TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/071591/0715200.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.7 KB | 123 lines

                                                                                BUSINESS, Page 36

AMERICA ABROAD

A Wealth Of Nations


By Strobe Talbott


    In an important respect, the 20th century has come full
circle. Once again national groups are asserting themselves as
nation-states; provinces are declaring themselves countries.
Balkanization is back in fashion, and not just in the Balkans.

    This atavistic trend is a direct result of the Soviet
capitulation in the cold war. The core of communism was a strong
center: it was from there that the orders and the troops came.
A single ruler could intimidate or punish the farthest corner
of his domain. The Yugoslavs used to say, "We have six
republics, five ethnic groups, four languages, three religions,
two alphabets -- and one Tito." Now that there is no Tito,
things fall apart; the center cannot hold.

    Totalitarianism dies hard, taking innocents with it. But
the Soviet military campaign against the Baltics has a
spasmodic, last-gasp quality. Similarly, the late, unlamented
Warsaw Pact was probably the only military alliance in history
that did nothing but invade its own member states, and the
Yugoslav army has finally seen action -- in a civil war. The
federal government's bullying of Slovenia is a reminder that
fear and force are all that keep these decrepit regimes
together.

    The custodians of all this disarray are vulnerable as
never before to censure, pressure and restraint from abroad.
Mikhail Gorbachev wants and needs the approval and assistance
of the West. When his friends George, Helmut and Francois urge
him to call off the Black Beret commandos who are harassing the
Balts, Gorbachev listens. In fact, he obeys. (Whether the Black
Berets always obey him is another matter.)

    Tito's mastery at playing off East against West left him
free to quash uppity subjects at home. Now that the East is out
of the game, his successors must heed remonstrations from Bonn
and Brussels. Among other things, that's where the money is. And
Belgrade, like Moscow, is desperate for financial help.

    The 40-year standoff between the U.S. and the Soviet Union
tended to reinforce long-established boundaries no matter how
artificial or unwelcome they were to the locals. Any attempt to
redraw the map might lead to superpower intervention, hence
superpower confrontation. No one wanted that.

    Third World dictatorships had their First or Second World
patrons to help maintain borders and thwart secession. Only as
long as the Kremlin armed Ethiopia was Mengistu Haile Mariam
able to cling to Eritrea and his own position in Addis Ababa.

    Now that it is so much easier for people to vent their
grievances, pursue their aspirations and raise their flags,
George Bush's instincts, formed during the cold war, sometimes
seem outmoded. He has been too quick to endorse the status quo.
By defeating Saddam Hussein but then letting him remain the
President of Iraq, Bush chose the devil he knew over the
uncertainties represented by Kurdish and Shi`ite rebels. In his
response to the dizzying events in the U.S.S.R. and Yugoslavia,
Bush has been slow to realize that multinational communist
states are, almost by definition, relics of a cruel, failed
ideology and therefore not viable in anything like their pres
ent form. The Balts and Slovenes are motivated by more than
tribal passions: they want out of the system. So, incidentally,
do a lot of Russians and Serbs.

    Bush tends to speak about territorial integrity as though
it were an absolute good and instability as though it were
nearly the ultimate evil. These propositions made more sense as
part of the bedrock of American policy when regional conflicts
could escalate to global war, but that danger is past.

    Others, of course, remain. Adam Smith said, "There is a
great deal of ruin in a nation." There is also going to be a lot
of disorder in the new world order. The problem of nationalism
requires managing, but not denial, and certainly not
suppression.

    So far, West European governments have been out front in
meeting the challenge. In the aftermath of Operation Des ert
Storm, the leaders of France and Britain nudged Bush into
establishing sanctuaries for the Kurds. The Ukraine, which is
untying many of its bonds to Moscow, finds Paris and Rome more
supportive than Washington. In their attempt to defuse the
Yugoslav crisis, the Europeans did their share of flailing
around. But they still seemed a bit more responsive to the
Slovenes than the U.S initially did. The explanation goes beyond
geographical proximity and relates to the transformation of the
continent itself.

    The demise of old countries and the birth of new ones are
more likely to be peaceful if they occur in a cooperative
international environment where economies are capitalist, trade
is free, political life is democratic, security is collective,
and some degree of sovereignty is pooled. Europe -- thanks to
the Common Market, the Helsinki process and the march toward
integration in 1993 -- is closer to that ideal than anywhere
else. Hence Slovenia, Lithuania and the Ukraine have somewhere
to go. And, crucially, their masters in Belgrade and Moscow have
less to fear in letting them do so.

    It was an American President who put the issue best:
"There must be not a balance of power but a community of power,"
said Woodrow Wilson in 1917. A year later, in his Fourteen
Points, he specified that "guarantees of political independence"
for "great and small states alike" would be possible only in "a
general association of nations." Cast in those terms at the
beginning of the century, the championship of
self-determination is the right policy for the U.S. in the
decade ahead.