On the 9th of November 1989, 20 years ago, Europe embarked upon a new chapter in its history.

As the German Democratic Republic opened its borders and the collapse of the Communist bloc neared, many in the Western world confessed a deep anxiety over the prospect of a reunified Germany.

In September, 1989, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had asked Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev not to let the Berlin Wall fall:

“We do not want a united Germany. This would lead to a retreat to postwar borders, and we cannot allow that, because such a development would undermine the stability of the whole international situation and could endanger our security”

American victory in the Cold War gave certain theorists the courage to spell out the old Marxist argument: humankind has arrived at its final stage of social development, therefore History, from now on, will be the history of the universal application of such a system.

Twenty years on, the little progress that liberal capitalism has made across the globe, has been in Eastern Europe. And yet, despite this, the fall of the Berlin wall has opened the way not to the ‘Americanisation’ of the former Socialist republics, but to the restoration of the old German sphere of influence over ‘Mitteleuropa’.

American liberal democracy may have triumphed in 1989, but it is European, and more specifically German, social democracy that is reaping the benefits of that success.

Ironically enough, it could be argued that some Eastern European states have moved from being Soviet buffer states against the West to being European buffer states against Russia.

It may be that the march of liberal democracy takes longer than expected, but twenty years after the fall of the Berlin wall, we see that conflicts of interests remain, independently of the social system.

In short, Russia is still Russia, Germany still Germany, and buffer states remain buffer states.