The new nationalism in Europe

Abstract

Far from ending, history seems to have accelerated since the revolutions of 1989. Germany has unified; the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia have fallen apart. A major war is taking place in the middle of the continent, with tens of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, and the destruction of whole villages, towns, and historic buildings. Anti‐Semitism, anti‐gypsyism, and other forms of xenophobia are on the rise again almost everywhere in Europe. Did those of us who devoted so much of our lives to the goal of ending the Cold War make a mistake? Was it worth being a dissident or a peace activist if this was to be the final outcome? Why did we assume that everything could be solved if the division of Europe were removed? Cold War apologists, like John Lewis Gaddis or John Mearsheimer, told us that future generations would look back nostalgically on the period of the Cold War as a golden era of stability—the “Long Peace,” they called it. East European officials used to warn us that democracy...