Decades 1960.1970 and 1980 still know many crises and see American and Soviet clashing by third country: in Ethiopia (1962), in Angola (1975), in Mozambique (1975), in Afghanistan (1980) or in Nicaragua (1982).

In addition, the treaty of Moscow (1963) does not start of anything the intensification arms race the nuclear armaments that are delivered both superpuissances. However, the American-Soviet competition does not seem any more milks it fundamental international situation. In many cases of figure, the two great powers rather got busy to calm their allies that to push their respective pawns.

The come to power in the USSR de Mikhaïl Gorbatchev (1985) leads quickly to an American-Soviet thaw, then with the dismantling of the Soviet empire in 1991. But already, the fall of the Berlin Wall, in November 1989, by its symbolic range, can be regarded as the end of the cold war.

The redistribution of the charts the shortly after the collapse of one of the two pillars of the cold war opens, at the dawn of the third millennium, one period of instability and geopolitical uncertainty. The United States hesitates to assume only the role of super power, whereas it appears certain that Russia, agent of the heritage of the ex-USSR, hears, in spite of its political and economic difficulties, not to be satisfied with a role of appear on the international chess-board.

The bringing together operated between Moscow and Beijing in 1996, intended to counterbalance the reinforcement, this same year, to the axis Washington-Tokyo, would be enough to testify that the period of undulation which followed the disappearance of the Soviet empire would touch at its end.

If there remains nevertheless difficult to consider with certainty what will be the post-war period cold, one can affirm that the ideological confrontation which opposed the two blocks during about fifty years contributed to the disintegration of the colonial empires and the emancipation of Asia and Africa. A reality which constitutes, in comparison with the history, one of the major events of the XX ^E century.