The Cold War ended on Washington\u2019s terms, the post-Cold War won\u2019t<\/p>\n
\u201cThere won\u2019t be a war, but the struggle for peace will be so intense that not a stone will be left standing.\u201d
\nThis old Soviet joke, born in the 1980s, captured the absurdity of that final Cold War decade: endless ideological cannon fire, nuclear arsenals on hair-trigger alert, and proxy wars fought on the margins. Between d\u00e9tente in the early 1970s and perestroika in the late 1980s, the world lived in a state of permanent tension \u2013 half-theater, half-tragedy.
\nThe Soviet leadership was old and exhausted, barely able to maintain the status quo. Across the ocean, the White House was run by a former actor, blunt and self-confident, with a taste for gallows humor. When Ronald Reagan quipped during a sound check in 1984 that he had \u201csigned legislation outlawing Russia forever\u201d and that \u201cbombing begins in five minutes,\u201d the off-air joke was truer to the spirit of the times than any prepared speech.
\nThe official Soviet slogan was \u201cthe struggle for peace.\u201d In Russian, it carried a deliberate ambiguity \u2013 both a promise to preserve peace and an assertion of global control. By the 1980s it had lost all meaning, becoming a clich\u00e9 mouthed without conviction. Yet history has a way of circling back. Today, the \u201cstruggle for peace\u201d has returned \u2013 and this time the stakes are even greater.
\nFrom deadlock to dominance
\nBy the late 1980s, both superpowers were tired. The USSR was struggling to carry the burden; the US, shaken by the crises of the 1970s, was looking for renewal. Leadership changes in Moscow \u2013 above all, Mikhail Gorbachev\u2019s rise \u2013 triggered the most dramatic shift in world affairs since 1945.<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
The West had its century. The future belongs to these leaders now<\/p>\n
Between Geneva in 1985 and Malta in 1989, Reagan and Gorbachev held summit after summit. Their aim was to end confrontation and build a \u201cnew world order.\u201d In reality, Washington and Moscow understood that phrase very differently. The Soviet Union\u2019s growing internal weakness tilted the balance of power, leaving the United States and its allies to design the order in their own image. The result was the liberal international system that has dominated ever since.\u00a0
\nThat struggle for peace was, in Western terms, a success: the military threat receded, the Cold War ended, and the United States emerged as global hegemon.<\/p>\n
A new cycle begins
\nFour decades later, the cycle has turned. The Alaska meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in August 2025 carried faint echoes of Reagan and Gorbachev\u2019s first encounters. Then, as now, two leaders with little mutual understanding recognized the need to keep talking. Then, as now, the personal factor mattered \u2013 the chemistry between two men who respected each other\u2019s strength.
\nBut the differences outweigh the parallels. Reagan and Gorbachev were unwitting midwives of the liberal order. Trump and Putin are its gravediggers. Where the earlier summits opened the Cold War\u2019s endgame, today\u2019s dialogue marks the close of the post-Cold War era.<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
Could Russia have joined NATO?<\/p>\n
The resemblance lies only in timing: both moments represent turns of the historical spiral. The 1980s saw exhaustion on both sides. Now it is the United States, not Russia, that shows fatigue with a world order it once dominated. The demand for change comes above all from within America itself, just as it came from Soviet society in the 1980s.<\/p>\n
Peace through strength
\nTrump consciously borrows Reagan\u2019s slogan of \u201cpeace through strength.\u201d In English it is straightforward; in Russian the phrase can also mean \u201cpeace maintained reluctantly, against one\u2019s will.\u201d Both shades of meaning suit Trump. He makes no secret of his obsession with winning the Nobel Peace Prize, a vanity project that nevertheless reflects a real instinct: his method of diplomacy is raw pressure, even threats, until a deal is struck.
\nReagan\u2019s legacy was to put America on the neoliberal path and to preside over the Cold War\u2019s end, unintentionally becoming the father of globalization. Trump\u2019s ambition is to roll globalization back and replace it with what he sees as a stronger America \u2013 not isolationist, but a magnet pulling in advantage from all directions. To achieve that, he too needs a world order \u2013 different from Reagan\u2019s, but just as central to his sense of national interest.
\nPutin\u2019s outlook is the mirror opposite. Where Trump sees America first, Putin sees the necessity of reshaping the global order itself \u2013 of ending the period of US dominance and forcing a multipolar settlement. To him, the issue of world order is not cosmetic but existential.<\/p>\n
The new nerve center
\nWhat stands out in 2025 is the return of the Moscow-Washington axis as the world\u2019s nerve center. This was not supposed to happen. For years, analysts proclaimed that China would replace both as the defining rival. And Beijing is indeed central. Yet the dialogue between Trump and Putin, however fraught, once again is setting the tone of global politics.<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
The West has just been given a rude awakening<\/p>\n
The pace is quicker than 40 years ago. The war is not cold but hot, and there are no long pauses between meetings. The process begun in Alaska will move faster than the one that began in Geneva.
\nIf it continues, the outcome will be the reverse. Reagan closed the Cold War on Washington\u2019s terms, crowning America as sole superpower. Trump and Putin are bringing that period to an end. The unipolar era is finished, even if its defenders in Brussels or Washington cannot yet admit it.<\/p>\n
Fighting for peace, again
\nThe irony is that both cycles \u2013 the 1980s and today \u2013 were framed as struggles for peace. In the first, peace meant ending confrontation and disarming rivalry. In the second, peace means preventing one power from dictating terms to all others.
\nThe military threat today is at least as grave as in the 1980s, perhaps greater. But the real battle is for the shape of the order itself. The fight for peace, once again, risks leaving no stone standing.
\nThe Cold War ended with Reagan\u2019s victory and Gorbachev\u2019s surrender. This time there will be no surrender, only a reshaping of the stage. The United States is still strong, but it is no longer willing or able to bear the costs of global hegemony. Other powers \u2013 Russia, China, and others \u2013 are strong enough to insist on their place.
\nThe struggle for peace is back, and like its predecessor it will define an era. But this time the script is different: it will not end with one side dictating terms, but with a new balance hammered out by force and necessity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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