What happened to the overall sense of peace, prosperity after the end of the cold war
February 16, 2025
I was just born back then, but I imagine that was the case.
All I hear about nowadays is the doom and gloom and kinda getting tired of it.
Or it is not just doom and gloom?
8 comments
> I was just born back then, but I imagine that was the case.
It certainly was, but it was mostly wishful thinking.
1. Technology is far easier to access for most people, so people see the suffering that goes around the world a lot more. People are aware of wars going on in places like Sudan, Myanmar and the DRC, despite living far away from all of them, and this gives us the idea that there are so many wars going on right now (obviously, the Ukraine war happening in Europe itself fuels this sentiment even more). When internet wasn’t that widespread and you couldn’t see all the chaos, wars and suffering in other places, you just ignored them, even though they were also happening. It is also easier to see how hard people have it in the developing world, even if their material conditions have improved, as you are viewing things through Western lens.
2. The unipolar world is becoming less and less of a thing anymore. At the end of the Cold War, China was more integrated with the Western world, and Russia was very weak. Nowadays, China has grown a lot, and has become a strong US rival, and Russia under Putin wants to relive the old USSR days. This gives possibilities for more proxy wars, like the ones going on in the Sahel, or the chaos in the South China Sea that could escalate.
3. Outsourcing, the erosion of labor unions and automation (albeit the last one was less important, AI will contribute a lot more to this, but we will see) meant that the growth of real wages slowed down in the Western world, and in some countries (mostly Southern Europe) they even stagnated or declined (mostly around the 2008 crisis). This started happening after the Cold War endes, so obviously, people are less positive now. Stuff like housing and rents have even grown faster than real wages, and in general, in a world centered around constant growth, this is frustrating, especially with the current wave of inflation and economic downturn (we in the West still have it way better than anywhere else in the world, but there is a sense that it won’t last forever). This doesn’t relate to the fear of wars, but when the quality of life gets worse, people start worrying more.
4. Social media in general has given a wrong picture for people. You basically see how the 1% lives, and you will think that you are poor in comparison. This further adds to negative feelings.
If I’m frank with you, that peace and prosperity was largely confined to Europe, Oceania and North America. The rest of the world was suffering from the consequences of the Cold War.
What followed after 1990 was a series of Western military misadventures that further devastated nearly the entirety of the Middle East, parts of North Africa, and now Ukraine.
This has led to many countries in the Global South, who disproportionately suffered from the Cold War, feeling lukewarm about following our narratives on the “rules-based liberal order”. Because it feels like the rules only apply to people outside the West.
Now the Western military-industrial complex is finding a good reason to run into a conflict with these countries in a desperate attempt to maintain the unipolar world order, and it’s costing thousands of innocent lives every day.
This is coinciding with global problems due to these wars as well as the fallout of the pandemic.
We’re still in a better position than most of the world when it comes to peace/quality of life. Our best bet to preserve peace and prosperity (at least in our region) is to stop the military hubris, and focus on ourselves.
Same as always before. We fooled ourselves into thinking that all bad stuff belongs to history, and now we have entered a new era full of peace and prosperity that will last forever. In 1910’s people thought that WW1 was the war that was supposed to end all wars.
I remember when my granddad, who, by the way, was a WW2 veteran, read a book written by Politkovskaya. This was in 2005, before she was killed. I remember he commented after reading that book that Putin is shady and seems very dangerous. He passed away a few months later. I’m sure if he now came back alive for a day and checked the news to see what the world looks like in 2025, he would just say, ”Yeah, here we go again, I knew this”.
As far as prosperity is concerned: labour organisation plummeted, financially illiterate dogmatists convinced people that “there is no alternative” and they decoupled the growth of wages from the increases in productivity. As a result, even though more wealth is created, it’s distributed more and more unequally, which leads to severe political crises everywhere.
Well, I only became aware that there was a world around me when the berlin wall fell. And from there on up until before Corona, it’s been summer every day.
But these last 4 weeks, with the culmination in Munich this weekend tells that we’re heading straight into winter.
We dont have to actually fight a war, if we can collectively agree on lowering our standards of living substantially, so we can prepare for war. A war we dont have to fight as long as it’s big enough of a deterrant.
So whatever you do, dont vote radical or protest vote at your next election.
The Cold War never ended.
The peace and prosperity you’re talking about was really in the west—NATO aligned nations. The world, for at least two decades, had one global superpower and it was the United States. This is why and how U.S. foreign policy has become what it has. This is why Europe has largely demilitarized until Ukraine was invaded. On the contrary, the former Soviet states and much of the third world was really going through it in the 90s and 2000s.
Putin was able to capitalize on that, and that’s why the Cold War isn’t over. Just as Hitler was able to rise to power using Germanys grievances from defeat during the Great War, Putin had risen to power and consolidated power using the grievances from the aftermaths of the Cold War.
Mate in europe we are all used to be used to is peace.
Legitimately, when I speak to my 100 yo / 97 yo grandad / nana their young lives sound so much more difficult than mine ever was.
I think these days people are much more susceptible to shit they read on social media.
8 comments
> I was just born back then, but I imagine that was the case.
It certainly was, but it was mostly wishful thinking.
1. Technology is far easier to access for most people, so people see the suffering that goes around the world a lot more. People are aware of wars going on in places like Sudan, Myanmar and the DRC, despite living far away from all of them, and this gives us the idea that there are so many wars going on right now (obviously, the Ukraine war happening in Europe itself fuels this sentiment even more). When internet wasn’t that widespread and you couldn’t see all the chaos, wars and suffering in other places, you just ignored them, even though they were also happening. It is also easier to see how hard people have it in the developing world, even if their material conditions have improved, as you are viewing things through Western lens.
2. The unipolar world is becoming less and less of a thing anymore. At the end of the Cold War, China was more integrated with the Western world, and Russia was very weak. Nowadays, China has grown a lot, and has become a strong US rival, and Russia under Putin wants to relive the old USSR days. This gives possibilities for more proxy wars, like the ones going on in the Sahel, or the chaos in the South China Sea that could escalate.
3. Outsourcing, the erosion of labor unions and automation (albeit the last one was less important, AI will contribute a lot more to this, but we will see) meant that the growth of real wages slowed down in the Western world, and in some countries (mostly Southern Europe) they even stagnated or declined (mostly around the 2008 crisis). This started happening after the Cold War endes, so obviously, people are less positive now. Stuff like housing and rents have even grown faster than real wages, and in general, in a world centered around constant growth, this is frustrating, especially with the current wave of inflation and economic downturn (we in the West still have it way better than anywhere else in the world, but there is a sense that it won’t last forever). This doesn’t relate to the fear of wars, but when the quality of life gets worse, people start worrying more.
4. Social media in general has given a wrong picture for people. You basically see how the 1% lives, and you will think that you are poor in comparison. This further adds to negative feelings.
If I’m frank with you, that peace and prosperity was largely confined to Europe, Oceania and North America. The rest of the world was suffering from the consequences of the Cold War.
What followed after 1990 was a series of Western military misadventures that further devastated nearly the entirety of the Middle East, parts of North Africa, and now Ukraine.
This has led to many countries in the Global South, who disproportionately suffered from the Cold War, feeling lukewarm about following our narratives on the “rules-based liberal order”. Because it feels like the rules only apply to people outside the West.
Now the Western military-industrial complex is finding a good reason to run into a conflict with these countries in a desperate attempt to maintain the unipolar world order, and it’s costing thousands of innocent lives every day.
This is coinciding with global problems due to these wars as well as the fallout of the pandemic.
We’re still in a better position than most of the world when it comes to peace/quality of life. Our best bet to preserve peace and prosperity (at least in our region) is to stop the military hubris, and focus on ourselves.
Same as always before. We fooled ourselves into thinking that all bad stuff belongs to history, and now we have entered a new era full of peace and prosperity that will last forever. In 1910’s people thought that WW1 was the war that was supposed to end all wars.
I remember when my granddad, who, by the way, was a WW2 veteran, read a book written by Politkovskaya. This was in 2005, before she was killed. I remember he commented after reading that book that Putin is shady and seems very dangerous. He passed away a few months later. I’m sure if he now came back alive for a day and checked the news to see what the world looks like in 2025, he would just say, ”Yeah, here we go again, I knew this”.
As far as prosperity is concerned: labour organisation plummeted, financially illiterate dogmatists convinced people that “there is no alternative” and they decoupled the growth of wages from the increases in productivity. As a result, even though more wealth is created, it’s distributed more and more unequally, which leads to severe political crises everywhere.
Well, I only became aware that there was a world around me when the berlin wall fell. And from there on up until before Corona, it’s been summer every day.
But these last 4 weeks, with the culmination in Munich this weekend tells that we’re heading straight into winter.
We dont have to actually fight a war, if we can collectively agree on lowering our standards of living substantially, so we can prepare for war. A war we dont have to fight as long as it’s big enough of a deterrant.
So whatever you do, dont vote radical or protest vote at your next election.
The Cold War never ended.
The peace and prosperity you’re talking about was really in the west—NATO aligned nations. The world, for at least two decades, had one global superpower and it was the United States. This is why and how U.S. foreign policy has become what it has. This is why Europe has largely demilitarized until Ukraine was invaded. On the contrary, the former Soviet states and much of the third world was really going through it in the 90s and 2000s.
Putin was able to capitalize on that, and that’s why the Cold War isn’t over. Just as Hitler was able to rise to power using Germanys grievances from defeat during the Great War, Putin had risen to power and consolidated power using the grievances from the aftermaths of the Cold War.
Mate in europe we are all used to be used to is peace.
Legitimately, when I speak to my 100 yo / 97 yo grandad / nana their young lives sound so much more difficult than mine ever was.
I think these days people are much more susceptible to shit they read on social media.
It’s really sad 🙁