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:
Soviet Middle Eastern foreign policy during the Cold War
Shuttle diplomacy was instrumental in brokering a Middle Eastern peace. U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger spent considerable time at Middle Eastern peace talks as a neutral party. He explained the reasons behind the need to pull out of Vietnam, which complicated the Middle Eastern talks and the nascent nuclear-nonproliferation-treaty talks. President Richard Nixon used the Sino-Soviet split to begin ending the Cold War by breaking down political and economic barriers between the U.S. and China, further isolated the Soviets. Kissinger spoke about his roles in brokering peace between the Arabs and Israelis and ending the nuclear-arms race. Nixon also became a key player in Middle East peace talks, ignoring Dwight D. Eisenhower's non-interventionism and hoping that his reputation for ending the Vietnam War, brokering the first nuclear-arms treaty and opening China to American trade would overshadow the Watergate scandal.