Ideas: Sorry To See the Cold War

Now that almost everyone agrees the cold war is over, policymakers and analysts have begun to debate whether jubilation or apprehension is in order. Even before Iraq's mugging of Kuwait, some experts worried that without the superpowers to rein them in, other nations tend to live by the law of the jungle, and hot wars are a condition of nature. Hence Europe could revert to patterns of international behavior that not too long ago made it every bit as dangerous and violent as the Middle East is today.

One of the first to sound a note of alarm was Deputy Secretary...