general election, and the French electorate, still in the mood that had re-
elected him, returned a sufficient number of left-wing members to the
assembly for him to form a coalition government under a socialist prime
minister, although this still included some ministers from the centrist Union
pour la De ́mocratie Franc ̧aise. Ironically, Mitterrand had campaigned in the
late 1970s to shorten the presidential term to five years to avoid the problem of
cohabitation, but made no effort to carry out this promise in the first decade of
his presidency. The shortening of the presidential term was finally achieved
during a later period of cohabitation, which involved the conservative Chirac
as president and a socialist prime minister, Lionel Jospin, in 2000. Thus
Chirac’s second presidential term, to which he was elected in 2002, was
scheduled to last only until 2007.
This is not a problem unique to France. It can arise in any political system
where apresidentwith real political power is elected at a different time, or
separately, from the parliament. In the USA, for example, it is not at all unusual
for the party of a president not to enjoy a majority in Congress. For example,
following the elections of 2000, while the Republican George W. Bush won
control of the presidency (albeit on a minority of votes cast), the Democrats
improved their position in both the Senate and House of Representatives,
ultimately gaining control of the former.
Cold War
Nothing so demonstrates the impermanence of political life than the history of
the cold war. As a concept, cold war gained popularity shortly after the last
‘hot’ or ‘shooting’ war to involve all the major powers, the Second World War.
It describes a state of extreme hostility between thesuperpowers, associated
witharms races, diplomatic conflict, and hostile measures of every kind short
of overt military action. The cold war started, at the latest, in 1947 with the
Berlin Blockade, and remained intense until the middle 1960s, with incidents
such as theCuban missile crisisand the building of the Berlin Wall. From the
late 1960sde ́tentegrew, or at least became more fashionable, but the threat of
a return to the cold war remained. Some commentators talk of a ‘second cold
war’ beginning roughly with the election of President Reagan in 1980;
certainly for a few years in the 1980s arms races took on more energy, defence
budgets increased, and diplomatic conflict between the superpowers in many
areas of the world intensified. However, from 1985, withGorbachev’srise to
power in the Soviet Union, and Reagan’s need to curb defence spending to
ease the US budgetary crisis, what can now be seen as an inexorable process of
winding down this institutionalized, but essentially irrational, conflict began.
As reform in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe accelerated, the economic
capacity of theWarsaw Pactto compete militarily withNATOdeclined, as
Cold War