State of the world
Almost twelve years to the day, the Soviet Union used the flimsiest of pretexts to walk into Afghanistan. Flush with triumphs of its surrogates in Angola and Ethiopia, Afghanistan seemed to be an easy acquisition, formalizing the East European-type satellite status, a convenient staging post in the age-old Czarist dream of secure routes to the warm waters of the Indian Ocean. Three years of Jimmy Carter’s indecisive Presidency had convinced the Soviets that after its Vietnam experience and the self-deprecation syndrome thereof, the US had become a paper tiger that would not involve itself in another adventure on the Asian mainland. The strong are invariably contemptuous about weakness, furthermore the Soviets did not have any qualms or apprehensions about internal dissent or conscientious objections. The USSR’s planners were right in the sense that the Americans did stay away physically from the internecine civil strife that erupted but welcomed the opportunity for a tit-for-tat proxy war against its Superpower rivals. The US pragmatically funnelled money, material and moral help through the Pakistani conduit to all comers among the Afghan guerilla factions, anyone who could take reasonable potshots at the Soviets and their Afghan clients.
The once vaunted Soviet Union has disappeared into oblivion, a thing of the past. The disparate republics that have arisen Phoenix-like from the ashes are fooling themselves that the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) will provide a platform of equals, actually the Russian Republic has become more equal than the rest. One cannot easily dismiss the parting fears of former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev as sour grapes. Ringing down the curtain on the great Superpower with his resignation on Christmas Day 1991, Gorbachev gave a dire warning De Gaulle-like (Apres mon roi, le deluge!) about chaos and confusion to follow, a process that in fact he had heralded in less than six years earlier with his Glasnost (openness) and Perestroika (economic reform). Gorbachev created aspirations among the masses without creating fact, his vacillations led to events overtaking his half-baked policies. In the last four months he was more a prisoner of unfolding circumstances and the master of almost nothing. Though he has seemingly passed into history, Gorbachev may yet make a comeback, one should not count him out just yet.
It would be romantic to suggest that the Afghan rebels, with their modern Lee Enfields (the US-supplied Stinger shoulder-fired ground-to-air missiles), brought down the communist fantasy of a socialist dominated world. In fact, the Afghan war simply expedited the process of economic decay within the Soviet establishment that had been papered over by vocal propaganda, no totalitarian system relying on centralized state control of economy can sustain the mass aspiration for socio-economic advancement. Instead of going the cautious Deng Xiaoping route, the China example of keeping economic reforms just ahead of social freedoms was abandoned in a pell mell scramble for economic emancipation without a definite action plan or the common sense to loosen many decades-old controls slowly. The former Republics of the Soviet Union now face great privation and hunger in the long winter ahead, their only hope of staving off mass starvation lies in massive western food aid and economic assistance.
The world may be a better place to live in without the thought of a predator Super-power breathing God-less socialism down one’s throat, the existing nuclear arsenal of the former USSR, divided into four unequal portions, remains a cause for severe concern. The euphoria of the downfall of the Soviet Union notwithstanding, the most potent portion of the former Soviet nuclear arsenals, delivery systems and all, lies in the territory of Kazakhastan Republic, a nightmare scenario, about a small nation having its finger on the Doomsday Button, come true. The force of geographical circumstances that made Kazakhastan a nuclear fortress of the Soviet Union has now made it the world’s first Islamic nuclear power. Its sober and respected President, Nursultan Azarbayev, a former wrestler and blast-furnace worker, is now a most sought-after personality, his clout way beyond the economic and (conventional) military potential of his nation.
Russia by itself remains a primary nuclear Superpower equalling the US of A. Even without the granary of the Ukraine, industrialised Russia with rich mineral and petroleum potential within its vast mass has a greater economic chance for progress once freed of the yoke of the rest. With or without communism, Russia has had its own sense of world destiny since Czar Peter the Great gave them those aspirations. What the rest of the world has got, at this time, is not one adversarial Super-power resigned to the realization that detente is necessary but four friendly (??) former enemies, all of whom individually have large-enough nuclear arsenals to blow up the world by themselves. Given that the US, UK and France in NATO had nuclear arsenals, nature may have just created a supreme nuclear balancing act inadvertently.
For good order’s sake, Marshal Shaposhnikov, the Defence Minister of the former Soviet Union, is to maintain control of all the nuclear and allied forces as a sort of a Super C-in-C answerable to the heads of all the Republics comprising the Commonwealth. It is at best an uneven, mind-boggling arrangement that shows little likelihood of lasting the test of time and/or circumstances. One can only hope that concise details will clearly spell out the military administrative arrangements and end the present confusion, tailor-made for application of Murphy’s Law. One can just visualize a Russian (or Kazakh or Ukrainian or Belorussian) version of Dr Strangelove aspiring for a Doomsday scenario!
The individual frustrations of a totalitarian society destroyed the USSR from within but the end was hastened because the mass aspirations could not cope with the misery and privations fostered by economic ineptitude of the socialist system that does not recognize merit and apportion incentive and reward thereof. Before we begin to accept this as an exact science, let us turn to the home of capitalism, the USA. While a million years removed from the desperate situation of the former Soviet peoples, the USA is itself facing the onset of a full blown recession. In the hour of the second greatest triumph in this century of its own ideology over that of its rivals (the first being over National-Socialism or Nazism for short), the all-American capitalist dream bubble is in danger of being overwhelmed by economic tribulations. One of the icons of the American economic miracle, General Motors Corporation, has announced more than 74,000 layoffs over the next three years. PAN AM, the American flag air-carrier to distant shores, has gone completely under. As automobile sales have slumped, “housing starts” have also fallen off sharply. These two great economic indicators have been buttressed by rising unemployment figures and lack-lustre Christmas sales. The overall prognosis is not good, so much so that the most popular President of this century has seen his ratings plunge drastically. A shoo-in candidacy for President in 1992 now seems to be a genuine horse race among a large bipartisan pack. President Bush’s sincere efforts to have a Middle East settlement evoked Israeli anger because he twisted their arms just enough to force them to the negotiating table by withholding bank guarantees for US$ 10 billion in new housing loans. The US and western media are awash with pro-Israeli sentiment and this economic downturn neatly coincides with media-created doubts about the US President’s ability to provide solutions on the domestic front. Positive moves to create jobs opportunities by public-financed roads, bridges and buildings, both new and rehabilitation projects, cuts no ice with his media detractors. Those who are aware of the clout of the Israeli lobby in the US Congress can appreciate Bush’s political courage.
While the EC countries, Japan and the Four Tigers (S.Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore) do not seem about to be hit by a recession, the portents are very much there in the Third World as well as the former COMECON countries. Even among some of the EC countries, layoffs are multiplying and a world-wide recession may not be far away. This is not good news for countries like Pakistan, already feeling the effect of a foreign credit crunch. If the Stock Exchanges are to be believed, the on-going boom signals a genuine economic escalation, in reality it is a roller coaster ride on an artificially created money spinning bubble, reminiscent of the Great Crash of October 1929 that led to the long depression of the early 30s. There is money to be made today by gambling in the bullish stock market, not enough investment is finding its way into modernisation of the existing industries and the deteriorating over-stretched socio-economic infra-structure. The long 90 minutes total blackout in the north of Pakistan on the evening of December 22 underscored the fact that we are living in fragile times, anything can short-circuit the economy and thus our future.
1991 has been a momentous year to live in, passing through one of history’s most drastic but peaceful transitions, a seemingly infallible and omnipotent ideology has almost been obliterated without a war being waged. This has been the civilized way, a recognition that the people have a God-given right to shape their own destiny in the manner they see to be right without having to do battle for it. We look forward to the coming year with hope and prayer. We pray that we may be blessed with leaders who can rise above themselves to deliver on promises made and we hope that in that deliverance our masses may finally perceive a glimmer of the genuine economic emancipation they aspire for.
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