The period between 1982 and the beginning of the crisis in Ukraine was pockmarked with conflict and contention: endless struggle in the Middle East, the worst ever terrorist attack on American soil, threats real and imagined in Iraq, fresh battles for gender and racial rights in the United States, a global financial meltdown, an overtime US presidential election, political deadlock and a violent assault on democracy at home, countless skirmishes abroad. All these, plus a deadly pandemic, made it clear that the period since 1982 would not qualify as one of those blank pages of history that Hegel regarded as humankind’s happiest hours.
But nothing is quite as transformative in history as war. Russia’s assault on Ukraine sets in motion Europe’s greatest migration since World War II, poses the greatest nuclear threat since the Cuban Missile Crisis, and signals the end of the post-Cold War era. We are now at the beginning of a period that lacks a name but does not lack danger. It also has the potential to upend our view of the past four decades.
Unlikely as it may seem, we may eventually come to see them as the new good old days.
The span from 1878 to 1914, when World War I began, might be instructive. That period included two Boer Wars, two Balkan Wars, the Greco-Turkish War, the Russo-Japanese War, the Spanish American War, a war in the Andes, pogroms in tsarist Russia, an abortive revolution in Russia, the spread of colonialism throughout Asia and Africa, the Dreyfus Affair in France, and the death of 13 million in a Chinese famine.
Yet consider the reflections of the British historian Norman Stone in “Europe Transformed,” his classic history of the period:
“The 40 years before 1914 were a period of extraordinary peace and prosperity. By 1914, although the population had risen very considerably, most people were fed, housed and generally looked after far better than before.”
We may be standing at another such turning point in history.
It may even make us nostalgic for long-ago days we didn’t think were so good as we were living through them. History tends to smooth out the rough edges and memory tends to fade.
The rate of those living without health insurance in the United States dropped from nearly 14 percent in 1982 to under 9 percent today. Americans gained four years in average life expectancy, which now stands at 78.5 years. The slice of American women who earned an undergraduate college degree grew from 14 percent to 37 percent.
Still other data points remind us that history rhymes: Whereas average gas prices are surpassing $4.50 a gallon, the price in 1982, adjusted for inflation, was $3.29. Speaking of inflation, the 7.9 percent rate last month was the highest inflation has been since . . . 1982.
And if the blossoming of democracy in Eastern Europe after the dissolution of the Soviet Union can go in history’s wins column, we must now reckon with Russia’s violent bid to reverse that course.
After the fall of Soviet Communism, political leaders and theorists thought the world was on the verge of a fresh era of democracy, openness, and cooperation. The movement of new states into NATO and the decline of superpower tensions fed this notion. But in Russia and China, resentment grew over what their leaders considered Western hegemony and the American conceit that its democratic values deserved to be replicated globally.
That resentment accounts for Vladimir Putin’s regret over the destruction of the Soviet Union, which, in turn, helps explain his military effort in Ukraine. It also accounts for Xi Jinping’s silence over the Russian invasion when so much of the world opposes it. In 2019, Xi declared the current era to be one of “major change never seen in a century.” Whether Russia and China prevail in quashing democracy’s spread around the globe, or whether…
Read More: The last four weeks could upend our view of the last four decades