And endings.
A Wall Street Journal deputy international editor, George Melloan, muses about progress - and lack thereof - of we humans. Apparently, it is his swan song, and thus our loss. Clearly, a man who appreciates our strengths and weaknesses as Melloan does is to be valued.
When I launched this column in January of 1990 I thought the new decade held great promise. The Soviet Union was tottering, America had regained its economic and political footing under Ronald Reagan, and the European Union was making steady progress in removing barriers to trade and investment. But looking back, I see that human progress doesn't roll forward steadily; it suffers fits and starts.
My optimism back then about the land east of the Oder was justified. The Soviet "evil empire," as President Reagan described it, was falling apart and would finally collapse in late 1991, freeing 14 non-Russian republics from the control of the politburo in Moscow. The empire's captive nations in Central Europe were breaking free even as I wrote my first Global View. Only a few weeks before then, the East Germans had torn down the wall that separated them from freedom.
But today, déjà vu intrudes. Russian imperialism is again on the march, under the leadership of a KGB clique in the Kremlin who never quite lost their taste for authoritarianism.
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