Friends, the death of Mikhail Gorbachev got me thinking about the man's legacy and about how the West's victory in the Cold War was, arguably, a mixed blessing. My latest article explores these themes. Check it out:
Gee, Thanks, Gorby!
The
death of the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, has,
understandably, triggered an avalanche of tributes to the man who
oversaw the dénouement
of the Communist Bloc, and America and the West's victory (by
default) in the Cold War. What so many of these commentators forget
is that both outcomes were entirely accidental, from Gorbachev's
perspective, and by no means are his leadership and legacy praised as
fulsomely in his native land as they are in the West. For us,
Gorbachev's failures amount to his most signal virtues, but, since
the Cold War was a zero-sum contest, that is only to be expected.
Gorbachev's
most important contribution to world history, it can be argued, was
his stewardship of the Soviet Union in its death throes, when he
narrowly beat back a coup launched by communist hardliners, and when
the dangers of autocratic regression, and even military aggression,
were very considerable. A cornered animal is, by all accounts, a
dangerous one. A cornered and
wounded animal is the most dangerous of all.
The
purpose of this article is neither to praise nor condemn Mikhail
Gorbachev, however, but to reconsider the consequences of the Soviet
Union's almost universally unexpected demise, and of America's
greatest triumph: the crushing defeat of not one, but two,
totalitarian ideologies in the 20th
century.
Once the Soviet
Union had been toppled, Americans and people throughout the West were
inclined to celebrate, and indeed we did for a while enjoy lower
defense costs, less exposure to the threat of nuclear annihilation, a
tenuous monopoly on moral rectitude (amid a surge in the worldwide
popularity of representative democracy and free enterprise
economics), and a chance to refocus ourselves on meeting domestic
challenges. For those in the USSR and Eastern Europe who were freed
from communist misrule, the gains were even more notable, even if the
transition to Western-style democracy and capitalism was not always
smooth.
What we tend to
forget, however, is that 40+ years of Cold War tensions, anxieties,
and burdens also came with major upsides. The technological advances
that arose as a side-effect of Western versus Soviet competition in
space exploration and weapons manufacture are well known, but the
chief advantage of our adversarial Cold War posture is rarely
admitted: we were, for roughly two generations, largely united in
facing down the threat of communist aggression. Americans and
Europeans, who could agree on little else, could and did come
together to defend the West's values, institutions, and territorial
integrity from an odious form of imperialistic collectivism that was
rightly seen as an existential threat, and all the more so when it
acquired nuclear weapons and the capacity to deliver them on a
gargantuan scale anywhere on the globe. And not only were America and
Europe united in this noble quest, but so were, by and large, the
Democratic and Republican parties in the U.S., and the
liberal/progressive and conservative movements.
The Soviets gave
us a very precious gift, therefore: a common enemy, and one which was
tailor-made to capture our attention, to hone our focus, to motivate
us to achieve new and evermore marvelous feats in the technical,
industrial, economic,social-cultural, and political domains, and to
distract us from the centrifugal forces that might otherwise have
overwhelmed us.
And therein lies
the tragedy of Gorbachev's accidental obliteration of his very own
“evil empire”. Its consignment to the dustbin of history left
triumphant Westerners like ourselves with no one to strive against,
and, just as importantly, no one to hate. No one, that is, but
ourselves.
True, bloodthirsty
Islamic terrorists and rogue state tyrants gave us a slight but
scrumptious aftertaste of the moral certitude and sense of purpose we
had enjoyed during the Cold War, but they were no substitute for the
likes of Stalin, Mao, and Brezhnev. To a large extent, therefore,
since 1991, we Westerners have turned against each other to satisfy
our moralistic and combative urges, and against even our own
institutions, values, and erstwhile heroes.
The rapid progress
and popularization of cultural Marxism, the denigration of Western
societies as racist, sexist, homophobic, and systemically unjust, and
the low esteem in which Western Civilization, the U.S. Constitution,
Christianity, and capitalism are now held, all point to an insidious
sickness permeating Western society.
We
live in a time when young Americans view
socialism more favorably
than capitalism, and Gen Z is the most
atheistic and agnostic
in American history. Meanwhile, the professors
and college
administrators
charged with inculcating the accumulated wisdom of the West, and
sound moral values, in the rising generation are veering further and
further left – left of Marx himself, in certain respects.
Self-described conservatives are essentially absent from the
leadership structures and faculties of higher ed, and elementary and
secondary education is scarcely
any better.
Wokeness, cultural Marxism, and identity politics are increasingly
the dogmas on which our new civic religion is based. This kind of
civilizational rot threatens to demolish the West far more
effectively than Soviet tanks and apparatchiks
ever could.
In short, the
Soviet Union and communism's defeat and destruction, and the triumph
of America and the West in the Cold War, ironically stole from us our
greatest strengths: our unity and our self-belief. Much as the USSR
collapsed fundamentally because its own elite no longer believed in
its foundational ideology, nor in the wickedness of its ideological
foes, we too face obliteration, because our elites have also turned
their backs on the institutions, values, and principles that made the
West what it is today.
When we are
finally done celebrating communism's downfall, therefore, we will
have to face the unpleasant reality that, without an evil empire on
which to fix our gaze, all we have left to look at is our own
reflection. And, at least to our current ruling class, the picture
that emerges is every bit as terrible and hideous as what they once
perceived on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Their judgment is
atrocious, needless to say, but that will be little comfort as they
lead us to perdition.
Dr.
Nicholas L. Waddy is an Associate Professor of History at SUNY
Alfred, and blogs at: www.waddyisright.com.
He appears on the Newsmaker Show on WLEA 1480/106.9.
And here it is at World Net Daily:
https://www.wnd.com/2022/09/cold-wars-end-precipitated-ruin-west/
In other news, Yours Truly stars in a hard-hitting Sputnik News piece about the absurdity of President Biden's recent efforts to demonize "MAGA Republicans". Sleepy Joe doesn't scare me one little bit!
https://sputniknews.com/20220902/analyst-bidens-speech-left-democrats-are-genuine-threat-to-us-democracy-not-maga-or-trump-1100323537.html
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