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 policy; the 1955 Bandung Afro-Asian Conference was the precursor (Nepal attended);
• Détente and decline: 1970s relaxation (Helsinki 1975), the "Second Cold War" of the early 1980s, then Gorbachev's reforms, the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) and the dissolution of the USSR (1991).
Nepal in the Cold War: the era defined Nepal's opening to the world — UN membership (1955), aid from both blocs, the 1950 India treaty and 1960 China treaty, the Zone of Peace proposal (1975) — Nepal learned to survive great-power rivalry by balancing (Unit 4 develops this).
2.3 The post-Cold War interlude and the War on Terror (1991–2010s)
The "unipolar moment" US primacy, liberal optimism ("end of history"), a wave of democratization and humanitarian intervention — the Gulf War (1991, UN-authorized), Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo (1999, NATO without UN authorization — the humanitarian-intervention debate of Unit 3), Rwanda's genocide (1994, the failure that reshaped atrocity policy). Globalization accelerated (WTO 1995 — Nepal a member since 23 April 2004). Then 9/11 (2001) and the War on Terror: the Afghanistan war (2001–2021), the Iraq war (2003), the securitization of world politics, drone warfare and Guantanamo-era law debates that reshaped international humanitarian law.
2.4 The contemporary system (2010s–present)
The return of great-power rivalry — a rising China (Belt and Road since 2013; strategic competition over technology, trade and the South China Sea), an assertive Russia (annexation of Crimea 2014; full-scale invasion of Ukraine 2022), and a world moving from unipolarity toward multipolarity;
the Indo-Pacific strategic frame drawing Nepal's neighbours and partners into regional contestation. The pandemic (COVID-19) and supply-chain shocks spurred "de-risking" and industrial policy; war returned to Europe; and the Global South's organizations (BRICS expansion, G20's African Union admission) signal a redistributing world order.