Britannica Book of the Year 1993 [antikvár]

COMMENTARY The Not-So-New World Order BY HEDRICK SMITH In the long sweep of time, scholars can point to certain decisive, watershed years when human history is suddenly thrust across an irrevocable divide—when with stunning swiftness a new leader or a political movement seizes control in a powerful nation or when revolution shakes the foundations of an empire, and the aftershocks of this one earthquake radiate outward, altering the destiny of the entire world. In the 20th century, humankind has witnessed several such defining moments: the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917; the ascent of Adolf Hitler in 1933; the defeat of Nazi Germany and the onset of the cold war in 1945; Mikhail S. Gorbachev's rise to power in 1985 and his launching of per-estroika to transform the Soviet Union and curb the nuclear arms race; and, finally, the breach of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Each of these developments had shock impact. Each bent the path of human history in a new direction. A similar bolt of lightning struck Moscow in August 1991 at the climax of the Second Russian Revolution, when unarmed citizens at the barricades stopped the tanks sent by hard-line factions of the military, KGB, and Communist Party to halt peresiroika and reverse Russia's momentum toward greater openness and democracy. That one brief week in 1991—^when the icons of communism were toppled and the Soviet state was shattered—electrified the world and kindled the hope that the death knell of Leninist totalitarianism also sounded the dawning of a new, more peaceful and more promising era. So in 1991, it seemed, the trend lines of history were pointing upward. Then came 1992, and the trend lines suddenly slanted downward. Dreams of global harmony and exaggerated expectations of democracy and prosperity generated by the collapse of communism and the end of the cold war were harshly jolted, if not exploded. U.S. Pres. George Bush might utter that hopeful, vague phrase about a "new world order," but suddenly the world seemed more chaotic. And meaner, too, whether in the murderous clashes of Hindu and Muslim in India or the epidemic-scale famine fanned by corrupt warlords in Somalia. Even amid the promise of new democracies in the Philippines, Nicaragua, or South Africa, the path seemed more vulnerable. In eastern Europe, lifting the dead hand of tyranny from long-captive peoples brought not just the anticipated burst of democracy and self-determination but a violent explosion of long-suppressed ethnic hatreds. The world watched in horror as proud assertions of independence in what used to be Yugoslavia turned into a barbarous civil war Hedrick Smith is a writer, author, lecturer, TV commentator, and documentarian. His books include The Russians, The Power Game, How Washington Works, and The New Russians. among Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians, conducted under the banner of "ethnic cleansing" with its echoes of Nazi racism. Czechoslovakia broke in two, its "velvet revolution" unable to sustain the unity of Czechs and Slovaks. In the Caucasus, civil conflict brought new bloodshed between Christian Armenians and their Islamic neighbours in Azerbaijan. The old Soviet state of Georgia was torn by warfare among Georgians, Ossetians, and Abkhazians. Elsewhere, liberation brought suffering along with new freedoms. Amid progress in privatizing their economies, Poland and Hungary suffered from mass unemployment and other painful symptoms of readjustment. Russia's fragile experiment in democracy and market reforms was threatened by industrial collapse, political deadlock, and a rampant, malignant inflation that ate away the savings, living standards, and stoic hopes of the nation's 150 million people. Dramatic arms-control agreements announced at year's end by President Bush and Russian Pres. Boris Yeltsin, to reduce their arsenals by two-thirds in 10 years, seemed in danger from the rising assertiveness of Russian nationalists and from the reluctance of the new nuclear states of Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan to conform even with earlier treaties signed when these states were part of the old Soviet Union. The flood of refugees from eastern Europe into Germany ignited waves of neo-Nazi violence against foreigners, shaking the confidence of bourgeois Germans in their own postwar democracy. The pace of German reunification was set back by the harsh realities of transition. By 1992 many western Germans were balking at the high price of implementing Chancellor Helmut Kohl's ambitious plan to reintegrate the once-communist regions of former East Germany with the prosperous West. More broadly, the German and Japanese economies, so long engines of global economic growth, both reeled into recession in 1992, and the U.S. economy laboured wearily to climb out of an economic trough. Britain suffered its worst downturn since the 1930s. People the world over felt the pain of economic contraction. In the U.S. the protracted economic downturn cost President Bush his reelection. This harsh economic climate contributed, moreover, to the undermining of the much-anticipated "year of European unity" in 1992. Expectations of swift movement toward unity had been high as 1991 ended. Yet 1992 became not a time of crowning achievement but a test of the very idea of European cohesion. Of course, there were events that countered the dominant trends: the holding of the global environmental summit in Rio de Janeiro; the election of a new Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, who began at once to revive serious peace negotiations with Israel's Arab neighbours; new bursts of democratic activism in Thailand and the election of a former dissident to the presidency of South Korea; the relentless