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In victory, magnanimity: US foreign policy, 1989–1991, and the legacy of prefabricated multilateralism

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Abstract

This article investigates not the causes of the end of the Cold War but the legacy of its ending for international politics in the post-Cold War era. To do so, this essay offers the concept of ‘settlement architecture’ as a way of understanding the political resolution that follows a historical moment of thoroughgoing transformation, of which the end of the Cold War was a prime example. In particular, it explores both the nature of the settlement architecture advanced successfully by Washington and Bonn in 1990, namely prefabricated multilateralism, and the consequences of that settlement.

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Sarotte, M. In victory, magnanimity: US foreign policy, 1989–1991, and the legacy of prefabricated multilateralism. Int Polit 48, 482–495 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2011.21

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