2 International Relations since 1945

2.1 The Second World War and the birth of the postwar order (1945)The war (1939–45) destroyed the European-centred world order and produced the institutional architecture of the modern era: the United Nations (1945) with its Charter's prohibition on the use of force (Article 2(4)) and the Security Council system; the Bretton Woods institutions (IMF and World Bank, 1944) for monetary and developmental order; the GATT (1947) for trade; and the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals, fathering modern international criminal law. Bipolarity replaced multipolarity: the USA and USSR emerged as superpowers.2.2 The Cold War (c. 1947–1991)A global struggle between the US-led Western bloc and the Soviet-led communist bloc — war short of direct great-power war, fought through:• Crises and wars by proxy: Berlin blockade (1948–49), Korean War (1950–53), Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), Vietnam (1955–75), Soviet-Afghan war (1979–89), African and Latin American proxy conflicts;• Alliances and blocs: NATO (1949) vs. Warsaw Pact (1955); economic orders — Marshall Plan (1948) vs. Comecon;• The nuclear revolution: mutual assured destruction producing a "long peace" between the superpowers and an arms-control regime (Limited Test Ban 1963, NPT 1968, SALT I 1972, ABM 1972);• The Third World and non-alignment: decolonization created a swarm of new states; the Non-Aligned Movement (founded 1961, Belgrade) refused bloc membership — Nepalwas a founding participant, making non-alignment a permanent plank of its foreign…