The Berlin Wall fell, but Communism is still with us -- American expert

Three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall in Nov 1989, political pundits in Washington discuss its legacy and the greater complexity of today’s challenges, the growing intensity of major power competition and oppression of human rights and religious freedom under repressive regimes.

"There are a lot of lessons to learn", says Marion Smith, executive director of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a congressionally authorized non-profit.

"We cannot leave the world to the Communist Party of China, to the corrupt, kleptocratic regime in Moscow, or the Cuban Communist Party," he told reporters at the U.S. Diplomacy Center during a briefing organized by the Washington Foreign Press Center.

"We also want to learn the lessons from 30 years ago and better understand how we can ensure that that same triumph of liberty can occur in other countries and for other peoples today the way it did for Germans and Europeans 30 years ago," Smith added. 

According to him, the Berlin Wall fell, but communism hasn’t. One out of five people alive today lives in a single-party communist dictatorship – in China, Laos, Vietnam, North Korea, and Cuba.

"If you look at what has happened in Crimea, in Hong Kong, in Venezuela, you see actually that communist parties and post-communist regimes – specifically Vladimir Putin – really are behaving in the way the worst communist parties of the 20th century were behaving," he added.

Three key factors that had a clear correlation to the 1989 events are:

- the people’s desire for freedom and liberty;

- the willingness of the Communist Party in power to kill their own citizens to stay in power;
- International pressure

The US, Smith said, played an important role in trying to separate communist China from the Soviet Union to prevent a juggernaut, "which would have been extremely powerful in crushing free societies around the world."

Asked whether the Western democracies today are sacrificing their values over their interests when responding to the recent democratic protests in Russia and Azerbaijan, Smith told TURAN"s Washington correspondent that "there’s a lot of complicating factors."

America, he said, "is best when everybody does their job, and it falls certainly to the United States Government and to our diplomats and our defense folks to make sure that we are protecting not only the interests of the American people, but the values of our country."

"And that’s when we’re at our best, and I think, there’s enough history to prove that. It also benefits us economically and in terms of national security," he added.

On Friday, Nov 8, U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo will deliver a speech in Germany that will focus on “the continuing imperative to defend free nations and free peoples,” as the State Department statement on his travel has billed it.

Back in Washington, journalists yesterday had an opportunity to view the U.S. Diplomacy Center’s new exhibit for the Signature Segment of the Berlin Wall.

This 13-foot-high piece of the Wall has been signed by 27 leaders who played a significant role in advancing German reunification.

For Smith, a younger generation of Americans "needs to realize that American foreign policy is not the uncertain victories in Iraq and Afghanistan."

"The United States has played the most powerfully productive role in human history, and we have a lot to be proud of.  We have a lot to learn from, and if we do that, there’s no reason why this century can’t be freer and more prosperous than the last."

Alex Raufoglu

Washington D.C.