Michael Howard

About the Author: Michael Howard is the Robert Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

The Duke of Wellington remarked glumly on the morrow of Waterloo that there was only one thing worse than winning a battle, and, that was to lose it. We are beginning to see what he meant. From the Baltic to the Caspian, there now stretches a huge arc of confusion bordering at times on anarchy. In Central and Eastern Europe, inexperienced leaders face the problem of reconstituting not only economies but entire societies poisoned by 40 years of Marxist totalitarianism. Farther east, the collapse of Soviet political and economic leadership has encouraged every group with any experience of national autonomy to demand independence from a center that...