Post Wall, Post Square
Rebuilding the World after 1989
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- 75,00 kr
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- 75,00 kr
Utgivarens beskrivning
‘A gripping and compelling account…. The peaceful ending of the Cold War between West and East remains one of the greatest achievements of modern statecraft’ CHRISTOPHER ANDREW, Literary Review
This landmark global study makes us rethink what happened when the Cold War ended and our present era was born.
The world changed dramatically as the Berlin Wall fell and protest turned to massacre in Tiananmen Square. Now, with deft analysis and a wealth of newly declassified archival sources, historian Kristina Spohr offers a bold and novel interpretation of the revolutionary upheaval of 1989 and, how in its aftermath, a new world order was forged without major conflict.
The Post-Wall world, Spohr argues, was brought about in significant measure through the determined diplomacy of a small cohort of international leaders. They engaged in tough but cooperative negotiation and worked together to reinvent the institutions of the Cold War. Exploring this extraordinary historical moment, Spohr offers a major reappraisal of US President George H. W. Bush and innovative assessments of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, and President François Mitterrand of France.
But the transformation of Europe must be understood in global context. Spohr elegantly weaves together the Western and Asian timelines to revelatory effect, by contrasting events in Berlin and Moscow with the story in Beijing, where the pro-democracy movement was brutally suppressed by Deng Xiaoping. Post Square, he pushed through China’s very different Communist reinvention.
Meticulously researched and brilliantly original, Post Wall, Post Square provides an authoritative contemporary history of those crucial hinge years of 1989-1992 and their implications for our times. The world of Putin, Trump and Xi, with a fractious European Union, rogue states and the crisis of mass migration has its roots in the global exit from the Cold War.
About the author
Kristina Spohr is currently the Helmut Schmidt Distinguished Professor at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs, Johns Hopkins University, Washington DC. She also is on the permanent faculty of the International History Department at the London School of Economics (LSE). Spohr is the author of two books and five edited volumes on international affairs, most notably The Global Chancellor and Transcending the Cold War, both published by OUP in 2016, as well as Germany and the Baltic Problem after the Cold War.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this painstakingly researched history, Johns Hopkins University global affairs professor Spohr (The Global Chancellor) dissects international relations during the "hinge years" of 1989 1992 to understand "why a durable and apparently stable world order collapsed" and how "a new order was improvised out of its ruins." Spohr draws on recently declassified and "neglected documents" to investigate the dismantling of the U.S.S.R., Germany's swift reunification after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the evolution of NATO, the establishment of the European Union, and the formation of the international coalition behind Operation Desert Storm in Iraq. Though she seeks to explicitly connect these and other matters to China's Tiananmen Square uprising in 1989 and the "false dawn" of Japan's geopolitical influence, the book's primary focus is on U.S., Soviet, and European relations. Spohr favors localized deep dives into the generational divide within Hungary's Communist Party leadership, for example over broad overviews, giving the book an impressive level of detail but a somewhat repetitive feel. She precisely captures individual personalities (George H.W. Bush "seemed a politician in flux"; German chancellor Helmut Kohl was willing to make fun of himself), and illustrates how the seeds of modern-day issues such as Brexit were sewn 30 years ago. Even the most dedicated students of world affairs will learn something new from this indefatigable survey.