Thirty years later, a different sort of wall divides Germany
"The right side of the map has also recently become a two-party system. The two major eastern parties, which now dominate most state legislatures across the region and represent the most federal MPs sent from the east, are the Left Party – a direct descendent of the communist regime that ruled the GDR – and the Alternative for Germany (AfD), an ultranationalist movement that became a major party in the east after 2015 by adopting harshly anti-immigrant policies and outspoken climate-change denial. Those views have made it a favourite of angry men in less urban areas where immigrants are rarely seen (it had a moment of success in some western states, as a protest vote, but has largely fizzled outside the east).
In Rostock, I met with federal MPs from both of these parties, and I was struck by their similarity. The extreme-left parliamentarian deplored the racism of his right-wing counterpart and had a more polished tone (and did not hide his pre-1989 role in the communist hierarchy), while even the supposedly moderate AfD parliamentarian often sounded like someone writing all-caps comments on a conspiracy-theory YouTube post. But they shared views on Vladimir Putin’s Russia (favourable), on the European Union and its currency (opposed), on immigration (unfavourable) and, notably, on the legacy of reunification – both parties characterize voters in the east as victims."
Rudolf Guiliani: Ronald Reagan's unyielding style won the Cold War -2009
"Before Ronald Reagan came along, the West was dangerously close to losing its will. The Soviet Union was on the march, while the United States continued to deal with the repercussions of internal political scandals and the pullout from South Vietnam. Soviet leaders were flush with confidence; in the West many of the so-called foreign policy establishment accepted the doctrines of moral equivalence and inevitable coexistence. ... Reagan understood the necessity of negotiating from strength and the critical importance of leverage. In contrast to much of today's diplomatic posturing, Reagan backed his words with action. Reagan knew a strong national defense was essential to deterring Soviet ambitions, but he had inherited a military weakened by years of neglect.
"History teaches," Reagan told the nation, "that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap." He convinced the nation it was time to rebuild.
The Soviets quickly learned not to underestimate Reagan. In 1986, Gorbachev tried to use the international pressure for successful arms reduction talks to get Reagan to abandon the countermissile program. At the end of what had been successful talks, Gorbachev surprisingly said that he would not agree to any of the terms unless President Reagan was willing to abandon the Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI, known as "Star Wars."
 | Ronald Reagan's unyielding style won the Cold WarRudy Giuliani In the 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union is viewed by some commentato... |
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American imagination was soon overtaken by the smug fantasy that we had “won” the Cold War "While President George H.W. Bush rushed to claim credit for ending the Cold War, the Soviet Union’s Mikhail Gorbachev was the lynchpin of that historic conclusion. It was he who, in the dramatic autumn of 1989, repeatedly ordered Communist forces to remain in their barracks while throngs of freedom-chanters poured into the streets of multiple cities behind the Iron Curtain. Instead of blindly striking out (as the leaders of crumbling empires often had), Gorbachev allowed democratic demands to echo through the Soviet empire -- ultimately even in Russia itself.
| | The Breach of the Berlin Wall - The GlobalistThe final hours before the fall of the Wall: An eyewitness report by an American diplomat. By J.D. Bindenagel |
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Yet the American imagination was soon overtaken by the smug fantasy that the U.S. had “
won” the Cold War and that it was now a power beyond all imagining. Never mind that, in 1987, when President Ronald Reagan issued his famed demand in then still-divided Berlin, “Mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” the Soviet leader was already starting to do precisely that.
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As the wall came down, the red-scare horrors that had disturbed American dreams for three generations seemed to dissolve overnight, leaving official Washington
basking in triumphalism. The U.S. then wrapped itself in a self-aggrandizing mantle of virtue and power that effectively blinded this country’s political leadership to the ways the Cold War’s end had left them mired in an outmoded, ever more dangerous version of militarism.
| | Tomgram: Andrew Bacevich, How We Got Here | TomDispatchThe fall of the Berlin Wall in October 1989 abruptly ended one historical era and inaugurated another... |
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After Panama, the self-styled “
indispensable nation” would show itself to be hell-bent on unbridled --- and profoundly self-destructive -- belligerence. Deprived of an existential enemy, Pentagon budgets would decline oh-so-modestly (though without a “peace dividend” in sight) but soon return to Cold War levels. A bristling nuclear arsenal would be maintained as a “
hedge” against the comeback of Soviet-style communism. Such thinking would, in the end, only empower Moscow’s hawks, smoothing the way for the future rise of an
ex-KGB agent named Vladimir Putin. Such hyper-defensive anticipation would prove to be, as one wag put it, the insurance policy that started the fire."
| | The US Nuclear ArsenalOur interactive tool visualizes every bomb and warhead in the US nuclear arsenal. |
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|  | Before he became the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin was a KGB spy —...Áine Cain Vladimir Putin worked as a KGB officer in East Germany long before becoming the president of Russia. While Putin... |
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| | Tomgram: James Carroll, November Hopes Mislaid | TomDispatchnull |
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TASS: World has a chance to avoid another Cold War, says Gorbachev
"Today we are witnesses to attempts … to roll the world back into the past. The worst risk is the return of the confrontation and the beginning of another arms race," Gorbachev said in the statement.
He finds it worrisome that "nuclear war is being talked about these days as something permissible, that it is being prepared for and that scenarios of it are being discussed."
"That’s the limit. It cannot be tolerated. It will be wrong to give up. I believe that another Cold War can be stopped and I will be doing all I can to this end," Gorbachev said.
In his message Gorbachev said that in a nuclear war there could be no winners.
"I believe that these words must become the slogan of a new movement against the nuclear threat," he said. Gorbachev recalled that just recently some foreign periodicals published his article in which he declared it would be impermissible to drop the Intermediate Nuclear Force Treaty. After the article’s publication Gorbachev received a message of support from former US Secretary of State George Shultz, who stated that another arms race would be impermissible.
After the film, he replied to journalists’ questions. "Getting rid of nuclear weapons as such is the most important thing. I am in favor of a ban on nuclear weapons," Gorbachev stressed, adding that the effects of nuclear weapons are well known and horrible.
Gorbachev also spoke in favor of normalization of Russian-US relations.
Meeting Gorbachev is a joint production of film directors Werner Herzog and Andre Singer. The documentary is based on a series of personal interviews Gorbachev granted to the authors. The documentary has already been screened in Canada and Germany"
