The World Since 1945: A Brief History (2nd Edition)

Tracing global events from the last years of the Second World War until the Iraq war of 2003, this brief but comprehensive volume on contemporary world history argues that the most profound transformation of global relations in this period has been the fall of the last colonial empires and the triumph of nation-states. The World Since 1945 offers its readers a basic chronology of the major events that have marked the history of the last half-century. Author Daniel Brower begins with a succinct discussion of the Second World War's revolutionary impact on the course of global affairs, emphasizing the disappearance of Western colonial empires and the beginning of the Cold War conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States. He concludes with an analysis of the rise of Islamic terrorism and the international crisis leading to the U.S. war in Iraq 2003. The narrative account emphasizes three major factors that have shaped the key events in this extraordinary half-century:

• The instability of nation-states caused by ethnic conflicts, poverty, and the rise of dictators
• The changes in global balance of power from Cold War to U.S. hegemony
• The economic fortunes of capitalism and communism

Brower argues that powerful forces of nationalism and social revolution, propelled by the turmoil following the end of the Second World War, quickly destroyed all colonial empires. He stresses the efforts at nation-building that followed these events and points to the widespread emergence of ethnic conflicts within and between these new states.

In each chapter thematic and biographical sections focus attention on the most important features of this history. Updated to incorporate recent events, the book discusses the efforts in the 1990s of international organizations and major states to implement new policies for peace and global security, and explains the factors behind the upsurge of local wars and terrorism, culminating in the 2001 Al Oaeda attack on the U.S. and the Afghan and Iraq wars.