from telegraph.co.uk: Here we are again, facing Russia across the barricades. How did that happen? Only five minutes ago, the West was celebrating the collapse of Soviet communism: a historic victory which had been achieved without a shot being fired. Russia would now join the free world as a capitalist economy, with something like democratic institutions. The end of the Cold War could bring an end to the East-West stand-off, which had required that so much of America’s wealth and Europe’s political attention be spent on defence. With mutual cooperation over the anarchic (but small-scale) threat from Islamist terrorism – in which Russia had its own stake in Chechnya – surely a new era of cooperation, stability and mass prosperity might follow.