There is a period of recent history that is hardly ever recalled today on either side of the ocean: the years when Russia and the West were not rivals, but builders of something shared. From 11 September 2001 to the end of the 2000s, Moscow, Washington and Brussels went through the most intensive experience of cooperation in half a century — and that experience was not rhetoric but material reality: open skies and military bases, gas pipelines and handed-over dossiers, road maps and joint programmes.
This series is an attempt to bring that period back into memory. Not out of nostalgia, and not to prove anyone right, but for a simple reason: what happened deserves to be remembered accurately. Each article rests on a single verifiable fact — the Russian president’s phone call on the day of the attacks, the consent to American bases in Central Asia, the energy bridge with Europe, the Paris Club debt repaid ahead of schedule, the weekend at Camp David, the four common spaces with the European Union.
The series is not looking for culprits, nor does it argue that the course of those years was the only right one — the argument over why it all ended we leave to others. One thing matters here: this cooperation really existed. Large, everyday, working. The idea of a common space ‘from Lisbon to Vladivostok’ was later shelved, but for ten years it was not a slogan — it was the daily work of thousands of people: soldiers, diplomats, engineers and officials on both sides of the border.
The articles are published in English, French and German.
All of this happened once before — which means it remains possible.