The Russians Are Coming, Again: The First Cold War as Tragedy, the Second as Farce

A timely commentary on today's New Cold War between the United States and Russia

Karl Marx famously wrote in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon that history repeats itself, “first as tragedy, then as farce.” The Cold War waged between the United States and Soviet Union from 1945 until the latter's dissolution in 1991 was a great tragedy, resulting in millions of civilian deaths in proxy wars, and a destructive arms race that diverted money from social spending and nearly led to nuclea...