Abstract

This thesis looks at the end of the Cold War as a period of "transition" rather than simply as "turning point". Between 1984 and 1992 contemporaries on both sides of the Iron Curtain though and promoted projects designed to put an end to the bipolar conflict and create a new world order. With the development of their New Thinking, the Soviets underwent a "paradigm change" in their world views and tried to promote a system of collegial management of the international system, based on a rejuvenation of the United Nations. A US-Soviet cooperation was established although on unequal terms and the Americans consistently rejected the Soviet ideas and acted in order to expand the Western American-led system on a world scale. Thus Soviet New Thinking was an example of "failed imagination" while the American approach epitomized an unwillingness to imagine any new approach to international relations

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