Only Mikhail Gorbachev’s principled refusal to do it again all across Eastern Europe, as rebellion and disaffection spread from Poland to East Germany, south to Romania, finally presaged the end of the old Soviet system in 1989. But while various American pundits proclaimed “the end of history” in reaction to the remarkable implosion of the Soviet empire that followed, history has persistently refused to cooperate. The invasion of Georgia by Putin, on the pretext of protecting ethnic Russians, looks a lot like Hitler’s invasions more than half a century ago.
As Americans on the left continue to call for our retreat from global engagement, beginning with Iraq, and Democratic politicians like New York’s senior senator, Chuck Schumer, excoriate the Bush administration for denying Russia its natural right to dominate its neighbors, we’re at last confronted with the fruits of such thinking. As we saw repeatedly in the twentieth century, and as Republican presidential candidate John McCain recently reminded us, great conflicts often begin with small events, just as they did in the two world wars of the past century.
In 2003, American politicians who opposed the current administration on domestic matters made a calculated decision to oppose it on just about everything, including its prosecution of the war against the terrorists who brought us 9/11 and the forced removal of Saddam Hussein. Successful beyond their wildest dreams, this strategy has finally positioned Democrats to retake the White House in 2008 while leaving the Bush administration seriously, perhaps even fatally, weakened in its final six months, unable to respond in a strong and effective way to the geopolitical ambitions of our enemies, whether religious fanatics in Tehran or KGB apparatchiks like Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin.
Although Bush has hung in there despite record low poll numbers, Putin and company have shown with remarkable clarity just how free they feel to act on their own worst impulses. No doubt they even feel an imperative to do so now, while a lame duck administration whose hands are effectively tied remains in control in Washington and before a new, potentially less fettered, president can take charge. At last Democrats can smell the heady aroma of executive power restored, even if the peoples of Eastern Europe, who once languished miserably behind an Iron Curtain, must once more find themselves consigned to the tender mercies of the reborn Russian bear.