Whichever way we may visualise the post-cold war world, we cannot ignore the possibility that we may be moving into a period of great uncertainty and disorder. After all, the talk of the dawn of the age of democracy, globalisation of the economy and a new world order based on them cannot cover up the reality reflected, among other developments, in the disintegration of Yugoslavia, the war in Bosnia, the impending break-up of Czechoslovakia and various armed conflicts in the former Soviet Union.
Most of the third world was in a parlous state when the Soviet-US contest was on. The aid these countries received as a result of this competition could not possibly help them overcome the social, economic and political disruption imperialism and other forces had caused. With the end of the cold war has disappeared whatever room for manoeuvre and freedom it had given them.
Perils Ahead
By and large their plight can only worsen. The growing indifference to on-going massacres and threats, indeed the reality of famine and mass starvation in Africa, speaks of the perils ahead. South Asia can get added to this list since there too vital western interests are no longer at stake.
This cannot but be a matter of the deepest concern to us since our own future is in jeopardy. But unfortunately that too may not be the end of the matter. The tragedy may be bigger. The first world itself may be heading for serious trouble and may not be in a position to serve, even if it were so inclined, as the central core around which a new order can be built. Let us look at the scene on the two sides of the Atlantic.
A gaping hole is only too visible at the heart of the United States which alone can provide the leadership for a new world system. It, of course, remains a formidable power and not just in military terms. It is still the leader in the realm of science, technology, communication and entertainment and it commands enormous productive and innovative capacity. But it lacks the internal coherence it needs to serve the role of world leader, or indeed even to be at peace within itself.
It is a matter of contention whether it is the racial riots in Los Angeles or it is the rise of billionaire Ross Perot that better illustrates American’s growing incoherence. The two together should certainly clinch the issue.
The riots in Los Angeles as well as the Perot phenomenon have been widely attributed to the decline of the US economy. That is, however, at best only partly true. The Perot phenomenon, for instance, not only speaks of widespread disenchantment with traditional politics, resulting partly from recession and unemployment, but also gives expression to the culture of instant gratification which those in command of the mass media, advertisement and entertainment have promoted.
Indeed, it can well be argued that the US economy itself is in disarray at least partly because in the larger context of the prevailing cultural milieu, the ruling establishment has neither thought it desirable nor possible to raise taxes. On the contrary, President Reagan reduced taxes on the rich and allowed the budget deficit to rise year after year precisely because he was a product and a salesman of that kind of culture. Imagine petrol being sold at $ 1.15 a gallon in the petroleum-importing US against $4.5 in petroleum-surplus Britain.
Like the Perot phenomenon, the white-black divide too cannot be explained solely, or even mainly, in economic terms, though President Reagan’s voodoo economics has doubtless contributed to its aggravation in recent years. The sources of the conflict run much deeper.
Of all peoples who constitute the United States, Africans alone have not gone there on their own volition. They were dragged there as slaves and they were kept there as slaves. That history remains a major source of conflict. For, in the very act of forced transition to the new world dominated by Anglo-Saxons, the African personality was decimated and could not be reconstituted, their conversion to Christianity and access to modern education in recent decades notwithstanding. The breakdown of the African family on a massive scale is a testimony to the devastation the African man and woman has suffered in America.
Treacherous Terrain
The US elite could cover up this and other fissures in their society under the garb of the supposedly life and death struggle against the communist menace. Since it can do so no more, it has to be preoccupied with domestic problems. The sharp decline in the popularity of President Bush, the victor of Moscow no less than the victor of Baghdad, so soon after the momentous events, should suffice to settle this question.
On the other side of the Atlantic, the situation, if anything, is more uncertain. The Maastricht treaty whereby members of the European Community are to merge their identities in a substantial measure into an unknown entity may well turn out to be something worse than a belated reaction to twin \ challenges, one of which has disappeared with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the other greatly weakened with America’s economic decline and preoccupations at home. It may prove to be an invitation to confusion and incoherence in the realm of culture as well as defence and foreign policy.
Beyond western Europe, the terrain is even more treacherous. The point here is not that the Soviet Union has disappeared but that it has not, indeed could not have, broken down into viable units. Russia itself is neither a reasonably homogeneous country nor an empire. It cannot be consolidated and it cannot be broken into constituents. And 25 million Russians live in its former constituents which have now become independent on an anti-Russian platform.
Turbulent Europe
There was a logic about Russian expansion which cannot easily be replaced by some other logic as it could be in the case of western European overseas empires. In fact, there is no comparable example. Throughout its history, Europe has been one of the most turbulent regions of the world and so it is threatening to become once again. The post-World War II stability has been the product of the balance of terror and imposition of order by Moscow on mercurial people like the Poles. Both the terror and the imposition have ended.
Unlike in the past, there are, of course, today no great European empires (Britain, France and Russia) or would be empires (Germany) which would be competing for influence on the basis of military might. But such struggles invariably assume new forms. The French and the British are already terrorised by the prospect of German domination over Europe.
Western propaganda claims notwithstanding, the cold war has not ended because the West has won the contest. It has ended because the Soviet empire and Union have collapsed under the weight of the terrible incompetence of its rulers. The collapse has led to a vacuum of a most frightening kind, involving as it does the entire society, economy and polity. The West is in danger of being sucked into this vacuum. That is one possible implication of one “common European home.”
The Times of India, 9 July 1992