Historians may disagree over the precise date the Cold War ended. Was it Nov. 9, 1989, when East Berliners flooded through the checkpoints of the Berlin Wall?
Or was it when Germany officially reunified in October of the following year? Or is the right date the final collapse of the Soviet Union on Christmas Day, 1991?
It may be wiser to view the end of the Cold War and ensuing collapse of the Soviet state as a process, not a single event, a process still unfolding more than 30 years later as Russia makes war on a former Soviet republic: an independent Ukraine.
The war is shaking the European order established after 1945 and then expanded after 1991, an order that would exclude Russia, whose leaders ultimately rejected democracy, while also failing to include Ukraine, which remained on the opposite side of the new “front line” in Europe. Unlike, for instance, the former Eastern Bloc countries of Poland and Romania, Ukraine never made it into the European Union and NATO.
In this episode of History As It Happens, historian Mary Elise Sarotte of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies discusses the reasons why U.S.-Russian relations fell apart after a promising start to the 1990s and the years of difficult diplomacy that sought to balance expanding NATO to Eastern Europe while accommodating Russia’s security concerns.
Ms. Sarotte says a new “Cold War” has begun and the lack of cooperation and communication between the U.S. and Russia could make the new conflict more dangerous than the last.
“We’ve lost many of the arms control agreements that provided guardrails to competition between Washington and Moscow. What’s frightening is that the nuclear weapons are still there,” said the author of “Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate.”
“The only treaty that currently constrains Washington and Moscow is the New Start treaty. It expires in 2026 unless it is renewed, and I am guessing chances at renewal are limited at this point.”
Listen to the interview with Cold War historian Mary Elise Sarotte by downloading this episode of History As It Happens.
