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Europe and Ukraine blog
Textbook Cold War Tales the Soviet Archives Quietly Overturned Seven common claims about the Cold War, from who started it to whether the spies mattered, tested against Venona and the documents opened after 1991. Tear Down This Wall Read Closely as the Speech Diplomats Tried to Soften Reagan's 1987 Brandenburg Gate speech read passage by passage, with the drafting history, the objections to its central line and how it read after 1989. The Night the Berlin Wall Fell and the Press Conference Slip That Opened It How a misread note at a live press conference opened the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, and why it took forty years of containment to make the slip fatal. Europe's 2015 Migrant Crisis and the Lessons It Taught Every Democracy How the 2015 surge broke the Dublin rules and reshaped European politics, and what it teaches about open-door signals, shared borders and humane limits. The Berlin Airlift Fed a City by Air for Eleven Months Without Firing a Shot In 1948 Stalin cut off West Berlin and America chose neither surrender nor war, keeping two million people alive by air and teaching a lesson in deterrence. Read the North Atlantic Treaty, All Fourteen Articles Take Ten Minutes The 1949 NATO treaty is short, plain and more modest than critics or champions say. Read it article by article, with what each clause means for the Senate. The 2014 Wales Pledge Explained, Where NATO's Two Percent Came From NATO's two percent of GDP is a guideline from a 2014 summit, with a forgotten equipment goal, not a treaty duty. Here is the text, the math and what it means. Should Conservatives Back Ukraine? Two Honest Answers, Weighed Fairly Two conservative camps answer the Ukraine question in good faith. Here are both cases at full strength, a table that compares them, and a verdict. Russia's Wars in Georgia and Crimea Were Warnings the West Chose to Ignore A dated record from Putin's 2007 Munich speech through the 2008 war and the 2014 annexation shows how muted Western responses shaped what Moscow tried next. How America Went From Importing Natural Gas to Shipping It Worldwide In a decade America built import terminals and then turned them around to export, and those cargoes serve allies and displace coal and Russian gas. Europe's Digital Services Act and the First Amendment, Side by Side Europe and Britain regulate online speech with statutes the First Amendment would not allow, and comparing them shows what American law protects. Yorktown in October 1781 and How a French Fleet Helped Trap Cornwallis Yorktown was won by a march of hundreds of miles, a naval battle few remember and a textbook siege, and it shows why alliances need clear aims. Reagan at Westminster in 1982 Predicted the Soviet Collapse Out Loud In June 1982 Reagan told Parliament that Marxism-Leninism was headed for the ash heap of history. The passages, the plan, and what came by 1991. NSC-68 and the 1950 Memo That Told America the Price of Staying Free A 1950 policy paper argued that containment without real military power was a bluff, and the argument still holds. What it said, what it cost, who objected.