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Author : Bilahari Kausikan
Ambassador-at-Large and Policy Adviser in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Singapore; Ambassador
to the Russian Federation from 1994 to 1995
In December last year, finding myself in Ukraine, I de-
cided to visit Kiev's Independence Square to observe the
EuroMaidan demonstrations. It was a colorful spectacle
with flags of all political stripes fluttering in the early win-
ter breeze, including some that I had not expected to see
and I wondered if the young people waving them really
knew their historical meaning. On one occasion I listened
to some European politician - I think it was a Member
of the European Parliament - give a rousing speech. He
spoke of freedom and democracy, the usual phrases tripping off his fluent tongue. He spoke in
English and I do not know how much the crowd understood. But his tone was clear enough
and they responded enthusiastically. Stirring music played in the background. There was a festive
air. But the thought came to me: this could all end very badly. Images of Hungary in 1956 flashed
across my mind. At that time, the West encouraged an anti-Soviet revolt, then folded its arms as
Soviet tanks rumbled into Budapest.
My worst fears have not come to pass, but it is bad enough. Crimea is lost to Ukraine forever.
The western narrative on the Ukrainian crisis has demo-nized President Putin personally. Yet, as
anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the region's history and Ukraine's complex relationship
with Russia should have known the intensity of cultural, historical and economic ties between
the two countries. It was feckless of the Europeans to have encouraged those Ukrainians who
sought a closer association with the EU - Ukrainians were and remain deeply divided on this
question.
Whatever the proximate cause of the Ukraine crisis - and historians will debate it for years to
come - the ultimate underlying impetus for the bad decisions that led to an imbroglio that nobody
really wanted was the end of the Cold War.
The fundamental imbalance is conceptual, epitomized by the idea that with the end of the Cold
War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, history had somehow found its summation in western
liberal democracy and thus "ended." It is now painfully evident that history is still playing itself
out and cruder versions of the idea of "the end of history" have been smothered by an embar-
rassing silence. But the idea still lingers in more invidious forms.
After the Cold War there seemed to be no alternative to American power and American ideas.
Successive U.S. administrations of both parties acted on that assumption in their domestic and
foreign policies. When Madeleine Albright infamously dubbed America the "indispensable na-
tion" that stood taller and saw farther than all others, she was merely articulating what many
Americans of all political persuasions believed.
The End of the Cold War: A Polemic From Singapore