序章 冷戦の終焉とヨーロッパ
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概要
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The Cold War had been fought on various fronts. First of all it was the battle of ideas. The fall of “Berlin Wall” in 1989 was a dramatic event signifying the end of the battle of Cold War ideologies. The Divisions in Europe, including the division of Germany, had also been a very symbolic aspect of the Cold War. Therefore the reunification of Germany in 1990 marked the end of these Cold War divisions. At the same time the Cold War was a military confrontation between two superpowers so the final dissolution of the USSR in 1991 was in this sense the actual end of the Cold War. Since the Cold War has such intertwined aspects, why and how it has come to an end should be scrutinized carefully.U.S. President George H. W. Bush proclaimed “America won the Cold War” in his State of the Union address before a Joint Session of Congress on January 28, 1992. That the U.S. “won” the Cold War became the typical American understanding of the end of the Cold War. The so-called “triumphalists” declared that the collapse of the U.S.S.R. was the result of the American strategy of containment, formulated in 1947 by George F. Kennan. They believe that the successive American administrations, and especially the administration of President Reagan, pursued this policy and finally brought the Soviet empire down with little help from the European nations.Many of the secret archives of the Soviet bloc have been made available to Cold War historians since the beginning of the 1990s and they have allowed researchers to revise the above interpretation: Western Europe, and to a lesser extent some East European nations, played a much more important role in closing the Cold War than the “triumphalists” have been willing to give them credit for.This issue of International Relations covers various aspects of the end of the ColdWar beyond “triumphalist” theory: the impact of “Gorbachev factor”, the role of institutionalization of arms control in Europe, the implication of “Ostpolitik” by West Germany upon the German reunification process, the influence of dissident movements in Eastern Europe, the impact of “deepening” of EC upon détente, and the function of “CSCE effect” as an promoter of “euro-détente”. The articles in this volume shed new light on the process of the end of the Cold War by introducing important European dimensions to the discussions. As editor, I hope this issue can be a catalyst for a fresh look in Japan at the origins of the end of the Cold War.