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:
History of liberalism
The Cold War featured extensive ideological competition and several proxy wars, but the widely feared Third World War between the Soviet Union and the United States never occurred. While communist states and liberal democracies competed against one another, an economic crisis in the 1970s inspired a move away from Keynesian economics, especially under Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the US. This classical liberal renewal, called pejoratively "neoliberalism" by its opponents, lasted through the 1980s and the 1990s. Meanwhile, nearing the end of the 20th century, communist states in Eastern Europe collapsed precipitously, leaving liberal democracies as the only major forms of government in the West.