If we would only pay attention, there's always a lot history can teach us at times of great turmoil. But the fact is, humans can fear the unknown and can be cautious when we should bold, and we can be too audacious and be bold when we can be cautious.
Patton observed that :
Had the Germans known that the Allies were going to take Berlin, the city might have fallen after brief resistance in the manner that German strongpoints had prior in the west. What later became West Germany would have extended to Berlin, the allies would probably have occupied Czechoslovakia where the Third Army finished the war, and we might not have had to make later concessions to Stalin to save Austria and Greece.
I guess we can judge that this scenario is highly plausible. If so, under such an environment, what shape and form would the Iron Curtain have taken. Would the Cold War be shorter?
Of course, it is entirely possible that without empowerment of the masses through information technology today, and without the sufficient checks and balances that this provides, a western dominated world may not have as much attention to individual liberty as it does today.
Still the thought that the West screwed up badly and created the Iron Curtain problem is a compelling argument, because no matter how good it looks, it can always be better.
Just like the flipside of that argument is : no matter how bad it got, it can always be much much worse. |
