24 - Legacies of the Cold War

Summary

What are the legacies of the Cold War in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe? In general, there are two kinds. One includes direct legacies of the Cold War, i.e. policies, structures, organizations, etc. which the ideological conflict had created. This includes the general decline of the left at a global scale, the rise of new forms of conservatism, democratization particularly in Asia and Europe, the internationalization of a subset of human rights included in the Helsinki Final Act of 1975, and nuclear disarmament. The other category comprises legacies that had roots mainly elsewhere but were shaped by the Cold War. In particular, this concerns the long-term legacies of colonialism in Indochina, South Asia, and the Middle East. Yet, only the Muslim world has spawned its own intellectual framework connecting the pre-1945 time to the post-1991 period—in the form of competing versions of pan-Islamism. Although Catholicism in Europe displayed a similar potential during the Cold War, Papal dream of a re-Christianization of the continent were not fulfilled.