The United States and China show growing signs of entering a long-term cold war, strikingly similar to the U.S.-Soviet cold war of decades past and demanding the same dogged determination that Washington displayed during that earlier conflict to protect its interests and defend its allies. Like the U.S.-Soviet conflict, the Sino-American one is rooted in …
An American president meets his Russian counterpart in Helsinki. Critics worry that he’ll validate Russia’s rule over its conquered neighbors, while human rights advocates fret that he won’t discuss their issue. Trump and Putin? Actually, it was President Gerald Ford and Leonid Brezhnev in Finland’s capital in 1975 — although, at the time, Russia was …
Seventy years ago this coming week, the Soviets blocked all access to West Berlin, prompting President Truman to launch an airlift of food and supplies that saved the city and convinced Josef Stalin to back down 11 months later. The airlift came amid Truman’s broad-scale reinvention of U.S. foreign policy in which — through the …
Continue reading “A timely anniversary of American greatness”
A quarter-century ago this month, East Germany’s communist leaders announced they were opening the Berlin Wall in an act that, as much as anything else during that momentous year, symbolized the Cold War’s end. The anniversary is timely, for it provides history lessons that seem particularly relevant at a time when America is re-thinking its …
Continue reading “3 Lessons From the Fall of the Berlin Wall”