IT LOOKS EASY AFTERWARDS (COMMENT).

IT LOOKS EASY AFTERWARDS (COMMENT). Anne Applebaum makes another point about how “the majority of … books and conferences have focused on the many unsolved problems, the mistakes that were made and the resentments that are still felt all across the former Eastern bloc.” She simply asks: “But what did we think Central Europe would look like 20 years after Nov. 9, 1989?” She says that too many treat the successes of the past twenty years as a “foregone conclusion.” Dick Weisfelder commented here that “George H. W. Bush rarely gets the plaudits he deserves” for his policies during this period, which included staying in the background while the two Germanies negotiated. I agree that he deserves plaudits and also that I tend to overlook the wise choices made during this period. Historians, like most of us, tend to write about activist policies. Restraint gets less attention.