Reflections on the end of the cold war?

“It’s official. We lost the Cold War,” the title of a Washington Post column by Dana Milbank on December 21, 2018, and “A new kind of cold war,” the title and main story of The Economist of May 18, 2019, are just two examples of current debates nearly thirty years after October 3, 1990, the day of German reunification, that historic moment when we thought the Cold War was over. Really?

October 3, 1990 was a marvelous moment after an incredible year that saw the first rather free elections in Poland, the opening of the Iron Curtain in Hungary, peaceful protests in the GDR and intensive negotiations with regard to the reunification of Germany. It was the beginning of a new era in Europe.