A dangerous momentum gathers pace - Superpowers grow restless

IT’S just 60 years since there was a popular uprising in Hungary to try to end Soviet rule — though Russian historians, politicians, and contemporary culture insist that revolt was an early attempt at regime change inspired by western intervention.

Much the same arguments are in play today over Ukraine and the violent events in Kiev just two years ago.

The Hungarian rising — one of the first insurrections seen on television more or less as it happened — was crushed by Soviet tanks and a short, sharp military intervention. It may, from today’s perspective, seem a grainy footnote from the last century but maybe we should regard it as just another tragic but instructive punctuation mark in the never-ending struggle between the world’s superpowers, a perspective sharpened by today’s return to something pretty much like Cold War international relations. Recent events in Crimea support this chilling argument.