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04 September 2009
Man-Made Vision Remains Relevant
This article is excerpted from The Berlin Wall: 20 Years Later, published by the Bureau of International Information Programs. View the entire book (PDF, 2.5 MB).
By: Simon Serfaty
What happened in Berlin 20 years ago, on November 9, 1989 — and what followed in Moscow the following year — was magical. The moment is not so far away that it cannot be celebrated now with the same emotion as it was lived then. So many had lived for so long with the “long, twilight struggle” we call the Cold War that they viewed its ending as a miracle rather than the fulfillment of a man-made vision that had dared anticipate the rollback of an evil empire, the collapse of a fatally flawed ideology, and the peaceful resurrection of Europe from two suicidal wars.
A vision, however, is mostly what is remembered after everything has worked. Lost sometimes in the glow of success are the components of that vision: the patience in the midst of occasional setbacks, prudence in the face of dangerous provocations, and fortitude to overcome the tragic burdens of history that produced the events of fall 1989. The many expressions of that vision, lived over time, deserve to be remembered, not only because they worked but also for their relevance to the new insecurity unleashed most dramatically on September 11, 2001.
Central to the vision that shaped the Cold War and its final outcome was a broad U.S. understanding that despite the nation’s unquestioned might, the “over there” of yesteryear had come over here to endanger American interests and values — and could again. Admittedly, calls to disengage from various Cold War flashpoints, to “come home,” were heard throughout the Cold War, often linked to warnings of irreversible decline and impending disasters. But those calls could be ignored, and the heavy burdens of entangling commitments could be borne because Americans had arrived at a broad understanding that no nation alone, however peerless, could remain isolated for long — without allies that shared its values, interests, and goals and could thus contribute their capabilities, experience, and diversity to common, complementary, or compatible policies.
The ultimate goal of U.S. leadership, however, was not merely to win a war but to defeat war itself on a European continent that had made of war an unsustainable way of life. As a result, the events of November 1989 were not merely the triumph of the U.S.-led trans-Atlantic West over the Soviet Union but Europe’s triumph over history: As the states of Europe bid farewell to arms when they surprisingly agreed to a gradual pooling of their national sovereignty, they recast themselves into an ever-closer community, now a union, that gave them more democracy, affluence, stability, and peace than ever before.
There were those, 20 years ago, who thought that the end of the Cold War and the reunification of Germany would threaten Europe’s unity, as well as its solidarity with the United States. That the reverse instead proved true testifies to the depth of the vision that brought America and Europe to that magical moment 20 years ago and has motivated the enlargement and deepening of the Euro-Atlantic institutions that continue to define their relations. Admittedly, during the Cold War this vision was confined to “half the world” only, as Secretary of State Dean Acheson subsequently wrote. Today those limits remind us of the need to extend that vision, to afford others the opportunity to achieve peace, prosperity, and freedom.
[Simon Serfaty holds the Zbigniew Brzezinski Chair in Global Security and Geopolitics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. His most recent book is Architects of Delusion (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009).]
