Fyodor Lukyanov on how Europe has split anew
Unlike Paris, London eventually came to see that the loss of its colonial empire was inevitable. At one point, the British elite even tried to manage the process in a way that would lessen the trauma for the home nation. The end of the empire brought clear economic and reputational costs—but it also created a deeper political dilemma. With the empire dissolved, what remained was ‘Little England’: a country with grand ambitions but far fewer resources to achieve them.
For Britain’s establishment, finding a new global role became a pressing task. No one embodied this dilemma more clearly than Winston Churchill. He began his career at the geopolitical peak of the British Empire at the turn of the 20th century; by the mid-1940s, he had already witnessed its decline.
Churchill’s famous March 1946 speech in Fulton, Missouri, reflected this reality. Its core message was that peace and the effective operation of the United Nations would rely on the strength and unity of the English-speaking world and its allies. Churchill acknowledged a hard truth: the United States had now risen to the apex of global power.
For a representative of a nation that had only recently held that position, this was no minor admission. Churchill thus framed the moment not just as a transfer of leadership, but as a shared responsibility. America, he warned, held overwhelming power—and with it came an enormous burden.
“You must feel uneasy,” he told his American audience, “that you may not be able to live up to what is expected of you.”
Churchill’s solution was straightforward: if the British Commonwealth and the U.S. acted in concert—combining their air power, naval strength, scientific expertise, and economic might—the unstable balance of power that invited aggression would vanish. In such a partnership, Britain’s influence could endure even as its empire faded.
Four-fifths of the “century ahead” Churchill spoke of have now passed. Looking back, it’s hard to ignore the striking parallels with the present. A new kind of curtain has fallen across Europe once again—though this time, it’s being drawn from the opposite side.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union sealed off its ideological and geopolitical sphere from the West. Today, it is the Western world that is increasingly isolating Russia. The confrontation Churchill described eventually produced something unexpected: instead of open war, it led to a relatively stable system of coexistence that lasted for decades. The Cold War became what American historian John Lewis Gaddis famously termed the ‘Long Peace’—a period when Europe avoided major wars and global conflicts remained contained.
Churchill himself did not advocate for destroying or dismantling the Soviet Union. His goal was containment: preserving the balance of power, preventing expansion, and recognizing the USSR as a permanent part of the international system.
Two weeks before Churchill’s Fulton speech, American diplomat George Kennan had already laid the intellectual groundwork for containment. Stationed in Moscow, Kennan sent his famous ‘Long Telegram’ to Washington, analyzing Soviet behavior and recommending a strategy of patient resistance. Later published in Foreign Affairs under the pseudonym ‘Mr. X’, the document became one of the 20th century’s most influential texts.
Churchill may have overstated Moscow’s ambitions to spread its political model globally. But in doing so, he recognized something critical: the Soviet Union had the capacity to challenge the West. That reality shaped the structure of the Cold War.
In Churchill’s view, the Soviet Union was not an aberration to be erased but an essential part of the global balance. He believed Britain’s relevance would be maintained by helping organize the Western response to such a formidable adversary.
History treated Churchill and Kennan differently. Churchill died 20 years before the Soviet Union launched perestroika—the process that ultimately ended the Cold War. Kennan lived much longer, and in his final decades, he became an increasingly vocal critic of U.S. policy.
He warned that NATO expansion, the Iraq War, and other decisions were short-sighted and dangerous. The Cold War, he argued, had fostered a political culture focused on prudence and long-term thinking—and when the Cold War ended, that culture vanished with it.
When Churchill and Kennan first outlined the containment strategy 80 years ago, they could not have known how long it would last or what consequences it would have. Forty years later, Western leaders celebrated what they saw as a historic victory.
But another 40 years on, that confidence has waned. The disappearance of a rival power did not bring lasting stability; instead, it removed the equilibrium that had structured international politics for decades. Without that balance, the global system grew more unpredictable.
President Joe Biden’s administration’s attempt to revive a simplified Cold War framework—using the familiar rhetoric of a “community of democracies” facing off against autocracies—failed to restore order.
The liberal world order that emerged from the 1940s Atlantic Charter ideals has gradually evolved into something more pragmatic and transactional. It would be wrong to say there was a clear break; the shift has been gradual, almost natural. Yet even the countries claiming leadership in this system no longer seem sure where it’s headed.
Britain, for its part, has never regained the global influence Churchill once hoped to preserve. The Cold War is sometimes recalled nostalgically as an era of confrontation governed by clear rules—but in reality, there was little to romanticize about it.
And the solutions of that era won’t work again. New curtains keep falling across the world, each promising security while hiding uncertainty behind it. In 1946, right after the most devastating war in human history, there was at least one universal belief: such a catastrophe must never happen again.
Today, even that certainty feels less secure than it once did.