Even though it has been ten years since the Berlin Wall came down, we still have no better name for the period in which we live than "the post-Cold War era." True, many have aspired to play the role of the next George Kennan--defining American strategy for this new era that does not yet have a name--but so far none has succeeded. Moreover, given the rate at which many politicians and commentators have been revising their recollections of their own stances during the period 1946-91, it may not be too long before someone disputes Kennan's authorship of the original containment strategy. For it seems that now, safely after the event, we have all become cold warriors.
In his maiden speech on foreign policy, presidential candidate Bill Bradley declared that, "For 50 years after the end of World War II and until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, we were sure about one thing: We knew where we stood on foreign policy." The former senator from New Jersey went on to rue the fact that today we face a more difficult challenge:
"when it comes to foreign affairs, things are not so clear. The world's a more complicated place and it's no longer divided like it once was into good and evil, clear enemies, obvious friends. The choices are no longer so stark, and stark choices are always the easy ones."
This nostalgia for the supposedly easier choices of the Cold War is not confined to Bradley. President Clinton, too, routinely echoes the lament about the lost clarity and clear choices of the recent past.
It is astonishing to hear the Cold War era so described. For in reality it was a time when the country was deeply divided over issues of foreign policy--most bitterly over the war in Vietnam, but also over the commitment of U.S. troops to Europe and Korea, the Strategic Defense Initiative and arms control, Central America and nuclear weapons, and over almost every year's budget request from the Defense Department.
