New World Order Looks Much Like the Old Order

Here we are again, facing Russia across the barricades. How did that happen? Only five minutes ago, the West was celebrating the collapse of Soviet communism: a historic victory which had been achieved without a shot being fired. Russia would now join the free world as a capitalist economy, with something like democratic institutions. The end of the Cold War could bring an end to the East-West stand-off, which had required that so much of America’s wealth and Europe’s political attention be spent on defence. With mutual cooperation over the anarchic (but small-scale) threat from Islamist terrorism – in which Russia had its own stake in Chechnya – surely a new era of cooperation, stability and mass prosperity might follow.