As the Cold War recedes, it becomes increasingly difficult to imagine what might have been and to objectively assess the contribution of Gorbachev's leadership and his legacy. Quite apart from the loss of a historic opportunity to build a radically different post-Cold War international relations, it is that the West did so in large measure out of an inability to understand that this was what, at least by 1989–1990, was central to Gorbachev's diplomacy. By focusing on our victory of superior power, and ignoring the role of Gorbachev's ideas, we ensured that what followed would indeed continue to be dominated by power politics. Once again, realism helps create the world it purports only to describe. By spurning Gorbachev's potentially greatest legacy as a twentieth-century leader, we ensured that this legacy would indeed be considerably less that it might have been.