ABSTRACT
World War I and the end of the Cold War were two of the defining events of the 20th, with enormous implications for the subsequent evolution of politics, culture, and history in individual states and in the international system as a whole. Some scholars argue that had World War I not occurred the world might have been spared the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, the rise of Hitler, the outbreak of World War II, and the Cold War. Others argue that if the Cold War had continued it is quite unlikely that we would have witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union and democratization in Eastern Europe, the collapse of Yugoslavia and the wars in the Balkans, the 1990-1 Persian Gulf, and the 2003 war in Iraq.
