Gorbachev resigns as General Secretary, but remains President of the USSR until late December. On December 8, the three Slav states of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine act to dissolve the Soviet Union and set up a Commonwealth of Independent States. The Soviet Union has broken up. For 45 years, the world fears a nuclear apocalypse, but it never comes. Statesmen on both sides who have the power to push the nuclear button choose not to in crisis after crisis.
Nuclear deterrence keeps the peace.
The costs of the Cold War, human and material, are staggering. The United States and the Soviet Union spend trillions of dollars on armaments. The Cold War leaves countless dead-millions in Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands in Africa and Central America, thousands in a divided Europe, two hundred at the Berlin Wall. For half a century, the superpowers have confronted each other. In 1991, one side withdraws.