it led to, posed serious challenges to the EU and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), apart from signifying a tragedy for the people of the region.

Chapter four covers initial rounds of the Ottawa and Budapest talks, where each side took the attitude that the other should make compromises. This may have reflected the powerful elements of the delegations' view that it was the best way to ensure the Treaty would not be realized. What was also discovered was how much the Warsaw Pact's solidarity had disintegrated, with the Soviets' allies essentially accepting the Western conception of the regime. However, they did insist that whatever capabilities the NATO allies would enjoy in terms of sensors and data-processing should be equally available. This was important to the Treaty and had the effect of moderating the extreme aspects of American positions. Open Skies was not the European allies' priority at this time; the treaty to limit conventional forces in Europe (the CFE Treaty) was. But Open Skies’ moment would come as the CFE Treaty later encountered difficulties.

This chapter covers the negotiation's final months. The breakup of the Soviet Union created a new Russian delegation, which initially caused some confusion, but the negotiations quickly hit their stride. During this ‘endgame’ period, as the delegates began looking seriously at how the regime would work in practice, it became clear that the adversarial approach first advocated by the NATO countries, which sought short-notice overflights for intelligence-gathering purposes, would not have worked, that these flights require a cooperative approach. Also during this period the increasing changes in Europe necessitated a new approach to the question of how neutral countries would be admitted to the regime. It was thus necessary to devise a more complex set of temporary fixes to allow neutrals to participate in the discussions. While the Treaty was completed on time, several issues had to be deferred to the implementation phase in order to accomplish this.

Chapter eight covers the treaty's implementation, which was signed on March 24, 1992. Ironically, it was after it was signed that the overflight regime was worked out in detail as those operating flights designed practical ways to fulfill its objectives. Political issues still bedeviled the process. A formula was found, however, that permitted neutral countries to join, except Cyprus. Chapter eight explores how the Open Skies idea might be applied in other contexts. Since the beginning of the talks the extension of the regime to other parts of the world, and also using flights flights for environmental and crisis monitoring, have been envisaged. For various reasons, none of this has happened. Recently, some have also proposed that Open Skies could be useful in verifying deep cuts in nuclear and other Weapons of Mass Destruction. This would require an evolution in the regime, and this chapter explores what that would entail.

Chapter three explores the issues which arose when the NATO countries began developing a concrete position on Open Skies. Lacking firm guidance from the political level on its basic objectives, this process soon degenerated into a squabble over details. Many in the US sought to develop a regime which would maximize the intelligence-collection aspects of the Treaty. They sought also to develop the regime firmly within the East-West paradigm which had dominated security negotiations for several decades. It was during this period that the first signs of pushback arose. Others began to wonder if the emerging concept of the regime was not too adversarial. Most of these discussions went on within NATO. The few opportunities for interaction with Soviets during this period revealed a cautious, but non-committal approach. There was no opportunity for any kind of “prenegotiation” of the sort which often precedes a major international negotiation.

Chapter two recounts how Open Skies was relaunched in 1989. As before, it was a “top-down” initiative, launched by a small group of officials and publicly endorsed by the President with little bureaucratic support. It continued to test a Soviet leader's commitment to mutual coexistence and openness. But there was a key difference; the 1989 proposal was launched as a multilateral one to include all the NATO countries and the Warsaw Pact. Key to this had been the high-level intervention with President Bush of Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. Arguing that the political and military benefits of Open Skies would best be realized multilaterally, Mulroney exerted influenced the decision to relaunch Open Skies multilaterally. Canada went on to play a significant role in initiating negotiations. In this Canada would be joined by a country on the other side, Hungary, which also saw the benefits of the idea.

The Open Skies talks thus resumed in Vienna in the autumn of 1991. There were two rounds of talks, the autumn of 1991 and the winter and spring of 1992. These rounds are the subject of Chapters six and seven. In Chapter six, the aftermath of the Soviet coup attempt lead to a new approach to the negotiations on the part of the Soviet delegation as the military's position in the talks was downgraded. Also the smaller countries emerged to take control of the discussion and push it along. Though the US and the Soviet Union (and later Russia) were key to the eventual success of the regime, it was countries like Germany, France and Britain which did much of the heavy lifting in Vienna, with Canada, Hungary and others assisting.

During a high-profile visit by Soviet head of state Nikolay Podgorny in June 1967, a desperate Egyptian President Nasser offered to formally join the Warsaw Pact in exchange for direct Soviet support of Egypt’s shattered forces. Moscow balked at such a formal commitment but took advantage of Nasser’s offer of free use of Egyptian air and naval bases. A military delegation led by Chief of Staff Matvey Zakharov took advantage of renewed hostilities in early July to establish presence of Soviet naval units and marines to stabilize the defense of the Suez Canal against further Israeli advance. The Soviet Navy’s Mediterranean squadron, which had been massively reinforced and activated in the run-up to the June war, was now officially created as a permanent formation opposite the US Sixth Fleet.

Otto von Bismarck famously said that “God has special providence for fools, drunks, and the United States of America.” Divine providence may not have hurt, but it was America’s domestic political institutions that transformed a smattering of British colonies in North America into, first, an independent nation and, then, a global superpower with a network of allies and partners spanning six continents. The United States faced off against the Soviet Union for a half century during the Cold War. But Washington possessed the better institutions, and the stress of the competition caused Moscow’s political system to collapse altogether. In the post–Cold War period that followed, Washington deepened and expanded the Pax Americana, and spread unprecedented levels of global peace, prosperity, and freedom. For the first time since Ancient Rome, a single superpower so overawed any potential competitors that great power rivalry itself came to a temporary halt.