Between 1989 and 1991 the world witnessed a number of dramatic and traumatic changes: the end of communism in Central and Eastern Europe, the reunification of Germany, the end of the superpower nuclear arms race, the demise of East-West rivalries in the Third World and, finally, the break-up of the Soviet Union. The final stages of the Cold War were impossible to accurately predict, and many of the questions posed by those events remain unanswered today. This book investigates the evolutionary and sudden end of the Cold War in three major areas: Europe, superpower relations, and the Third World. Extracting essential lessons from recent past, The End of the Cold War Era provides the reader with a clearer understanding of today's and tomorrow's world.