America Won the Cold War. Was It Worth It?

Has America benefitted from the end of the Cold War? It was heady times in 1989 as the Berlin Wall was torn down. So heady that historian Francis Fukuyama wrote “The End of History” – a celebration of the triumph of western liberalism over other political philosophies.

The wall came down and we won – right?

He believed – as many did – that western ideas, seasoned with a health dose of western consumerism, would be so compelling that alternatives would throw up their hands and plaint “why bother”.

Hubris. He might as well have written an essay called “The End of Weather”.

The yearning of Islamic fundamentalists to establish religious states, subjugated to Sharia law, is well evidenced now. But in 1989 the only imaginable, existential threat to the Pax Americana – the Soviet Union and its clients – had been vanquished.

Little did we know that the Soviet influence in the Middle East was not the malignant force we thought, but actually a useful prop to stability in the region. Yes, there were wars between the Israelis and the Arab states. And yes, there were terrorist attacks – such as the Beirut Marine Barracks massacre. But compared to today’s swirling chaos it was halcyon times.

The calm waters of the 1990s were only troubled by a Balkan brouhaha and a few bombings by some shadowy group, which no one had heard of, called al-Qaeda.

The M1 Abrams. The best at what it does. What it doesn’t do is fight terrorists

Then 19 men flew 4 planes into infamy. And we reacted in the only way we knew how. We fought as if we were fighting the Soviet Union. We “shocked and awed” the hell out of people. We mounted up on our trusty depleted-uranium steeds and beat the standing armies of our foes.

But we also discovered, in our unarmored Humvees, that we had ridden into a valley of death. So we wishfully proclaimed “Mission Accomplished” and declared the foe beaten. But unlike the Germans and Japanese of WWII – who had the decency to stop fighting when they lost – the Islamic zealot kept up the struggle.

Even the Soviet Union, reborn as the Russian Federation, is rattling sabers again. It makes the old days seem pretty rosy.

The fundamental check of the Cold War was MAD or “mutually assured destruction”. We knew that if the Soviets tried for our extinction it would result in their own. As Albert Einstein famously said, “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones”.

But “mutually assured destruction” doesn’t work if one side hasn’t the ability to destroy the other, and the other side can’t find the first.

Neocons may have had fantasies of a new world order spread by a metastasizing democracy – but we have learned that the Middle East doesn’t do that. I suspect that the realpolitik wing of the powers-that-be in DC are praying for the return of oppression-as-usual by Middle Eastern strongmen.

We need realism from grown-ups in Washington. We can’t count on politicians, who are more interested in winning the political battles than winning the war on terrorism. In all likelihood, because these good old boys – and girls – aren’t too sure what’s going on, who’s fighting who, or even where or why they are doing it.

If we continue to be mired in a Middle Eastern mess we will be unable to focus on the true threat to America’s global sway – China.