"History shows that terrorism can operate only in free, or relatively free, societies. There was no terrorism in Nazi Germany or in Stalin's Russia; there was (or is) none even in less harsh dictatorships. But this means that in certain circumstances, if terrorism has been permitted to operate too freely and become more than a nuisance, a high price has to be paid in terms of limitation of freedom and human rights to put an end to it."
When the Cold War came to an end in 1989 with the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, when the countries of Eastern Europe regained independence, and when finally the Soviet Union disintegrated, there was widespread feeling throughout the world that at long last universal peace had descended on Earth. The fear of a war in which weapons of mass destruction would be used had vanished. A leading political scientist wrote a book titled The End of History; this did not, of course, imply that history had come to a standstill, but he meant that serious, major conflicts between nations no longer existed and that on certain essentials all were now in agreement.
