#dnaEdit: 25 years later

Twenty-five years ago, on November 9, the Berlin Wall came down. The 87-mile stretch of concrete, put up on the night of August 13, 1961, cleaving Germany into two different political entities, came to represent — what seemed then — to be an insurmountable edifice of Cold War politics; a symbol of a sharply polarised world split into two different orders hegemonised by the US and the-then Soviet Union. When that concrete symbol of political apartheid fell under the impact of Glasnost and Perestroika ushered in by Mikhail Gorbachev, the former USSR President, the collapse was celebrated the world over. 

More than two decades later, people and leaders alike are celebrating the 25th anniversary of that historic event. The streets of Berlin teemed with people as the long row of helium-filled white balloons went up one by one into the night sky. That November night in the 1980s, many crossing over the border at midnight, thought that the worst of a polarised world was over. That the world was going to be a less polarised and sinister place. And the optimism was not without foundation.

In the Soviet Union, Gorbachev had begun a new conversation around democracy and Communism, questioning for the first time, the opaque Iron Curtain behind which the socialist countries took cover. Even before the Berlin Wall fell, by 1961, 3.5 million people had already fled East Germany. Each of these acts of defiance damaged the Soviet project across Central and Eastern Europe bit by bit. Two years into the fall of the Berlin wall, the mighty Soviet Union that once checkmated the US across the world, collapsed like a house of cards.

But here are some questions that jostle for our attention as we celebrate the 25th anniversary: Has the world become safer since 1989? Is the contemporary world less polarised and more democratic? It would appear not. In fact, right now we are witnessing a return of sorts, to the Cold War situation. The stand-off between Russia and the US has deepened with Obama slapping sanctions on the defence, financial and energy sectors in Russia, in retaliation to the presence of Russian troops in Ukraine. The ongoing Ukraine conflict has till now claimed more than 4,000 lives.

At an event to mark the Berlin Wall anniversary, Gorbachev, the man who set into motion the train of transformative events in the 1980s, said that the world is on the brink of a new Cold War. Observing that the West has “succumbed to triumphalism”, Gorbachev called for a renewal of dialogue with Russia. His words could not have rung truer. The Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union or the socialist bloc might be no more, but tensions in this multi-polar world — dominated by the US — are escalating every day. New centres and forms of conflict are surfacing despite the American philosopher Steven Pinker arguing that violence in the 21st century has declined. True, the wars fought on the gigantic scale of Vietnam might no longer be possible. But that is because the character of violence has itself changed. Recent technological advances — the use of drones for instance — have made wars apparently less brutal. But are they less pervasive?

The emergence of violent fundamentalist groups like the ISIS, the notching up of US troops in Iraq, and the increasing aggression between China and Japan over the East China Sea islands, are some pointers to the deep volatility now embedded in the world order. The totalitarian regimes that marked the Cold War conflict have now gone. But their place has been taken by hundreds of dictators and illiberal regimes, which are now perfecting fresh strategies of control and muzzling dissent.