From the archive: Freedom without constraints: how the US squandered its cold war victory

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  This is The Guardian.

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  The Guardian Archive Long Read.

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  Hi, my name is Andrew Bacevich.

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  I'm the author of the article, Freedom Without Constraints,

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  How the U.S. Squandered Its Cold War Victory, which appeared in The Guardian back in 2020.

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  The essay explains my disappointment, and I think the disappointment of many Americans,

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  that the end of the Cold War failed to yield the benefits that many of us expected.

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  More than anything else, what surprised me about the end of the Cold War is that it did n't yield anything approximating peace

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  and harmony for the United States or for the world more broadly.

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  On the contrary, immediately following the Cold War came a sequence of conflicts involving the United States,

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  sometimes involving allies, but cumulatively.

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  Costing billions and billions of dollars, along with thousands and thousands of casualties.

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  So since this essay appeared, in my estimation, things have gotten worse.

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  And the currently ongoing war between the United States and Israel on the one hand and Iran on the other is the best example

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  of how the Cold War has yielded outcomes, results,

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  other than those that people like me expected back at the end of the 1980s.

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  Welcome to The Guardian Long Read, showcasing the best long-form journalism covering culture,

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  politics, and new thinking.

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  For the text version of this and all our long reads, go to theguardian. com forward slash long read.

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  Freedom without constraints.

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