Role Reversal In The New Cold War | Zero Hedge

Role Reversal In The New Cold War | Zero Hedge



Submitted by Justin Raimondo via Anti-War.com,



This past weekend marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the reunification of Germany, an event that formalized the end of the cold war. The so-called “German Democratic Republic,” one of the most repressive of the Soviet-imposed regimes established in the wake of World War II, was no more. It imploded without a shot being fired.



The largely bloodless revolution that swept across Eastern Europe, toppling Communist dictatorships from Berlin to Budapest, soon penetrated the epicenter of the “evil empire” itself – and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics evaporated like mist on a sunlit morning. It was the end of the cold war, and peoples all over the world breathed a joyful sigh of relief – and yet that joy was not shared by all.



The cadre of that troublesome little sect known as the neoconservatives weren’t convinced that the Soviets were on their last legs: they had opposed the arms control agreements signed by Ronald Reagan in the Kremlin’s twilight years, attacking them as signs of “appeasement” and arguing that any rapprochement with the Soviets would give them breathing room and the strength to gather their forces for one last push against the West. The United States, they averred, should take the opportunity to push harder and institute a policy of “rollback,” because only a foreign policy of aggression could defeat the Evil Empire once and for all.



They were wrong.



What happened, instead, is that the captive nations of the Soviet bloc rose up all on their own, without any substantial support from us, and overthrew their oppressors. Not because we had weakened the USSR in any significant way, but because a system that never worked to begin with had finally reached its endpoint. As the great libertarian theoretician Ludwig von Mises had predicted as early as 1920 that it would.



Indeed, it could be argued that all our efforts during the cold war era had merely strengthened the Leninist project, unnaturally extending its lifespan. For Joseph Stalin realized two vital facts early on:



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