杏吧论坛

Professor Kristina Spohr, SAR 2.17 and Dr Aaron Clift.

This course is available on the MA in Asian and International History (杏吧论坛 and NUS), MA in Modern History, MSc in Empires, Colonialism and Globalisation, MSc in History of International Relations, MSc in International Affairs (杏吧论坛 and Peking University), MSc in International and Asian History, MSc in International and World History (杏吧论坛 & Columbia) and MSc in Theory and History of International Relations. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

We explore international relations from the early 1980s to the late 1990s, examining tensions, rivalries and linkages not merely between the Western and Communist blocs, but also within them. We will study the events reflecting the shift from the era of bipolarity to the post-Cold War world. The aim is to address from a historical perspective – from the vantage point of the ongoing Ukraine War which destroyed the post-Wall order – the diplomacy of the end of the East-West conflict, China’s exit from the Cold War, German reunification, Soviet disintegration, Yugoslavia’s bloody implosion, European integration, and NATO enlargement. The domestic bases of as well as the political relations between the leading figures (Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Reagan, Bush, Deng, Thatcher, Major, Mitterrand, Delors and Kohl) and respective government machineries will be covered. Major topics include Thatcherism; Reaganomics; Gorbachev's new thinking; the 1989 revolutions; Kohl’s unification drive; Soviet collapse and Russia’s stillborn democracy; the Kuwait crisis and Yugoslavian Wars; America’s unipolar moment; from the EC to the EU; the security arrangements of Russia and NATO after 1991.

20 hours of seminars in the AT. 20 hours of seminars in the WT.

There will be a reading week in the AT and the WT.

Students will be required to present one short class paper during the AT or the WT as well as to submit a practice essay (1,500 words) during the AT.

A detailed course outline and reading list, subdivided by weekly topics, as well as selected documents will be available at the beginning of the course on Moodle. Key books include:

• Kristina Spohr, Post Wall, Post Square (2019);
• Philip Zelikow & Condoleezza Rice, To Build a Better World (2019);
• Hal Brands, The Unipolar Moment (2016);
• Vladislav Zubok, Collapse (2021);
• Kristina Spohr and David Reynolds, eds, Transcending the Cold War (2016)
• Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (1993);
• EHH Green, Thatcher (2006);
• Julius W Friend, The Long Presidency, France in the Mitterrand Years (1998);
• George Bush & Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (1999);
• William Taubman, Gorbachev (2018);
• Misha Glenny, The Balkans 1804-1999 (2012);
• Saki Dockrill, The End of the Cold War Era (2005);
• Kenneth Dyson and Kevin Featherstone, The Road to Maastricht (1999);
• Sean Kay, NATO and the Future of European Security (1998);
• Daniel S. Hamilton and Kristina Spohr, eds, Open Door: NATO and Euro-Atlantic Security After the Cold War (2019).

Essay (40%, 2500 words) in the WT.
Essay (60%, 3500 words) in the ST.