I’ve been thinking about the essay published in the venerable The Atlantic by Tom Nichols around his great grief for the loss of a world that could have been, and for many, was visible, tangible and irreversible. Nichols is correct about its being gone forever. What lies ahead is a dangerous new frontier. There is war in Europe, and it is building towards something bigger and graver. It must be discussed.
I was 19 years old when the Berlin Wall fell. It was an astonishing event. It was the singularly most remarkable, sudden, unexpected and surprising moment of my lifetime during which something positive happened. What is even more amazing is how quickly the world’s memory moved beyond a divided Europe, half free, half oppressed. The end of the Cold War was a seismic event. It marked the triumph of freedom over repression, but it was not enduring.
Mankind’s pathology for conquest, war and destruction has reasserted itself via Vladimir Putin, and despite the claims of many western politicians, he is neither isolated or alone.
He is at war, and leading the largest nation on Earth with a massive armament of nuclear weapons. It is important to remember that the Soviet Union endured more than 20,000,000 casualties during the Second World War. The Russian people know suffering and deprivations that would beggar the American mind. Putin’s war has become an existential one for him. He can survive many things, but strategic defeat in Ukraine is not one of them.
Today, Vladimir Putin has his nuclear weapons pointed at the world. He has unleashed a war that is pulling China and Iran towards his position for the generational opportunity to break the post-World War II global order that rebuilt prosperity from the brink of civilization’s collapse. This raises a question. What happened? Let’s look back.