Shift from bipolarity -> NWO

Post-1960s

• World no longer bipolar

  • USSR and communist world morefragmented

  • 🇯🇵 and 🇩🇪 emerging as economic superpowers

1970s — détente

• Period of decreasing USSR-🇺🇸 tension

• High point = Helsinki Accords

• Led to signing of SALT

USSR collapse — 1989 (2)

1. Fall of Berlin Wall

2. Overthrow of communist regimes in E.Europe

USSR collapse — 1990

• Reunification of 🇩🇪

USSR collapse — 1991 (4)

1. Communist hardliners tried to overthrow USSR SG

2. Yeltsin rallied nationalists and defeated the coup

3. Went on to lead 🇷🇺 and declare it independent

4. 26th December USSR formally dissolved

“New World Order” origin

• Coined by Gorbachev

4 elements of NWO

1. Use of threat/force no longer valid in IR

2. Increasing cooperation

3. De-ideologisation of relations amongst states

4. Strengthening of UN and it’s PK role

1989 🇲🇹 Conference shift

• Bush Sr and Gorbachev commited from shift

• Containment, superpower antagonism → superpower cooperation, new security agreements

“Towards a NWO” 1990 speech by Bush Sr — 4 aspects

1. Post-CW world outline

2. 🇺🇸 leadership

3. 🇺🇸 and USSR partnership, esp in economic bodies

4. Promotion of collective security to check use of force

‘Unleash’ of pressures post-CW

• Removal of the external threat of the other ideology → unleash of internal pressures

  • Ethnic, racial and regional conflicts like Yugoslavia massively increased

2 failures of NWO

1. NWO basically just used to legitimise 🇺🇸 hegemony

2. International community supported Yugoslavia’s genocide