Parallelism, Asymmetry and Convergence in Cold War Europe

With its opposing and mutually exclusive military and economic organisations, post-1945 Europe was the perfect embodiment of the symmetric and parallel development of the two ideological Cold War blocs. Drawing on the rich historiography of the last fifteen years that put the Europeans centre stage, this conclusive article qualifies this view of Cold War Europe and rather argues that the Continent should be seen as a complex space where parallelism, asymmetry of various kinds and convergence coexisted and where multi-layered cooperation emerged between a diverse range of actors in various domains.