The Last Decade of the Cold War

The 1980s was a period of almost unprecedented rivalry and tension between the two main actors in the East-West conflict, the United States and the Soviet Union. Why and how that conflict first escalated and thereafter, in an amazingly swift process, was reversed and brought to its peaceful conclusion at the end of the decade is the topic of this volume.With individual contributions by eighteen well-known scholars of international relations and history from various countries, the book addresses