What went wrong?

Misconceptions of the End of the Cold War and some of their implications

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to address widespread perceptions of the end the Cold War. It argues (from an ‘ex ante’ or ‘real time’ standpoint) that opposing political and ideological actors shared a perception which was highly flawed from an empirical and conceptual point of view. The paper addresses the question of why, how and when these misconceptions arose.