Post wall, post square : how Bush, Gorbachev, Kohl, and Deng shaped the world after 1989 /
Kristina Spohr.
- New Haven : Yale University Press, 2020.
"In this lively historical account, Kristina Spohr tells the story of the New World Order achieved at the end of the Cold War-the pacts, agreements, and institutions that are now under stress. Drawing upon extensive archival research, Spohr shows how George W. Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Helmut Kohl at the center, and François Mitterand, Margaret Thatcher, and Deng Ziaoping on the peripheries, responded to the unrest of 1989 by initiating a "conservative revolution" led by the West, re-structuring international institutions around what had worked in the previous order-for better and for worse. While this reconfiguration brought Germany together and helped broker a peaceful conclusion to the Cold War, the choices made between 1989 and 1991 also sowed the seeds of discontent that fueled the rise of a new wave of populism currently challenging the political status quo"--