Notes from abroad: Ghost Recon revisited

Certainly, the old communist fears have been on the backburner for a few - maybe ten or so - years now. For anyone born after 1979, the fears of nuclear war, Soviet aggression and socialist revolutions in Iowa were replaced with fears of nuclear meltdowns, rogue nations and terrorist attacks by the mid-90's. While for that epic greatest generation of Tom Brokaw fame viewed the threat of the Soviet Union, and international communism, as paramount in the years after the end of the second world war, their children and grandchildren are more concerned with the state of major league baseball.

That all changed - or at least shifted slightly - with the Russian invasion of Georgia. With the subsequent (and probably permanent) annexation of two rebelling provinces and the beginnings of what looks to be a Russian Anschluss the old geopolitics of the Cold War seemingly reemerged, coming full bore from the woodwork. 

Prague remains a symbol of Soviet - and Russian - aggression in the post World War II world. No where else were the aims and tactics that embodied the Soviet Union during that period of world history better displayed. 

Marking the height of the Prague Spring in 1968, Russian tanks allied with their Warsaw Pact partners put an end to burgeoning political freedoms in the Czechoslovakia. Though there was no military resistance to the occupation, 1968 marked a low point for the West, which watched on earnestly as one of the earliest attempts to shrug off the stranglehold of Stalinism failed spectacularly. 

With the current Russian invasion of Georgia still fresh in the mind, the site of the beginning of the end of the Prague Spring takes on special importance, as does the city of Prague itself. Here is a place that for the past four hundred plus years has served largely as a political football for the larger European powers, who suffered under Austrian, Nazi, and then Soviet control for decades and faced defeat and failure at every attempt to pull itself back together until 1993. 

Now, a bustling tourist city, opened to the west fully for the first time since the interwar years, Prague stands as one of the most poignant symbols of rejection of Marxist-Leninism. A single tank still stands outside of the National Museum, along with a bent cross consisting of warped and shredded wood to commemorate the victims of communism. Around these two symbols - and the grossly commercialized American owned "communist museum" down the street - a bustling, democratic, free market city has emerged. 

You might miss it for the discotheques, designer clothing stores and street vendors if you're not careful. Fitting, I think.