ABSTRACT
The focal point of the Cold War was military capability, and on that score the United States and the Soviet Union were pretty close for most of its 45-year duration. Politically, Western capitalist democracy gained a decisive edge over Soviet communism only when its economic staying power – notwithstanding some nasty hiccups such as the stagflation of the 1970s – showed itself to be superior over the long haul. The kind of liberal pluralism, with its focus on tolerance and recognition, could to an extent reconcile the individuality promoted by liberalism with the community underwritten by structuralism. Thomas L. Friedman famously construed the cultural trappings of Western freedom that sprouted in the former Soviet space – the McDonald’s that opened in Moscow in 1990 is perhaps the most iconic – as signalling the globalisation of Western democracy and evidencing its conclusive victory.
