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:
Cold War II
Past sources,
such as academics Fred Halliday,
Alan M. Wald, and David S. Painter,
used the interchangeable terms to refer to the 1979–1985 and/or 1985–1991 phases of the Cold War.
Some other sources used interchangeable terms to refer to the Cold War of the mid-1970s. Columnist William Safire argued in a 1975 "New York Times" editorial that the Nixon administration's policy of détente with the Soviet Union had failed and that "Cold War II" was now underway. Academic Gordon H. Chang in 2007 used the term "Cold War II" to refer to the Cold War period after the 1972 meeting in China between US President Richard Nixon and Chinese Chairman Mao Zedong.