America’s Real Red Scare: The Slow-Motion Collapse of the American Empire
NOVANEWS
by: William Astore
A convoy of armored personnel vehicles cross the Soviet-Afghan border during the withdrawal of the Red Army from Afghanistan in May 1988. (Photo: AFP / Getty Images, file)
Jump into your time machine and let me transport you back to another age.
It’s May 2001 and the Atlantic Monthly has just arrived in the mail. I’m tantalized by the cover article. “Russia is finished,” the magazine announces. The subtitle minces no words: “The unstoppable descent into social catastrophe and strategic irrelevance.” Could it be that the country I had worried most about as a military officer during all those grim years of the Cold War, the famed “Evil Empire” that had threatened us with annihilation, was truly kaput, even in its Russian rather than Soviet...