This week marks the 25th anniversary of the free election in which the Nicaraguan people ousted the Marxist Sandinistas from power after 12 long years of revolution, war and poverty.

It was part of a global democratic revolution, the dramatic high point of which came with the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989.

Today, however, Nicaragua is back under the rule of the Sandinistas — or, more precisely, the rule of Sandinista President Daniel Ortega and his family. Democracy there “continues to be weakened by the authoritarian tendencies of the president, and efforts to subvert the constitution for his political benefit,” in the words of the Economist’s Intelligence Unit. Translation: The Ortegas are building a dynastic pseudo-democracy eerily like the Somoza regime the Sandinistas overthrew in 1979.

In short, if little Nicaragua epitomized the democratic revolutionary spirit of 1989, now it epitomizes a resurgence of dictatorship, illiberalism and anti-Americanism. Freedom House recently reported “a disturbing decline in global freedom in 2014,” the ninth straight year in which the organization has documented democratic back-sliding.

What went wrong? The United States, which spearheaded the democratic wave as part of its Cold War endgame, moved on to the war against terrorism after Sept. 11, 2001, a long and necessary, but draining, struggle that became Washington’s rationale for making common cause with various dictatorships.

Attempts to occupy and democratize Iraq and Afghanistan went sour, sowing permanent doubts, both in America and abroad, about democracy’s universal applicability — and about the United States’ democratic credentials, given its own compromises, and its own controversial measures against terrorism such as the prison at Guantanamo. The “Great Recession” and partisan gridlock damaged the democratic capitalist brand.

Europeans and Americans can and should reflect candidly on the moral and political sins we have committed in history, including recent history. And we’ve been doing a lot of that lately, from President Obama on down.

Today, all the confidence seems to be on the counterrevolution’s side. That must change, lest the United States find itself heading a dwindling, and weakening, band of like-minded nations — and lest history record that the fateful events of 1989 actually occurred not in Berlin but in Beijing.