This month, on Nov. 9, Germany will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Most students at the UW were born within a few years of that event, so for the most part, only our more senior faculty and staff will remember firsthand the excited reports of the Wall’s glorious demise.

The Berlin Wall was, more than any other visible structure, the physical manifestation of the Cold War, from its construction in 1961 until its fall in 1989. For some time before it was built, going to East Berlin and then crossing into West Berlin was the only way to get out of East Germany, and millions of people did just that. The Wall completed the division of Germany into two nations that would take radically different paths.

West Germany became free and prosperous, while the East languished under Soviet-style, central planning and a large, bureaucratic apparatus devoted to spying on its own population for purely political purposes. The divergence between East and West Germany underscores that by any reasonable measurement of outcomes or process, some political and economic systems are inferior to others.

East Germans knew they were getting a raw deal, with strikes and rebellions occurring as early as 1953. Later on, those who didn’t leave or, when the border was sealed, couldn’t leave consumed West German media (illegally, of course) when it was available. It was said that an East German could have any two of the following, but not all three: personal honesty, intelligence and sincere support for his government.

In the end, the Wall was destroyed by those millions of people who adopted the first two traits. U.S. presidents, from JFK to Reagan, openly supported the East German citizenry’s struggle for freedom. The East German government, like its murderous wall, fell to an angry population fully aware that the world west of the border was passing them by.

Today, there is no Berlin Wall separating the free people of the world from the repressed ones. Nor is the “repressed world” quite as easily defined. Nevertheless, the lack of Wall-like symbols should not lull us into thinking that it is perfectly acceptable for billions of people to live without the ability to vote in fair elections to determine who will lead them.

Those whose only experience is of freedom may find it easy to bash the United States’ imperfections and write off foreign populations living under repressive governments in the name of multiculturalist anti-colonialism and of some misguided determination to respect the sovereignty of native tyrants. Yet to support a nation’s discontented people against its illegitimate government is anything but colonialist.

Standing against authoritarian regimes, contrary to the sarcastic language of pacifists and self-proclaimed realists, doesn’t necessarily equate to invading a dozen foreign countries. As the Cold War experience shows, military power underpins many peaceful initiatives but need not be used at every turn. That nuance hasn’t changed.

On the other hand, little can be achieved by legitimizing undemocratic regimes by dismissing the efforts of liberal minds in their countries and fetishizing dialogue with their leaders in hopes of finding “peace in our time.” The middle ground between the polar opposites of feckless dialogue and military intervention is as fertile today as it was in the 1980s, if only policymakers would tread on it.

Reach columnist Russ Wung at opinion@dailyuw.com.