February 28, 2024
Putin’s Rollback of Reagan’s Victory
By William R. Hawkins
On March 5, 1946, Winston Churchill made his famous post-World War II speech in which he observed how “an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe… this is certainly not the Liberated Europe we fought to build up.” That “iron curtain” would become literal with the construction of the Berlin Wall which would not come down until November 9, 1989. Events would then snowball. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics would formally dissolve on December 26, 1991, an excellent Christmas present to the world. President Ronald Reagan had called on Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall” at a speech in West Berlin on June 12, 1987. Reagan had dedicated his presidency to ending the Cold War on the terms “We win, they lose.” And he had broken the Evil Empire without the Cold War turning hot by operating from a position of strength, both economic and military, that the Soviet regime recognized as unassailable.
More than the “ancient states” with Warsaw Pact puppet governments were liberated by Reagan’s policies. Fifteen other lands across Eurasia became independent, many having been under Russian domination for centuries. It was the greatest advance of human freedom in modern history. Ukraine was one of those liberated as were the three Baltic States which are now members of NATO. These four countries along with Poland and Finland had made bids for freedom after World War I when Tsarist Russia has been defeated by a Germany that had then lost the larger war. The Soviets used Russia’s defeat to discredit and overthrow the regime but were still imperialists who wanted the lost territory back. Ukraine was reconquered in 1919. The Soviet drive on Warsaw was driven back in 1920. The Baltic States were not retaken until June 1940, after the Hitler-Stalin Pact opened the way. Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia had partitioned Poland (again) the previous year. Russia also invaded Finland in 1939 but suffered heavy casualties and only gained some border areas in the 1940 peace agreement.
Vladimir Putin, who was a lieutenant colonel in the KGB stationed in East Germany when the wall fell, has called the collapse of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe" of the 20th century. So, no one should be surprised that he wants to rebuild the empire as Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin did. In 2008, he attacked Georgia and captured border areas. In 2014, he seized Crimea from Ukraine and backed an insurgency in the Donbas. In February 2022 he invaded to reconquering the entire “former province.” Putin has argued that Ukraine deserves no separate identity from Russia, and neither do Poland or Lithuania (and by extension the other Baltic states). Finland and Sweden are joining NATO in response. On the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg again declared that Ukraine will join the alliance, something that should have been done over a decade ago to deter what has is happening today.
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https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/02/putins_rollback_of_reagans_victory.html
