I gotta agree with you there. The collapse of the USSR presented a great opportunity to permanently end the Cold War, and unite the West. It wouldn’t have been easy, given the history of the region. But France and Germany are now good friends. So it could have been done.
But instead of reaching out to Russia, the West provoked Russia. And so the opportunity was lost.
Was that provocation deliberate? Was it necessary? I have my opinions, but I’ll leave them to another thread. The main point here is that a great opportunity was lost.
Bush, The Elder, surely mismanaged the fall of communism.
E.g. he opposed the disintegration of Soviet union and Yugoslavia. He even went there to try to talk to them. Funny, the disintegrations in both cases happen just the next day after he left!
His reasoning was really stupid - “I want to have only one country to talk to”. Understand, I am lazy, I do not want to talk to a dozen of countries separately!
Moreover, he basically refused to help post soviet countries, so they were left for Soros to be picked (Soros was extremally active then!)
When the Communism disintegrated, there were many countries who tried to get over the scourge. But they were left on their own, with little or none help or even a guidance!
Those poor people were even voting the communists back in some cases, just because the switch was really painfull.