42 Years Ago, I Was Born into a Less Free World

The borders of the free world have expanded in my lifetime. But freedom isn't inevitable.

It’s my birthday. So like any well-adjusted adult, I’m going to write about my deepest fear: the decline of the American-led global order. Foreign policy is depressing, so I only pay attention when I have no choice. I’m taking mission creep to a new level here, but I swear there’s a connection to my usual subject matter. I’ve got plenty of material, but little time. But I’ll have more material on North American urbanism soon, I promise. For now, existential dread.

I was born 42 years ago today, into a very different world. My earliest memories are from a military base in West Germany, a country that no longer exists, at a time when the West was vying for power with the Soviet Union, which also no longer exists. Sometimes history comes at you fast.

My father was stationed at CFB Lahr, which - you guessed it - no longer exists. What we now call Germany had one foot in the free world, the other under the boot of the Soviet Union. West Germany had a thriving capitalist economy, while their Eastern counterparts lived under communist rule. East Germans wanted freedom, so eventually they knocked the damn Wall down and the Soviet Union collapsed soon after. It’s almost certainly the most inspiring moment of my lifetime. I don’t remember it well – I was seven – but it was an early lesson: none of this is inevitable.

Those of us born during the Cold War remember a world that was on the knife’s edge. We like to tell ourselves stories about how victory was inevitable for the West. The creaky old Soviet war machine was bound to break down. Maybe. But there were inflection points. It’s not hard to write an alternate history where the Cold War ended organized human existence. The world is a dangerous place, even under the protective shield of military alliances that keep us safe. Without them, good luck.

All of what we do – all of what I talk about here – is underpinned by agreements. Some of them are pedestrian. Contracts, insurance policies, legal tender. Our word is our bond. Agreements and trust are the connective tissue that hold society together.

We often take those agreements for granted. That’s no surprise, given that they’re abstract. People don’t walk around thinking about gravity, so it’s no surprise most people aren’t fixated on the rules that underpin commerce or global security.

It’s easy to imagine that what happens outside of our vast borders doesn’t really affect us. Vladimir Putin taking a bit of soil from Ukraine doesn’t impact our lives in obvious ways. But it has consequences.

We live under the greatest protective shield known to mankind, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It’s the lynchpin of the American-led global order that has underwritten the West’s post-war security and prosperity.

George Orwell wrote in 1942 that “we sleep soundly in our beds, because rough men stand ready in the night to do violence on those who would harm us." It’s easy to forget this in an era where conflicts seem so far off – both geographically and historically. We’re insulated from most conflicts by two oceans. Not all conflicts are contained by borders and oceans.

Collective security requires credible commitments. NATO makes this clear.

Article 5 provides that if a NATO Ally is the victim of an armed attack, each and every other member of the Alliance will consider this act of violence as an armed attack against all members and will take the actions it deems necessary to assist the Ally attacked.

What happens to our allies matters. We may be further from the front, but they keep us safe. If our resolve falters, and they aren’t able to deter conflicts anymore, we’ll have to make a choice. Do we walk away from our commitments, and hope that conflicts don’t reach our shores? The fact that we’re even having these conversations is enough to call our commitments into question.

This is especially worrying given that Ukraine is right on the border of NATO, and it’s being waged by a dictator who has far greater ambitions than taking a bit of Eastern Ukraine. There’s no reason to believe he’d stop there. All that really stands between Vladimir Putin and his imperial ambitions are the women and men in Ukraine, armed with whatever weapons we’re willing to send them. How long can they hold out? Can they drive out the invaders? Who knows. Nothing is inevitable.

Freedom isn’t cheap. But it has its perks.

We now live in a world I couldn’t have imagined as a child. With a few clicks of a button I can buy nearly anything I’d ever want from around the world, and have it on my doorstep in under 48 hours. I can book a ticket on my phone to fly to London or Paris tomorrow. North American cities that were in rough shape during my childhood have rocketed back to life. Places like Times Square that used to be thought of as scary are now playgrounds for global tourists. As an urbanist, it’s exciting!

This hasn’t just benefitted the middle and upper classes of wealthy countries. Global poverty has collapsed over the last half century. Globalization has unlocked untold wealth. It hasn’t been seamless, and we’ve made some short sighted decisions along the way. But by historical standards, everything is amazing under our protective shield.

Of course, this is all contingent on our commitments. If we let Ukraine falter, those assurances are all called into question. Ukraine isn’t a NATO country, but Poland is. Will Vladmir Putin stop at that border? A border he doesn’t view as legitimate? Will other potential adversaries decide they can pursue their own imperial ambitions with relatively few consequences? We don’t know. But it sure seems like a risk.

I don’t want to be sitting here thinking about foreign policy. I really don’t. It’s all too depressing. I get why people are feeling “Ukraine fatigue.” The costs are real, but we’re paying with cash, rather than blood. By historical standards, that’s a pretty good deal.

I haven’t been back to Europe since I was a teenager. I’m planning on doing so this fall. Roaming around under the security umbrella of NATO is an incredible luxury. I hope in decades to come, we can still do it. The American led global order may not be perfect, but you really don’t want to see what would replace it.

The freedom and prosperity we enjoy in the West isn’t guaranteed. The institutions that underpin our relatively cushy lives could falter. The free world has grown during my lifetime. There’s no reason it can’t shrink. Nothing is inevitable.