A lyrical Gen-X tale of hope in the dawn of the post Cold War era which seems lost at the moment. My children are the same age but had no Eastern euro experience to give it voice. As a cold/hot war Army veteran, I am less surprised at the recent devolution. In 1989, I was very hopeful. We did not win, they just collapsed. There were nai…
A lyrical Gen-X tale of hope in the dawn of the post Cold War era which seems lost at the moment. My children are the same age but had no Eastern euro experience to give it voice. As a cold/hot war Army veteran, I am less surprised at the recent devolution. In 1989, I was very hopeful. We did not win, they just collapsed. There were naive thoughts among US elite that democracy would be ascendant and global trade would bind us so tightly that war became impossible. In effect, it was our victory.
This was wildly optimistic since is the opposition of national states had been operating for 2 centuries and had often lead to war. Adding a religious dimension, in 2001, to the ethnic and national struggles apparent already in Yugoslavia in 1994 should have been a clue. History was not over, it was merely reset.
The collapse of the Soviet Union was engineered by Ronald Reagan. He attacked their weakness, their economy, by (among other things) demanding hard currency for grain. The Soviet military build up created a huge weakness that Reagan exploited.
Democracy has pre-requisites. It takes a moral and educated people and some trust. Some places in the world don't have those.
A lyrical Gen-X tale of hope in the dawn of the post Cold War era which seems lost at the moment. My children are the same age but had no Eastern euro experience to give it voice. As a cold/hot war Army veteran, I am less surprised at the recent devolution. In 1989, I was very hopeful. We did not win, they just collapsed. There were naive thoughts among US elite that democracy would be ascendant and global trade would bind us so tightly that war became impossible. In effect, it was our victory.
This was wildly optimistic since is the opposition of national states had been operating for 2 centuries and had often lead to war. Adding a religious dimension, in 2001, to the ethnic and national struggles apparent already in Yugoslavia in 1994 should have been a clue. History was not over, it was merely reset.
The collapse of the Soviet Union was engineered by Ronald Reagan. He attacked their weakness, their economy, by (among other things) demanding hard currency for grain. The Soviet military build up created a huge weakness that Reagan exploited.
Democracy has pre-requisites. It takes a moral and educated people and some trust. Some places in the world don't have those.
My abject apology, forgot Regan was the evil genius who felled the USSR and led us, inevitably, to the current moment.
Oh yeah. Events are unfolding just as Reagan planned them 40 years ago :-).