"Led by Vladimir Putin for the past 25 years, Russia has resumed the familiar role of an aggressive, expansionist power stalking Europe's borderlands. Ukraine, the Baltic republics, Georgia, Moldova, even Poland, are again treated as property or prey. With hindsight, it seems that 1989 turning point was less than wholly decisive. In fact, it has been turned on its head."
"This phenomenon is nothing new. Successive generations typically believe their experience is unique yet, historically, factually, ideologically, they are usually wrong. When major geopolitical shifts occur, they are breathlessly described as historic and unparalleled. Because history is insufficiently studied, because perspectives are limited by human lifespans, because the same mistakes are repeated over and over, momentous events are hailed as watersheds, landmarks and epochal inflection points. Almost invariably, they're not."
On 9 November 1989 the Berlin Wall fell, its watchtowers, searchlights, armed guards, minefields, Checkpoint Charlie and the Wall itself swept aside in a popular lunge for freedom. On 3 December 1989 US president George HW Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev declared the Cold War over. By December 2025 the question persisted whether the Cold War ever truly ended, as Russia under Vladimir Putin resumed aggressive, expansionist policies toward Ukraine, the Baltic republics, Georgia, Moldova and Poland. Generations habitually misread moments as unique, and past upheavals such as the Arab Spring and 9/11 showed that proclaimed watershed events often fail to produce lasting, transformative change.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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