Britannica Book of the Year 1992 [antikvár]

COMMENTARY Legacy of 1991: Phoenix or Empty Ashes? BY FLORA LEWIS A wise old saying has it that there are no solutions, only new problems. The fierce medieval dispute about the substantiality of angels, how many could stand on a pinhead, faded away because it could not be resolved and pressures rose to deal with other issues as the world moved on. Perhaps, in the distant future, people will look back on the 20th century with the same sense of the appalling absurdity of its bloody, monstrous arguments, its hubristic ideas of how to run society and remodel humankind. Of course, the essential question of man in society, the needs of community versus the needs of individuals, has not been resolved and probably never will be. People are both individual and social animals. But the way of dealing with the dilemma is undergoing change, provoked by real changes in technology, population, production, the way people live, what they know about, and therefore the way people think. The year 1991 was a time of transition, in some instances abrupt and dramatic, marking the end of an era and forcing new beginnings. In a sense, it was the end of a century, foreshortened on the calendar but closing a cycle that began in 1914 with World War I and then the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. In 1989 the Soviet bloc collapsed, ending the Communist power monopoly imposed on the people of Eastern Europe and a third of Germany by the Red Army after World War II. In 1991 the Soviet Union itself and its Communist Party collapsed, ending the whole idea of the 74-year experiment. Scarcely a place in the world was untouched—by the disappearance of an ally, of a patron, of an aspiration; by the disappearance of an enemy, of a troublemaker, of a rival belief. The euphoria of victory over what former president Ronald Reagan had called "the evil empire," of liberation from dictatorial constraints, quickly gave way to uncertainty and new fears. The new time was called the "post-cold war" as the time after 1945 was called the "postwar" because people knew what had gone, but there was no clear idea of what was coming. Looking back, a tremendous sense of relief was justified. The threat of war between superpowers, and therefore of nuclear holocaust, virtually dissolved. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists established a "doomsday clock" in 1947 to warn of impending nuclear danger. It was set at seven minutes to midnight, dropping to three minutes in 1949 when the Soviets exploded their first atomic bomb and two minutes in 1953 when the U.S. tested its Flora Lewis is senior columnist for the New York Times, specializing in international affairs. Her books include Red Pawn and Europe: a Tapestry of Nations. first hydrogen bomb. The clock was moved a little back and forward until it reached 10 minutes to midnight in 1990. On Nov. 26, 1991, the Bulletin announced its "optimism that we are entering a new era" and reset the clock to an unprecedented 17 minutes to midnight. "The world is still a dangerous place," it warned, still containing some 50,000 nuclear warheads, still pouring "vast sums of money and intellectual capital into weaponry" at the cost of "economic distortions and human misery." But leaders were increasingly coming to use the United Nations for its original purpose of resolving conflict and recognizing "the destructiveness of seeking military solutions to the world's ills." Yet looking ahead was far from reassuring. Militant nationalism was on the rise again, particularly but not only in ex-Communist countries, where it had been repressed by force. States were breaking up in economic disaster. Europe shuddered as civil war raged in Yugoslavia, fearful that its old 19th- and early 20th-century demons of hatred might reemerge triumphant before its new sense of supranational community and cooperation could be firmly rooted and enlarged. War in the Persian Gulf had demonstrated an international will to block aggression. A U.S.-led coalition of states achieved a stunning defeat of Iraq after its invasion and annexation of Kuwait. But the military victory did not lead to effective political change. Iraq's dictator Saddam Hussein kept power, and none of the region's sources of instability were addressed, while arsenals multiplied. Tyranny was challenged in many parts of the world, and brought down. The urge to democracy. and political settlements of violent conflict was spreading, but it turned out that removal of oppression was not enough for democracy and comity to thrive. There might be a phoenix in the ashes, but it was not guaranteed; there might also be just ashes. The late French poet Paul Valéry once said, "Two dangers constantly threaten the world: order and disorder." It was proved so again. Some felt a certain regret for the simplicities of the nearly half-century-long East-West confrontation when so much seemed predictable. U.S. Pres. George Bush proclaimed the goal of establishing a "new world order" based on shared values, consent, restraint of the mighty, and protection of the weak. But it was not at all clear how he intended to go about it, what sacrifices might be required, much less granted. To many outside the U.S., it had undertones of an ambition for global American hegemony, a Pax Americana whether the rest of the world wished it or not. Inside the U.S., people turned quickly from a sweet sense of triumph over Communism and Iraqi aggression to a sour sense of how much had been neglected