Aims to provide an overview of international developments from the Potsdam Conference down to the current issues of globalization and the emergence of USA as the only world power. Topics dealt with include : the origins of the Cold War; NATO and the Warsaw Pact; regional wars (Korea, Vietnam) and other crises (Berlin, Cuba, the Middle East); ); the partial thaw of the 1970s; the SALT agreements; the Third World and the Non-Alignment movement; the Helsinki Summit of 1975. Escalating tensions from the late 1970s into the 1980s (renewed nuclear buildups, together with crises in Grenada, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, and Ethiopia- Somalia). The disintegration of the USSR and the end of the Cold War. A new era of diplomatic and military instability, marked by US unilateralism, the emergence of China as a new power, the EU as another global player, continuing problems in Russia, "failed states" in the Third World, and global terrorism.
