“The Fall of the Berlin Wall Almost Started WW III,” Eric Margolis, November 8, 2014.
The next three US administrations – Clinton, Bush II, and Obama – violated the original sphere of influence accord and began advancing US power east towards Russia’s borders. The most recent NATO foray was the overthrow of Ukraine’s pro-Russian government, a ham-handed act that nearly sparked World War III.
“The Economics Behind the Fall of the Berlin Wall,” Ryan McMaken, November 11, 2019.
Throughout the mid-twentieth century, Eastern Europe was home to numerous anti-Soviet revolts and acts of civil disobedience. In Hungary in 1956, Prague in 1968, and especially in Poland throughout the 1970s and 1980s, resistance flared up, but was reliably crushed with Soviet-sponsored martial law and outright military intervention.
But in the summer of 1989, the Poles held an election that essentially overthrew the Soviet-approved regime in Poland. This, time, however, instead of sending tanks to crush the Polish agitators, the USSR did nothing.
Americans today, and especially American conservatives, like to claim that the end of the Soviet bloc and the Soviet Union was America’s doing; that the Soviet oligarchs feared American military might, and simply decided to give up and vote themselves out of existence, as they did two years later. This tale makes for nice domestic propaganda in America, but the fact that regimes virtually never just “give up” without firing a shot when faced with a threatening foreign power makes it rather unlikely.
San Gabriel Tutor 