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Ten years ago this month, a mass of boisterous, ebullient Germans breached the Berlin Wall, effectively ending the Cold War. The West's triumph in a conflict that had stretched over decades was a stupendous achievement, all the more notable for having been gained without an actual showdown between the two chief antagonists, the United States and the Soviet Union.
The victory gained at the end of 1989 compares to the triumph over fascism in World War II. The immediate consequences of this success were enormous. The vast empire created by Josef Stalin in the aftermath of World War II disintegrated. Communism was discredited. In short order, the Soviet Union itself collapsed. In the long, bitterly contested ideological struggle that defined 20th century politics, democratic capitalism had finally prevailed.
As for the United States, it stood astride the world like a colossus. If stray doubts about American global primacy remained in 1989, events in the Persian Gulf would soon quash them, seemingly demonstrating beyond dispute that the United States was indeed the World's Only Superpower. Epitomizing that dominance was the strength and competence of America's Armed Forces.
Abruptly resolving problems that for a half-century had seemed intractable, the closing chapter of the Cold War was indeed a remarkable occurrence. Seldom if ever in the annals of history had there been anything quite like it.
How remarkable, then, that this second V-E Day passes each year all but unnoticed. Even the 10th anniversary has attracted hardly more than nodding attention. Yet there is something more remarkable still. Far from easing U.S. security concerns and reducing the burdens borne by American troops, the end of the Cold War has seemingly had the opposite effect. Expectations that the defeat of communism might produce an era of peace permitting the United States to revert to the status of "normal nation" have come to naught.
Recalling the dramatic events of 1989, 10 years on, the preliminary evaluation of the Cold War's outcome drafted in the flush of victory cannot stand. Seldom if ever has a decisive outcome yielded a more perplexing and seemingly paradoxical legacy.
For national security professionals, the implications of that paradox demand scrutiny.
The Irony of History
In one sense, the events of the 1990s have reaffirmed the...