Mikhail Gorbachev never intended to liquidate the Soviet empire. Perestroika and glasnost were meant to rescue a bankrupt ideology and a moribund economy after the West’s relentless pressure exposed communism’s hollowness. Instead, they hastened the empire’s unraveling. The system collapsed not because Gorbachev hated it, but because his reforms could not save what ideology and economics had already doomed.

Vice President JD Vance now performs the inverse role for the West. Where Gorbachev’s opening responded to defeat, Vance’s diplomacy sought to preempt American strength by accommodating its foremost ideological foe in the Middle East.