🏛️ Flügel History

Chapter 6: Cold War Bipolarity, Decolonization & Non-Aligned Movement ​

1. Cold War Ideological Bipolarity (1947–1991) ​

Following the Yalta and Potsdam conferences, the post-war world polarized between two nuclear-armed superpowers:

  • Western Bloc (USA): Liberal democracy, free-market capitalism, Truman Doctrine (1947), Marshall Plan, and the NATO alliance (1949).
  • Eastern Bloc (USSR): State socialism, planned economy, Cominform, and the Warsaw Pact (1955).

Cold War Flashpoints & Proxies

2. Decolonization & The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) ​

Newly independent states across Asia and Africa rejected alignment with either superpower bloc:

  • Bandung Conference (1955): 29 Afro-Asian nations established the Ten Principles of Bandung (Panchsheel).
  • First NAM Summit at Belgrade (1961): Led by Jawaharlal Nehru (India), Josip Broz Tito (Yugoslavia), Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egypt), Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), and Sukarno (Indonesia).

3. Dissolution of the Soviet Union (1991) ​

Under General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, twin reform policies:

  • Glasnost (Openness): Freedom of speech, press, and political transparency.
  • Perestroika (Restructuring): Decentralization of economic planning.
  • The End: Fall of the Berlin Wall (November 1989), formal dissolution of the USSR on December 25, 1991, yielding 15 sovereign republics.

Check Your Mastery ​

⚡ Concept Quick-CheckTest Your Conceptual Intuition
The historic 1955 Asian-African Conference that laid the foundational principles for the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) was held in which city?