U.S., Russia, Europe, China have different views on Berlin Wall's fall --- The Berlin Wall continues to haunt the world. Only shards remain of the concrete and barbed wire that once divided a city and split a continent. Few can be found in Berlin itself. Sections adorn a men's room in Las Vegas, a pedestrian mall in South Africa and the dining room at Microsoft. Bits can even be found on EBay (buyer beware). -- But the wall's legacy, not its collectibility, is the problem. The world cannot agree on precisely why it fell, and more broadly why European communism collapsed and the Cold War ended. Four contradictory explanations dominate, from the most powerful corners of the Earth: the United States, Russia, Europe and China. This is no mere academic debate. How political elites understand the past directly affects their strategies for the future, and conflicting readings of a shared pivot point offer a recipe for ongoing international instability. -- Americans largely understand the Cold War's end as a story of triumph. "By the grace of God," George H.W. Bush declared, "America won." Forty-plus years of economic and military dominance won, to be specific. After decades of containment, Ronald Reagan commanded "tear down this wall," and the Kremlin, recognizing the folly of continuing an exceedingly expensive and unwinnable arms race, complied (a few years later, but still). -- Soviet surrender, coupled with a democratic eruption in Eastern Europe, symbolized to American minds acceptance of not just U.S. global dominance, but of American values. Europe's oppressed peoples wanted to be like us, American leaders thought, because as George H.W. Bush said, "We know what works. Freedom works." All but ignoring the activism that helped erode communism from within, and lumping together Eastern Europe's reforming and recalcitrant regimes, the American story offered a profoundly simple, yet profoundly powerful explanation for the Cold War's end: Might makes right, and we were right all along. --- Europeans don't buy this story. Their prevailing explanation for communism's collapse gives credit not to American might and ideals, but instead to their own continental elan. Force had not destroyed communism. Instead, its absence made Eastern Europe's velvet revolutions possible. By avoiding war for more than two generations, a long time given recent history, sage European strategists gave communists time to come to their senses. -- Read More, Latimes, http://touch.latimes.com/#section/527/article/p2p-81840871/