Introduction

With the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991 and the end of the Cold War at about the same time, the ideological divide between Marxism and capitalism lost its major impetus as an arena of world conflict. Although a few countries, notably China and Vietnam, were still run by political parties claiming to adhere to Marxism-Leninism, they too were already on the track of market reform, and did not pose nearly the same challenge to liberal capitalism as had been the case during the decades of the Cold War. Liberal capitalism, as represented mainly by the countries of North America and Western Europe, seemed triumphant. Many countries formerly socialist or neutral went over to the side of capitalism, some though by no means all of them adopting the form of government most strongly advocated by the main capitalist states, namely liberal democracy. The United States and its allies had won the Cold War.