On Faith, Brexit and Designer Babies

Last week was awful in terms of the news: conflict, conflict everywhere and not a drop of light at the end of the tunnel.  As if mass shootings, terror attacks and wars were not enough, politicians are clashing on every single issue and the general public picks up the cue. The Brits are still fighting over whether they should stay in the EU or not, the young now claiming their long life ahead was determined by geezers with one leg in the grave. Amid all the mayhem reports, a refreshing headline grabbed my attention the other day: "Baby-making could jump from the bedroom to the lab." Wow!

I've heard of genetic modification and tampering with embryos to create a baby with desired traits. But this is not about harvesting eggs and working on them, it is about creating a baby from any cell in the body; a skin cell for example. In the near future, according to the report, cells will be turned into eggs and sperm in a lab to produce hundreds of embryos. Those will be tested to see what genetic traits they carry, and parents will be able to choose which one they want hatched into a baby. People who otherwise could not have their own children will be able to have them made from non-reproductive cells. From the multitude of embryos they will also be able to pick the ones that do not carry a hereditary disease. And if they have a lot of money to spend they can have the embryo further engineered to produce a baby with the desired eye and hair color, the size of the nose, the height, etc.

These days, children who get stuck with silly names chosen by their parents, like North West or Apple and Pear, can change them when they grow up. Altering one's physical and character traits may be a little harder. Still, in the future, we may have more Caitlyn Jenners. Gone are the days when the family awaited the arrival of a baby with baited breath to see if it is a girl or a boy. There will be no surprises - pleasant or otherwise - any more.

Whoa!  I got carried away.  For a moment I forgot my own video packages on drought and famine in sub-Saharan Africa. More than 40 million people in the region face hunger and even a larger number in India. A family moving from the parched Somaliland into the scorched parts of Ethiopia in search of food and water will be happy if the child is delivered alive, forget the hair color.

Then there is faith. A person who believes that a reward for killing in the name of God secures a place in heaven, with charming maidens serving refreshments  (as allegedly the Orlando shooter believed), is hardly likely to believe in creative baby making. Such a person is killing and ready to be killed to return things to what he imagines they may have been in some other time and place.

I am reading a book about Dracula - the real one, not the Hollywood creation. A fascinating and repulsive character at the same time: overly fond of impaling even for his own era, he also seems to have engaged in cutting off noses, ears, heads, women's breasts and genitals. It was said that Vlad III, nicknamed the Impaler, sometimes had children boiled in hot oil and made parents eat them, and did other stuff too gruesome to mention. But as we know, similar things happened during the war in the Balkans just a couple of decades ago, and are still happening at the hands of Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.

We live in a world in which technology and innovation are literally skyrocketing, but too many people still face  hunger.  There is poverty in the United States, "the richest country in the world." More than 45 million people worldwide live in "modern" slavery. Globalization was supposed to even out some of the differences and bring people closer together, but appears to have created an even wider abyss between fellow human beings - a chasm not different from the one separating the medieval Wallachian prince and his brother Radu the Handsome, a favorite of Sultan Mehmed II.  The brothers fought each other, one with atrocities, the other with Turkish support.

Those caught in the middle of the tensions are confused and angry.  Sometimes they feel helpless, like the young Brits who say that the elderly imposed an unwanted future on them. Other times they arm themselves with assaults weapons, like some Americans.  Readers' comments to media articles on any topic reek of racism, misogyny and hatred. Culture is no exception. Just check YouTube video clips from operas. If you happen to like a singer or performance someone else dislikes, you better keep your opinion to yourself unless you have high tolerance for insults.

So commentators, professional or amateurish, who hasten to praise the Brexit as a "momentous event" akin to the fall of the Berlin Wall, those who predict that other EU countries will follow suit, and those who hope that the U.S. under Donald Trump will close its borders, are missing the point. Britain was split almost in half on the remain-leave referendum and it seems that some members of the "winning" camp got cold feet the very morning after the victory.  More than a million are now demanding a second referendum. Whichever way the vote might have gone, it would not have reduced the tensions in Britain. Neither will the country fall to pieces because it stepped out of the bloc. "Nigdar ni bilo da ni nekak bilo"...as an old Croatian wisdom goes.

In the 1960s, the slogan "Make Love, Not War" began its tour around the world, and the Hippy era saw the Westerners enthralled with oriental culture and spirituality. The commercialization of yoga and meditation in the West is a lasting reminder of that time. The world "love" has disappeared from the intercultural discourse. Today, we are talking of "tolerance" and we are protesting "against hatred" at best. Some of the most religious of us believe that a faith can be "defended" by war and isolation, and that love has nothing to do with it. I am no proponent of a return to any "glorious" era of the past, but I do hope that a future generation of the "Brave New World," the one that will create babies in the lab, comes up with a new make-love movement, one less steeped in drugs and more in sharing.

Migration of Slavs and Other History Lessons

I paid scant attention to Trump's promises to build "The Wall" until I came across an article about the construction of a wall around Baghdad. Trump repeatedly made it known that his wall was inspired by Israel's, but it was the construction of the wall around Baghdad that made me pause. Visions of the Berlin Wall, the Great Wall of China and  walls around medieval cities came to mind and were followed by the images of less historic barriers, such as security fences around concentration camps, prison complexes and American gated communities. Most of them have been built for protection from attacks, but some fences serve only to keep the undesirable in or out. 

One of my first history lessons dealt with the Migration of Slavs  (Seoba Slavena)  from their oldest known homeland in Western Asia to Russia, and from there to Eastern Europe and beyond. The process that might have begun around 2000 B.C. was long and complicated - so complicated in fact that I never learned the lesson properly. The only thing that really stuck was the title "Seoba Slavena," often used in the Croatian slang to refer to any major, or messy, or inexplicable move.

What I do know is that the people populating Europe today have descended from various ancient tribes, whose origins remain a subject of contention, and ever-emerging new demographic theories. One I found interesting recently is the Ghengis Khan-legacy theory, which suggests that a significant percentage of men around the world, including Europe, are descendants of the 13th-century invader.

Ancient Slavs

Mongolian hordes swept through much of Eastern Europe in the 13th century, and as the invaders killed, raped and pillaged along the way, it is quite possible that they left their genetic mark on the local populations. Impregnable fortresses and hefty walls may have slowed them down, but did not stop them. They eventually retreated when a strong Mongolian leader died back home.

It would be wrong to deny the importance of walls in the defense of medieval cities, such as Dubrovnik. For centuries, the Adriatic port had repelled invaders with success. But eventually, the wall alone was not enough to protect Dubrovnik's independence, and the city-state had to pay dues first to the Venetians, then to the Ottomans to avoid war. And, of course, the wall did nothing to stop Napoleon. Today, Dubrovnik's great ramparts serve to attract tourists. The same goes for the Great Wall of China and historic walled cities around the world. 

The Berlin Wall, or what's left of it, also attracts tourists, but not with its beauty or grandeur. Only a few ugly grey concrete blocks remain to provoke horror, rather than admiration, and there is a lengthy section decorated by international artists. It is somewhat unique in that it was built by those living outside to prevent escape into the enclosure rather than the other way round. We know how that ended. I hope the Iraqi government has some long-term plans for the Baghdad wall.

When there's a will  (I almost said when there's a wall), there's a way.  People who want to breach a wall badly enough either to conquer or to escape, very often succeed, and if they don't, time eventually makes the wall irrelevant. History books are full of examples of successful sieges. They also are full of great migration stories.  Even the Bible has one.

Migration stories remind me of weather reports. When there is too much pressure at one end, the mass of air, or water, moves to relieve it and we can be hit by storms, floods, tsunamis and whatnot until the calm settles in. When huge populations start moving at once, they also create havoc and spark fear.  

We live in a world in which about 60 million people are displaced by conflict - more than at any other time in recorded history. One in every 122 humans is either a refugee, internally displaced, or seeking asylum. According to the UNHCR, if those people formed a country, it would be the world's 24th biggest. Many temporary refugee camps have turned into permanent tent cities, with the largest, Dadaab in Kenya, housing half a million people.

Dadaab, Kenya

Since the beginning of the millennium, numerous studies have discussed Europe's and Japan's aging and declining populations that have resulted from low child birth rates. These populations have not seen much conflict since World War Two, with the exception of Yugoslavia's bloody demise in the early 1990s.

Some of the world's poorest countries have very high birth rates and therefore large young populations. In sub-Saharan Africa, more than one third of the people are aged 10 to 24. In the Arab countries, young people are the fastest growing segment.  Some 60% of the population is under 25 years old, making this one of the most youthful regions in the world.  

The unemployment in this age group is as high as 50 % and in many regions even higher, while the prospects of improvement during the lifetime of these young people are minimal. According to researchers, overpopulation combined with poverty and weak governance produces disruptive demographic. Elizabeth Leahy of Population Action International said the restive element is composed of a society's younger generations.

"What we found is that countries in which at least 60 percent of the population was under the age of 30 were overwhelmingly the most likely to have experienced civil conflict. Eighty percent of all outbreaks of civil conflict between 1970 and 1999 occurred in those types of countries that had overwhelmingly young populations," said Leah.  

The pressure of discontent has been growing for years with very little attention paid to it. The Arab Spring was largely unexpected. When trickles of migrants heading for Europe turned into huge waves last year, many people were incredulous and shocked.  One friend asked me: why now?  I answered: why not earlier? Social media went viral with the prophecies of late Baba Vanga, a blind Bulgarian seeress who allegedly had predicted that Europe would be taken over by Muslims.  

Western European governments are dealing with the waves of migrants about the same way they would with victims of a natural disaster, which is to say they house them in temporary shelters and distribute food and clothing.  When floods become threatening, they seek to curb the flow.  Some, like the Hungarians, have put up a fence, which serves to divert the river away from their border,  but creates an overflow in other places.

Trump said: "Walls work. Ask Israel!" In terms of our lifetime, and this year's election, he may be right.  But in a wider context of human history, Dubrovnik may be a better example.  

Dubrovnik

The migrants who make a new life in Europe will add a new coil to the continent's already complex demographic history.  Maybe 2000 years from now some other kid will remember his lesson about a great migration, but his will not have the same title as mine. 

Berlin: Two Tales of a City

The German capital is marking the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. When the communist structure began crumbling in November of 1989, many people from all over the world flocked to Berlin to witness the historic event.  This year,  many are flocking back to celebrate the anniversary of a key event that lead to the unification of Germany.  I was planning a trip to the country for different reasons, but it was a perfect opportunity to add Berlin to my itinerary.  A friend from Croatia joined me for what was the first visit to the city for both of us. Here are our two different accounts of a fascinating October week in Berlin.

First:  by Sina Karli, Zagreb, October 2014

Brandenburger Tor, Berlin

I arrived in Berlin on an earlier flight from Zagreb and was tasked with settling into our rental apartment in the Savigny Platz and making what preparations I could ahead of Zlatica's arrival from the United States in the evening.  I got off to a smooth start.  Bus 109 from Tegel Airport  dropped me off nearly at the door of our apartment building. I rang a doorbell per the landlady's instructions and was ready to enter what I imagined would be a German-style neat and orderly place - my home for the next seven days.

Croatians think of Germany as the country where trains run on time, everything is spotlessly clean, people are tidy and punctual, and discipline reigns supreme.

The door opened only after my persistent ringing and a rumpled young woman, still in her pajamas, blinked at me and mumbled "oh, you are already here?" as if she didn't know the time of my arrival.  She ushered me into a nice size ground floor apartment with windows looking onto a quiet courtyard.  The shabby, mix-and-match furniture was tolerable, but the bed linen looked suspiciously unclean as did the frayed towels of nondescript color.  The landlady seemed unperturbed when I noticed that there was not even one roll of toilet paper in the bathroom - a most essential necessity after a long trip from abroad.

I was much more forgiving when I learned that she was from Cuba.  It was easier for me to imagine a Cuban swaying to the rhythm of salsa than vacuuming and wiping off spider webs from a rental apartment.  That's what stereotypes do to you.

Those of us growing up in the communist Yugoslavia were taught from the earliest days at school to view the Germans as occupiers of our country who were defeated by much smaller but braver partisan forces.  We had to watch state-subsidized movies about  Tito's shabby troops fighting well-equipped Nazi forces and winning against all odds.  Nothing else was taught about Germany, and studying German was not popular.  At that tender age the concept of democracy was as remote for us as the concept of  Nazism. 

Attitudes toward Germany changed gradually after Yugoslavs began working there as “gastarbeiters,” and bringing home money, high-quality technical products and stories about disciplined and hard-working, although somewhat hostile Germans.  More recently, especially after Croatia gained independence and Germany lent support to that effort, the tenor of the reports has changed.  There is now mostly admiration for a people that arose from the ashes of World War Two destruction to become Europe's most powerful nation.  

So during my visit to Berlin I wanted to see beyond the remainders of the wall and the tourist attractions such as Checkpoint Charlie.  I wanted to envision the entire length of the demarcation that separated the people of one city for 28 years, forcing a half to live in tyranny while the other half was surrounded by it.  But the line of division is not that obvious today except in a few places included in sightseeing tours.

Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin, October 2014

An uninformed visitor has difficulty figuring out which part of Berlin was East and which was West.  Residential areas are easier to identify --gray and still somewhat dreary looking Soviet-style apartments on one side, and classic warm-colored Mittel-Europa buildings on the other.   Few people in the streets of Berlin were able to give us directions to the  Nazi-era sites such as Hitler’s bunker or the square where the  "un-German" books were burned.  No street signs are pointing to these places either.

As we strolled down the elegant Unter den Linden avenue, enjoyed an espresso outside Café Balzac, or lingered under the glass dome of the spectacular Sony Center,  Berlin’s dark part of history seemed as remote as if it had happened somewhere else.

The city feels both like a cosmopolitan metropolis of Europe’s most powerful country that it is, and as a haven for people from all over the world seeking a better life.  It is a mecca for artists, trendy Germans and young people looking for opportunities as well as for businessmen and politicians.  In some parts it is as elegant and formidable as Paris or New York, in others it looks like an ordinary central European city -- Prague, Vienna and even  Zagreb. 

Some of Berlin's gloomier neighborhoods still reflect their Soviet-style past.  Poor service in many restaurants and tourist offices also smacks of the communist era.  The Schiller Theater, which serves as temporary home to the opera, lacks grandeur and could be described as downright shabby.  So Berlin exudes power and vulnerability at the same time. Perhaps it was exactly its fragile side that made me feel at home.  Who wants perfect order anyway? 

The week in Berlin served to debunk many of my personal myths about Germans and Germany.  They are not all organized and disciplined and spotlessly clean.  But Germans are people who have rebuilt their cities, often from near complete destruction, and don't seem to be dwelling on the dreary part of their history.  Berlin reflects that.

Seeing the German capital also made me feel good about my own country.  Furnished apartments for rent in Zagreb are the epitome of luxury compared to the place we rented in Berlin. I also realized that work ethic in Croatia has changed and that the services are better than before the 1990s war for independence.  I saw our nation's capital with new eyes and found it to be gorgeous.  I was finally able to shed the lingering Croatian inferiority complex, stemming from our communist past and the association with the Balkans.  Berlin, Prague, Vienna?  I can feel at home in any of them, but I can also proudly say that I live in Zagreb, another European capital with an interesting history and abundant culture.

Berlin Offers Diverse Culinary Experience

Second: by an American with European roots, Washington, October 2014

"I told you twice to get your salad at the salad bar," an impatient waitress snapped at me in the Maredo steakhouse, a chain restaurant on the elegant Kurfürstendamm strip on my first day in Berlin. It wasn't quite clear what ticked her off. I had asked if I could have a salad with my steak instead of the coleslaw which came with it, and she said I could if I paid extra. I said no problem. There was no mention of a salad bar that either I or Sina heard, nor was one immediately visible from our table.  So when the waitress served me a plate with nothing but a steak on it, I asked if she was bringing the salad separately. It was a logical question because a little earlier she had brought only one soup although we had ordered two. I thought she was forgetful. 

A male server was then sent to collect our payment and when we said the food was good, but the service terrible, he just waved off his hand without a word, but with a facial expression that could only mean " I am not interested."  I swore then and there that I would never again complain about the 20 % tip we pay our waiters in the U.S.

The next day, we had a similar experience with drivers on the hop-on-hop-off sightseeing tour of east Berlin.  Since that tour is less frequented than the tour of west Berlin, drivers come and go as they please, regardless of the schedule, and God forbid that you complain. We made the mistake of getting off our bus before the loop was completed and then had to wait one hour in the rain before another one showed up.  That one left us standing in the rain despite our frantic waving.  The last scheduled bus finally picked us up, but the driver cut the tour short so he could finish his shift by 6 PM.  When he made a stop along the way, I first thought he was doing his duty, but quickly realized that he stopped for  a colleague on the bus who wanted to take a cigarette break. 

Memorial to the 1933 Nazi bookburning in Bebelplatz is an underground room lined with empty bookshelves, visible through a window in the pavement. 

Despite these first impressions, I enjoyed Berlin tremendously.  After reading so much about it in history books and having seen it in so many movies and documentaries, I felt that I was coming to familiar terrain.  It was Europe after all, not Mongolia.  I soon realized that my ignorance about the country, including Berlin and its history, is huge and inexcusable.  In central Berlin, I was never quite sure if we were walking east of the demolished Wall line or west of it.  I had difficulty locating places we'd seen in documentaries, such as the square where Nazis burned "un-German" books.  It was humbling to walk through the Charlottenburg castle and realize that the recorded tour was almost meaningless without a context in which to place the exalted people who once lived in it.  The bewilderment was compounded during a subsequent visit to Potsdam, which I had no idea was so close to Berlin or that it had so many palaces. Neither did I know that the KGB had its headquarters in Potsdam.  It would be embarrassing to go on. 

Berlin's monuments, creative architecture, grandiose foreign embassies, street art, parks and elegant avenues put it on an equal footing with London, Paris or Washington.  But its less glamorous areas make it more human.  It is fun for a change to have a cup of coffee in a funky Turkish cafe and grab a sausage or goulash in a neighborhood brewery, where you can chat with the owner and his Bosnian waitress.  Ours even offered neck-and-shoulder massage by practicing students.  

Berlin by night was the time to relax with a glass of  beer and clear my mind of all the Ludwigs, Friederichs and Wilhelms of Germany - or was it Prussia? - until the next day.  We happened to be in the city during the traditional October Festival of Lights, when its most famous landmarks, such as Brandenburg Gate, Berlin Cathedral and the television tower are illuminated with colorful light projections and video art. 

Berlin Cathedral During the Festival of Lights

To my regret, both opera houses were closed for renovation, the Berlin Philharmonic was not performing and tickets for the Arcadi Volodos piano recital at the Kozerthaus were sold out.  

We only saw the Staatsoper's new production of Tosca because I had purchased the tickets online several months ahead of time.  The performance at the seedy Schiller Theater was a disappointment. There was more chemistry between Tosca and Scarpia than her and Cavaradossi. Barenboim's first conducting of Puccini, although refined, was so slow that it further diluted the tepid drama.  The leading opera house of Europe's richest country, and the one that produced Bach, Beethoven and Wagner, should do better than such a forgettable Tosca.  The Staatsoper waited 38 years to stage a new production of Puccini's blockbuster - it could have waited a few more to come up with something more impressive.

On the way home we passed by a jazz club or cabaret, which looked like it would have been more fun.  But our stay in Berlin was at an end even though we only skimmed through it. We never got so see Nefertiti at the Neues Museum, we did not make it to the hipster  Kreuzberg area, or the bohemian Friedrichshain, and there was no time to take a boat ride on the Spree River, or climb up the iconic TV tower.

Berlin is worth visiting for whatever time you can afford.  I know I could live there.  That vibrating city offers something for every personality and taste, including  such local specialty as currywursts - hot dogs smeared with tomato sauce and sprinkled with curry.  Seriously!  

But if you want good restaurant service and friendly bus drivers,  kommen Sie, bitte, nach Amerika!

21st Century Trends: Who Knew?

At the turn of the century pundits offered a plethora of predictions of what the new era would bring. Few have foreseen the Arab Spring and its reverberation throughout the Middle East, South Asia and Africa. Russia was considered too impotent to pose a threat to anyone.

At the close of the 20th century, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War sparked hopes that we were entering a new era of peace and prosperity. Instead, we saw the September 11, London and Madrid bombings, violent sectarian and ethnic clashes and a growing rich-poor gap.

Lack of freedom, terror, civil strife, poverty, environmental disasters and deadly disease outbreaks are among the common problems in the world today. Almost all of Africa is affected and also large parts of Asia, the Caucasus, the Middle East, Central America and now Ukraine.

Ten years ago, military geostrategist Thomas Barnett and author of The Pentagon's New Map said these problems beset mostly countries where globalization has not taken hold.

“If you are looking at violence in the global system, it is overwhelmingly concentrated in those parts of the world, regions and countries that are not integrating their national economies with the global economy, either because they live in an authoritarian state, or because they are isolationist, or because they suffer endemic poverty, or they are dependent on export of a single raw material, and that leads to poverty or mal-distribution of wealth - commonly.”

Barnett said that leaving these "non-integrating" parts of the world “alone,” as some people suggest, would only make their problems worse and the world less secure because of the terrorism they breed.

“We need to stop terrorist activities, illegal movement of arms, or money, or people, the smuggling of people, copyright infringement -–those kinds of things. And the reason why you need to keep a lid on those sort of bad flows is that there are positive flows that do have to occur.”

Some of these positive flows according to Barnett were legal migrations of people from overpopulated areas to under-populated ones, the flow of oil out of the Middle East and direct foreign investment from Europe and the United States in developing Asia. He said many of these flows were hindered by terrorism. Therefore, he predicted, this century could see more U-S military interventions like the one in Iraq.

Ten years later, Washington-based analysts Peter Eltsov says Barnett's observations were mostly right, but that he failed to acknowledge that socioeconomic and cultural configurations of these troubled societies make it very difficult for their people to embrace free markets, democracy, multiculturalism and other developments that can help make a country rich and prosperous. Military interventions like the one in Iraq cannot change that.

Peter Eltsov

At the start of the Iraq War, many analysts pondered the effects of the U.S. display of military power on the rest of the world. California-based business consultant and author Larraine Segil, saw the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq as a major milestone, which would shape the coming decade in the Middle East.

“I think that what has happened in Iraq is an enormous and substantial change in the balance of power in the Middle East because it has suddenly become clear that there is somebody in the White House who is prepared to take action to follow words. ”

Eltsov says Segil was right in that the war in Iraq upset the balance of powers in the region. But, he notes, neither she nor anyone else foresaw the advent of the Arab Spring, the emergence of ISIS as the most powerful terrorist organization, and the unprecedented growth of extremist violence so soon after that war.

Segil acknowledged that military force is not an answer to every problem. She said that in addition to U.S. military force, another powerful new trend was shaping the world in this century: a rise of various formal and informal alliances across national borders.

Such alliances, according to her, have a great potential to improve life in the third world. For example, she said, African leaders could reduce famine and disease in their countries if they allowed private groups in their countries to connect with similar organizations in other parts of the world. China's economy has boomed, according to Segil, in large part thanks to business alliances with Taiwan, the United States, Germany, Africa and Latin America.

Ann Florini, professor of public policy in the School of Social Sciences at the Singapore Management University and a Brookings Institution fellow, agreed. She added that a wide range of transnational issues, from terrorism to environmental disasters to the global economy can be managed more effectively by non-governmental institutions, citizens movements and private corporations than by large international organizations such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

“The inter-governmental institutions that have the most influence right now in the world are the IMF, the World Bank, the World trade Organization, the UN Security Council, " said Florini.  "In all of those except the World Trade Organization, the rules are explicitly set up so that a handful of rich-country governments dominate.”

“The biggest problem is that most of the world’s population has been completely left out of global economic integration.  The overwhelming share of global trade and financial flows were among North America, Western Europe, Japan and some other parts of Asia. "

Florini said interests of poor southern countries have long been neglected. "There has been almost no foreign direct investment in Africa, while Latin America and parts of Asia have received much less than their fair share in proportion to their populations."

But she said, “NGO-s, particularly in northern countries, have had in some cases a very significant influence on global rules. They have had campaigns on poor-country debt. They have had campaigns on land mines. In those kinds of campaigns they’ve shown that they can have a significant influence in getting governments to consider a broader public interest."

Florini said that U.S. military prowess in Iraq alarmed many people around the world, and it also showed that most economic, environmental, social, health and other global problems cannot be solved by force.

Eltsov says her assessment of the global trends seems to have been the most accurate. "The interests of poor southern countries are still being neglected, and globalization has not been helpful to many impoverished economies throughout the world." Furthermore, he says, "the invasion of Iraq created a dangerous precedent:  Russian President Vladimir Putin used it as a justification of his own actions in Georgia and Ukraine. One cannot help but agree that force does not solve most global problems."

Eltsov says it was naïve for anyone to assume that the fall of the Berlin Wall would have signified the spread of free markets, democracy, peace and prosperity in the whole world. And as for the end of the Cold War, " it was significant mostly for the USSR, USA, and Europe - not as much for the rest of the world."

"As we witness today, nationalism and fundamentalism are on the rise in Europe, Eurasia, South Asia, the Middle East and East Asia, raising questions about the viability of democratic values in significant parts of the world. Likewise, the economic crisis of 2008 raised questions about the viability and universality of market economy," says Eltsov.