Outline of the Cold War
End of the Cold War – While many observers state the 1989 Malta Summit was the end of the Cold War, it was December 1991 before the Presidents of the United States and the Soviet Union formally recognised the conflict's end, with the Soviet Union also being dissolved at that time. Some key events leading up to the end include:
Big Four Conference
Cold War tension relaxed after the death of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and the end of the Korean War in 1953.
On 16 August 1953 the Soviet Union proposed a Big Four conference to discuss a German peace treaty that would reunite the nation.
The French agreed, and in December 1953 Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of Britain, threw his weight behind a conference of the foreign ministers of the Big Four that would discuss how to progress with peace talks, or at least find a way to stabilize the present situation. President Dwight D. Eisenhower of the US was in favor of such a conference, at least as a gesture of good will, while his Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was opposed.