A Berlin Wall moment is needed

During the Cold War between the West led by the United States and the Soviet Empire, the United States suffered many setbacks. During the mid to late 1970s, it seemed as though the Soviet Union might defeat the West, not because Communism was a superior political structure to liberal democracy in terms of bringing its citizens happiness and material wealth, but because the Soviet-Communist system was capable of effectively mobilizing resources behind a single purpose while the West, being a society that values freedom of dissent, could rarely take decisive action and maintain that action for longer than a few election cycles.

But then, as the National Review wrote in 1989, "God cleared his throat," the Berlin Wall collapsed and Eastern Europe began to pull free of Soviet domination. A few years later the Soviet Union broke apart. As we attempt to win the war against Islamic extremism, we need to look back at the Cold War and how it came to its surprising end.

The Soviet Empire was one of histories largest, spanning all over the globe from Southeast Asia in Vietnam to parts of Africa and even in the Western Hemisphere. East German agents funded peace movements in West Germany while North Korean agents similarly attempted to influence South Korean politics. The Soviet Union could increase aid to Cuba and increase its military budget without worrying about whether the people would support such expenditures, since few people were aware of how much of the nation's income was being spent on these items.

But the Soviet Empire began to collapse in 1989 without a shot being fired by the West. By this I mean that neither a single Soviet tank nor a single soldier was destroyed or killed in Eastern Europe by the West.

All governments rely, to some extent, on a willingness of its people to obey. While a military or secret police can intimidate a subject population, this still requires that the military or secret policy execute orders given to it. When a significant number people are charged with executing government "policy" decide to disobey, a dictator thought to be ruling with an iron fist can be made ineffective or even overthrown.

What is needed in the current war against Islamic extremism is a Berlin Wall moment, moment when thousands of (perhaps nominal or lapsed) Muslims in positions of executing orders given to them by their government decide to join the movement for democracy and freedom. Unfortunately, the opposite seems to be happening in Great Britain and elsewhere in the West. There seem to be pockets of support for Islamic totalitarianism and hostility to liberal democracy within Western societies. If we are to win this war we have to identify and support those pockets of resistance to Islamic totalitarianism in the Islamic world. Perhaps the result will be a Berlin Wall moment in the Islamic World.