What Went Wrong? From the Fall of the Berlin Wall to the Rise of New Fences

Abstract

Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, illegal in terms of the pre-1990s international law and probably a geopolitical miscalculation, has caused a shock incomparable even with that of the 2003 American attack on Iraq that was proudly baptised Operation Shock and Awe. Remarkably, neither the twenty-year-long war in Afghanistan waged by the U.S. and its allies, nor the destruction of Libya in 2011, nor the multiple military interventions in Africa, nor even NATO’s bombardment of Serbia in 1999—the first unlawful use of force in post-WWII Europe—have caused such anger. There is always a whiff of racism in the fact that wars waged against people who have chosen to be on the “wrong side of history” are not condemned by those on “right side of history” as they must be. How did it happen that after the fall of the Berlin Wall and reasonable expectations of a peaceful future, the world found itself in a situation where the use of military force has become nearly normal unless it is used against Europeans who chose the “right side of history”? How and why, in the race towards “the end of history” the fundamental principles of international law have been twisted and crumbled to such an extent that soon there may be not a single man left in the world to contemplate this end? Today we are all in unchartered waters, but we still have a chance to survive if we learn the lessons of history which offers helpful hints of how to end military confrontations.