This collection of documents, which includes the main speeches, treaties and agreements concluded between these two events, has been designed to illustrate the nature of these changes. The volume if prefaced by an analytical essay by the editors, and is subsequently divided into six sections.

The first four deal respectively with the final ending of the cold war through the resolution of the problem of the two Germanies; the ending of the Vietnam War and the formal entry of the People’s Republic of China into the international system; the diplomacy of detente between the super-powers and in Europe; and changes within the Western Alliance involving both NATO and the EEC, and in the Warsaw Pact.