Ancient History?

It dawned on me this week while talking to some employees at a wine store that I frequent, that current college students have no recollection of life before the Berlin Wall fell, no Cold War frame of reference. A kid born the year the wall fell would be a senior in high school now! Now I feel ancient, the pivotal event of my high school years, happened 18 yrs ago. I was always conscious of the threat of nuclear war during the 80's as a kid, and it scared the hell out of me. As I studied the fall of Communism in college a few years after the fact I realized that the Soviets had been broke for years and that the Cold War was something that realistically should have ended much sooner. In some ways I may have preferred the state of affairs in my youth to the uncertainty of the current global situation. Rogue nations, failed states, preemptive wars, Islamic terrorists, and the fact that Russia and China still have plenty of nuclear missles pointed at the West. Things seemed a bit more cut and dried back then, even if the threat of mutually assured destruction was terrifying. The collapse of Communism was a much heralded event, but now almost twenty years on are we any safer from a cataclysm? I don't think so, we in the West have squandered a real chance to make the world a safer place.