The end of the Cold War came as a shock to many in the liberal democratic world. While U.S. intelligence agencies recognized that the Soviet system was in a state of decline in the 1980s, it would have been impossible to predict the speed and scale of the USSR’s collapse. Many American policymakers and analysts regarded the bipolar confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union as a permanent feature of the geopolitical landscape. And when that confrontation came to an end, it was difficult to predict the shape of the world to come.
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