We knew where we, the Western and democratic world, stood vis-a-vis the communist bloc countries made up of the USSR and its eastern European satellite nations. That was simplified even more by former U.S. President Ronald Reagan who referred to the Soviet Union as the "Evil Empire."
But these days - beginning when communism was expunged from eastern European countries and Russia almost as quickly as those old children's doodle boards that would instantly erase your scribbles when you tilted the tablet in a certain way - politics has become more confusing.
Back then, when the United States called for an international peace conference on the Middle East, the Soviets and their satellites - mainly the countries of the Warsaw Pact group - would oppose it and join with other countries and organizations in a rejection front.
But the Annapolis peace meeting - as U.S. President George W. Bush first called the mega-gathering which ended up bringing together nearly 50 countries and representatives, including Syria and Saudi Arabia, along with Israel - received the full support of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Why? Because for the first time since the end of the cold war the West and Russia share a common enemy - Islamist extremists.
Putin is well aware of the dangers involved in allowing the spread of al-Qaida's ideas and ideals. And the Russian army has had firsthand experience in fighting Islamists in Afghanistan, well before U.S. and NATO forces ever set foot in the country. And it's an experience the Russians do not want to repeat.
Moscow realizes that the unresolved Palestinian issue gives Islamist extremists the perfect recruiting poster. Russia, which in recent years has come to appreciate the benefits of a free market economy, realizes that continuous crisis in the Middle East is bad for business. Bad business produces poor economic results, which in the end translates into fertile ground for conflict. Putin, much like the Saudis, has seen the results of home-grown terrorism, and has decided to act.
According to Russian sources it was largely thanks to Putin's direct intervention – in the form of a personal telephone call to Syrian President Bashar Assad that finally convinced Damascus to participate in Annapolis and to send its deputy foreign minister.
Riyadh's role was to convince the Arab countries to attend the meeting, which along with the enormous prestige it carries, helped give the Annapolis conference greater legitimacy.
The Islamists, contrary to what they were hoping for, ended up acting as a unifier between not only the former cold war warriors, but also pushing the vast majority of the Arab world into the same camp with the Western-Russian alliance who now agree they have a new common enemy.