Three decades ago, U.S. President George H.W. Bush marked the end of the Cold War in his 1992 State of the Union address. It was a heady moment when anything and everything seemed possible. But it would not last.
In his State of the Union address this year, delivered just a week after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, President Joe Biden rallied the nation and the West for what appears to be a new protracted conflict with Moscow.
Two speeches, three decades apart, are like bookends of an era. One marked the end of one Cold War and the second heralded the start of another. So what did we learn in that interlude between the Cold Wars? What are the lessons we can draw as the West enters what appears to be another period of confrontation with the Kremlin?
On The Power Vertical Podcast this week, host Brian Whitmore speaks with historian Jeff Mankoff, a Distinguished Research Fellow at National Defense University’s Institute for National Strategic Studies and author of the recently published book Empires of Eurasia: How Imperial Legacies Shape International Security. (Jeff Mankoff’s comments represent his own views and not those of his employer or the United States government).
Enjoy…