Last Saturday, Germany marked the 50th anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall. A memorial service was held and a minute of silence observed in the German capital in memory of those shot dead by East German soldiers while trying to flee to the West.

In June 1961, East Germany leader Walter Ulbricht stated loud and clear that ‘ niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten ’ (no-one has the intention of erecting a wall). Two months later, he went back on his words and set about building a wall that would later become not just the symbol of German division, but of the Cold War as well.

NONE Still, the history of the Berlin Wall remains hotly contested more than two decades after its demise.

As Angela Merkel, the first chancellor of a reunified Germany from the east, was recollecting the horror of being contained within the wall that zigzagged around the city, another group of leftist politicians was gathering in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania to declare the wall had been necessary in order to prevent talented East Germans from exodus.

Indeed, a poll by the left-leaning Berliner Zeitung found that as much as 74 percent of the former members of the defunct Socialist Unity Party (East German Communist Party) agreed the wall was necessary and justified. The findings clearly indicate that, while the physical wall has long been removed, the mental barriers are still alive and kicking among the people of Germany.

The refusal by the former communists in Germany to dismiss the Berlin Wall as being the hallmark of an authoritarian regime is understandable, for they are eager to claim the right to interpretation of historical events back from the Wessis who now dominate Germany’s political discourse by virtue of being the ‘victors’.

History is - more often than not - written by the victors - just look at how Umno has been portraying itself as the ‘rightful freedom fighters’ against colonial rule while relegating the contributions by the leftists and the communists to historical irrelevance.

Regrettably, the world is still mired in the largely futile Us vs Them debate even though the Berlin Wall has come down and the Cold War ended.

azlan Take, for example, the security sector in Malaysia. The Royal Malaysian Police and the army fought an intensive war against the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) in the late 1940s through to the 1970s. The Malaysian government and the CPM eventually reached a peace accord in 1989 and the rest is history.

However, it would seem that the ruling elites and the security forces in this country have been elevated to a sort of sainthood status that renders them beyond reproach. They are quick to cite their achievements in defeating the insurgency when confronted with criticisms, the emotional appeal by General Zulkifeli Mohd Zin, the Armed Forces chief, is the latest case in point.

One wonders how the confession to electoral fraud by ex-military men could end up undermining the integrity of our armed forces. If anything, readiness on the part of the security sector to identify irregularities in public institutions will only enhance their credentials as guardians of national security.

The irrational response of the Umno government to the Bersih 2.0 rally and the hurling of charges of insurrection at Parti Sosialis Malaysia testify to the failure of the powers-that-be to rid themselves of the Cold War mindset, of which one important syndrome is the inability to acknowledge, engage, and handle political differences.

Zero-sum argument lives on

Internationally, the fear of a clash between the ‘Judeo-Christian’ West - of which the Shinto-Buddhist Japan was unfathomably a part - and the Rest as advanced by the late Samuel Huntington guided George W Bush’s foreign policy in the aftermath of the Sept 11 attacks.

The ‘evil of communism’ gave way to the threats posed by ‘Islamist’ terrorism and authoritarianism, represented by Iran, the Taliban, al-Qaeda, China and North Korea. For nearly a decade now, foreign policymakers across the world have not been able to set a new and convincing discourse while the zero-sum argument as a legacy of the Cold War era lives on.

azlan Nowhere is this more visible in the current war against Libya. Scaremongering and peddling untruths by both sides have come to characterise the conflict from day one. The American, British and the French governments continue with their propaganda against the Qaddafi regime, at the same time turning a blind eye to the atrocities committed by the Bahraini, Yemeni and the Saudi authorities against their own peoples.

This blatant double standard reeks strongly of the Cold War mantra of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’. It only delights China and Russia that are perceived as ‘questionable powers’ by the West.

Perhaps for the sake of his own survival in a post-Qaddafi Libya, Saif Qaddafi, the colonel’s charming son, has told the New York Times he will not rule out working alongside the Islamists in the opposition camp.

With the Muslim Brotherhood ’s ideology now gaining credence and support across Egypt, will the outmoded dichotomy perpetuated by the Cold War turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophesy: an ‘Islamist’ Middle East that does not sit comfortably with western, Chinese, Russian, Indian or even moderate Muslims’ interests?

The jury is still out on this. But it is high time Malaysia and the rest of the world ditch the Cold War mentality and learn to engage different opinions by peaceful means. Only then can the historical significance of the building and the fall of the Berlin Wall be properly commemorated.

JOSH HONG studied politics at London Metropolitan University and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. A keen watcher of domestic and international politics, he longs for a day when Malaysians will learn and master the art of self-mockery, and enjoy life to the full in spite of politicians.