How Ukraine crisis echoes the Cold War – and how it doesn’t
Tanks on the move somewhere in Europe. Headlines blare about “High-stakes talks!” between Moscow and Washington. Allies confer on the sidelines. A smaller country waits, stuck uneasily between big powers, as clocks tick and tension builds.
That’s the Ukraine situation today, as Russia amasses military force on its borders and threatens invasion. But blink, and it could be 1968, with Warsaw Pact armies preparing to roll into Czechoslovakia. Blink again, and it’s 1961 amid the Berlin crisis, as the Soviets try to muscle Western troops out of the divided German city.
In many ways Ukraine is a Cold War crisis that’s erupted in a post-Cold War world. It’s a reminder that the hard realities of geopolitical competition didn’t end with the fall of the Berlin Wall – and that patient containment pressure across a variety of fronts has
