Post Cold War era

The Post Cold War era is the period in world history from the Collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 to the present.

It has mostly been dominated by the rise of globalization (as well as seemingly paradoxically, nationalism) enabled by the commercialization of the Internet and the growth of the mobile phone system. The ideology of postmodernism and cultural relativism has according to some scholars replaced modernism and notions of absolute progress and ideology.

It has seen the United States become by far the most powerful country in the world and the rise of China from a relatively weak third world country to a fledgling superpower. It has also seen the merging of most of Europe into one economy.

Environmentalism has also become a mainstream concern in the Post Cold War era; global warming entered public discourse in 1988 after a very hot summer which burned down 40 percent of the forest land in Yellowstone National Park. Recycling has become common place in many countries and cities over the past 30 years.

Background
During most of the latter half of the 20th century the two most powerful states in the world by far were the United States (formed in 1783) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (formed in 1917). These two federations were called the world's superpowers.

Faced with the threat of growing Japanese, German and Italian fascism and a world war, the western Allies and the Soviet Union made an alliance of necessity during WW2.

The alliance between the USA and USSR was simply against a greater common enemy and the two countries never really trusted each other. After the Axis was defeated these two powers became highly suspicious of each other because of their vastly different ideologies. While the Americans valued consumerism and individual liberty, the Soviets valued communism and wanted to eventually create a stateless and equal society.

This struggle, known as the Cold War, lasted from about 1946 to 1991, beginning with the second Red Scare and ending with the August Coup when hardliners temporarily ousted Gorbachev's government, causing the Soviet Union to implode.

Consequences of the fall of communism
The collapse of the Soviet Union caused profound changes in nearly every society in the world. Much of the policy and infrastructure of the West and the Soviet Bloc revolved around the capitalist and communist ideologies respectively and the possibility of a hot war.

Government, economic and military institutions
The fall of communism formed an existential threat for many institutions. The United States Military was forced to cut much of its expenditure, though the level rose again to comparable heights after the War on Terror started in 2001.

American power has allowed the United States to project its force into any part of the world, and the Washington consensus has largely made NATO a puppet government of the United States.

Socialist parties around the world saw drops in membership after the Berlin Wall fell and the public felt that free market ideology had won.

The end of the Cold War also coincided with the end of Apartheid in South Africa. Declining Cold War tensions in the later years of the 1980s meant that the Apartheid regime was no longer supported by the West as a bulwark against communism and they were condemned with an embargo. In 1990 Nelson Mandela was freed from prison and the regime made steps to end apartheid, which were on an official basis completed by 1994 with the new election.

Libertarian, neoliberal, nationalist and Islamist parties on the other hand benefited from the fall of the Soviet Union. As capitalism had "won", as people saw it, socialism in general declined in popularity. Socialist Scandinavian countries privatized many of their commons in the 1990s and a political debate on modern institutions re-opened.

The People's Republic of China, already having moved towards capitalism starting in the 1970s and facing public anger after the 1989 killings in Beijing moved even more quickly towards free market economics in the 1990s. McDonalds and Pizza Hut both entered the country in the second half of 1990, the first American chains in China aside from Kentucky Fried Chicken which entered 3 years earlier in 1987. Stock markets were established in Shenzhen and Shanghai late in 1990 as well. The restrictions on car ownership were loosened in the early 1990s, causing the bicycle to decline as a form of transport by 2000.

The move to capitalism has increased the economic prosperity of China, but many people still live in poor serf-like conditions, working for companies for very small pay and in dangerous and poor conditions. Pollution has also gotten much worse, killing over a million people per year and the Chinese government has not relaxed its restrictions on freedom of speech.

Technology
The end of the Cold War allowed many technologies that were formerly off limits to the public to be declassified. The most important of these was the Internet, which was created as ARPANET by the Pentagon as a system to keep in touch following an impending nuclear war. The last restrictions on commercial enterprise online were lifted in 1995.

In the approximately two decades since, the Internet's population and usefulness have grown immensely. Only about 20 million people (less than 0.5 percent of the world's population at the time) were online in 1995, mostly in the US and several other Western countries. Today in the mid 2010s, more than one third of the world's population are online.

The Internet has become the handmaiden of globalization and outsourcing, along with the mobile phone and more highly integrated telephone networks. This has allowed multinational corporations such as Walmart to coordinate cooperations as easily as if they were based in one country.

Society
The decline of communism has changed the society of the world's people in many different ways. The end of the Cold War caused a decline in ideology in general and a loss of national purpose in the United States. In American culture, this led to the 1990s being labeled a "decade about nothing" where everything was relative and nothing really mattered. In Europe, this manifested as the rave culture and an era of hedonism.

One third of the world's population lived in Eastern Bloc countries, and the dismantling of the Iron Curtain caused their economies to open to the rest of the world. For the first time in history there was an economy that was not only truly global (within the exception of Cuba and North Korea) but thanks to modern communications instantaneous as well.

While capital and economic opportunity now moves almost without regard to national borders, people do not and are subject to immigration laws that are just as strict and sometimes more strict than they were during the Cold War. This has caused human trafficking to become a growing crime.

International terrorism and army has become more of a threat as the Internet allows worldwide networks to communicate and American hegemony and international consumer and pop culture form an existential threat to Hindu culture and other cultures and ideologies around the world.

The use of the Internet has caused journalism to be increasingly dominated by amateurs, making it more difficult to trust the news media. Conspiracy theories and anti-intellectual positions such as the belief that vaccines cause autism and global warming is a myth have risen in popularity.

Empiricism and knowledge have become less valued in the Post Cold War era due to the over-abundance of information and social networking, intuition, opinion and adaptation more highly valued.

Islamic world
The end of the Cold War caused an increase in power in the Islamic world. Prior to 1991, Islamic nations controlled 60% of the world's oil production. With the break-up of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the Islamic republics of Central Asia, that percentage has increased to 74%. Fundamentalism has also grown as a force - the Taliban took over Afghanistan in 1996 before they were ousted by the Americans after 9/11.

The Arab Spring created hope that the Islamic world would transition to democracy - the results of this have been mixed. While democratic government was established in Tunisia, Egypt has fallen prey to hardliners and Syria fell into a civil war.

American hegemony
The English language due to its status in America and before in the British Empire has been called the "language of globalization".

27 percent of the Internet is in English, though this number is declining. American movies, film, and music have continued to spread around the world aided by international television programming such as MTV and now online media like YouTube and Facebook.

On the other hand, regional popular music scenes, especially K-Pop from South Korea have seen recent international success.

Far East
China has seen immense growth in the past 30 years, while Japan's has stalled since 1991. India has begun to see rapid economic growth over the past decade.

North Korea remains isolated from the rest of the world and South Korea's economy has continued to grow immensely.