I foretold when Gorbachev undertook his program of glasnost and perestroika that it would end in the fragmentation of the Soviet Union. The suppressed internal nationalisms were too intense. It was like pulling the lid off a pressure cooker: once you open it the first little crack, it explodes in your face.

Don’t get me wrong, I admire Gorbachev as much as you do: the greatest world statesman since—who—Churchill, maybe? But he miscalculated his chance of succeeding. The demise of the Soviet Union furnished Putin with the “geopolitical disaster” he seems determined to reverse.

Gorbachev’s other tragic mistake was thinking he could liberalize the country politically without also dismantling the state-run command economy. The demand for that was what drove him from office in favor of Yeltsin, who proceeded to make the opposite mistake of trying to rush privatization too abruptly. The resulting economic depression drove the country straight into the arms of a strongman like Putin.

If the mighty Union of Soviet Socialist Republics could dissolve before our eyes, can the United States of America be immune?