The New Era
by Jorge Vargas
Prior to World War Two and the end of colonialism in Africa and Asia, our world did not have such dramatic differences between rich and poor, both at national levels and at the international level. Latin America, though never quite as advanced as Europe and the United States and Canada, was nowhere near where it is today. There was a strong, shining light at the end of the tunnel and the belief - widely held - that the region would amount to something. Africa and Asia, boosted in large part by the colonial regimes that brought order and stability to those regions, were poor and under-developed, yes, but the poverty was not what it is today, and there was the vision of a developed Africa.
We all know what happened next: After World War Two, the US economy boomed; the Europeans commenced the most impressive recovery and reconstruction plan in human history; and the USSR locked itself into a prolonged ideological conflict fueled by over-zealous bureaucrats in the United States who believed in the communist threat with as much passion as the radical, right-wing Protestants in the US countryside today believe in the superiority and saving power of Christianity. The collapse and rapid withdrawal of the European powers - and their continued and enduring economic control - from their colonial possessions produced dozens upon dozens of countries, all of which lacked legitimate governments, tangible plans for economic growth, and the strength to oppose the schemes of the two superpowers.
Blame is not the issue. There is poverty, poverty has locked most of the world's population into a vicious cycle that is simultaneously also fueled by greed, power, and violence.
But, just as in the post-World War era, we are finding ourselves in a flux. The American century, the world has learned, was actually only an American decade. At most, it was a 13-year period. It is over. Its beginning was the fall of the USSR and its ending was the US invasion of Iraq.
The Iraq invasion, leaving aside the wrongness and rightness of it, was an attack staged by a regime that had lead itself into a cult not of the offensive but rather a cult of invincibility. US experiences in the Balkans, in Grenada, in the first Persian Gulf War, in Panama, and later in Afghanistan, had allowed the US right-wing - and yes, the US left - to believe that the United States was essentially an unassailable and invincible nation. September 11th, 2001 did alter this vision: The US was no longer unassailable. Invincibility remained.
Robert Kagan, for instance, wrote - just prior to the invasion of Iraq - that the United States is an invincible state without a single formidable enemy in sight and which was able to start up a debate with the Europeans about unilateralism because the United States could act unilaterally and emerge unscathed. I hope I'll never have to bite my tongue as hard as he's biting his now.
Based on this false pretense that the United States could go into Iraq, destroy a regime that - legitimate or not - was a stabilizing force in a country that is today the world's biggest battlefield, and replace that regime with a democracy imposed from without. Why democracy? A US love for democracy?
Or another false pretense: Democracies don't wage wars on one another and therefore, creating democracies in the US will make it so that there is stability in the Middle East and, because democracies don't fight wars with one another, the assurance that US oil interests will always be protected, at least in the military sense that some oil producing lightweights and favorites of the US – Kuwait - would always be protected. A nation has never acted out of idealistic desires. Every national action has had a tangible, political reason behind it.
The second false pretense - the inherent peace of democracies - is correct in the sense that the Western European powers, Canada, and the US have not fought one another while all three were democratic. But then, why would Canada ever fight the US? Or with what military prowess could the Western Europeans ever again raise their sabers against the US? These countries depend on the United States economically and a war between them is a practical calculation for all of the Western states, even now, with the common Soviet enemy dead and buried.
But the inherent peace of democratic states falls short in the only 'non-Western' democratic region of the world: Latin America. In the past century, the Latin American countries have flirted with democracy countless times, and there have been countless wars as well, some of them between democratic states. Today, the Latin nations are almost exclusively democratic, and there are no wars. However, that could be a factor of democracy just as well as it could be that wars between the Latin nations no longer makes sense. All of the Latin nations, even the autocracies, recognize the importance of international law and the importance of multilateral decision-making if poverty is ever to be defeated. Furthermore, they know that any serious war between them will lead to a certain US intervention and to an assured economic downturn. War is simply not an option.
However, on these false pretenses, the United States launched its sure-win invasion against Iraq. The invasion is a failure. There is nothing that serves as evidence that Iraq will not devolve into chaos once the US withdraws. If anything, the US emphasis on a strong Iraqi military is only ensuring that the principal power mechanism of Hussein will be even stronger after the US makes its honorable exit from Mesopotamia.
Now, the United States is witnessing the growth of international poles of power rising up in every region. Some of these poles are multi-national - the EU in Europe and Mercosur in South America - and others are strong national entities - China, Russia, Venezuela, and Iran - and these poles are making it so that the free reign that the hegemon was able to enjoy from 1990 until 2003 is no longer quite so free.
These poles are not enemies - though some may speak that way and others are being treated as unfriendly elements by the neo-conservative fanatics that hold the United States, a once honorable nation, hostage - but rather self-interested powers just like the United States. If the United States seeks to assail them, then they will defend themselves out of self-interest; otherwise, there is no credible reason for them to do so. After all, with the exceptions of Russia and China, these countries would not be militarily formidable against the United States if acting alone.
We are living in a world of flux. The dangerous Era of the Hegemon has ended. No longer can a nation bully the rest of the world into policies that are unpopular in every major city but Washington. Furthermore, the United States has slowly but surely transformed from the willing and resented leader to the village lunatic who hangs on to the vestiges of past glory.
For the Third World - let's not talk about the emerging economies because, as far I remember, we never went into hibernation - this is a time of opportunity. This is a time in which we can subtly and intelligently play off one power pole against another. The United States does not want to play fairly? Fine, let's go to the Europeans. They refuse as well? Then let us go to the Chinese. Or to the Indians. The world has once more become a market of vendors.
Furthermore, the world has become an opportunity for the poor. This is the time for alliances, for brotherhoods, for fraternity and equality. This is the hour of change. The hour of Europe and the American decade have both given way to the hour of the poor.
Only together can the poor nations bind together and reach the status that we have long since been denied. Only together can the children of the African Savannah, of the African Great Lakes region, of the Himalayas, of the Andes, of the Amazon, and of the American isthmus be saved from a future of misery, suffering, starvation, and death.
There are already encouraging signs and one can write, with joy, that the strongest of these signs is to be found in South America. The South American Community - a partnership between the Mercosur group (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, and, soon, Venezuela) and the Andean Pact (Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia), along with Guyana and Suriname - was born on December 12, 2004 in the Peruvian city of Cuzco, the ancient capital of the Inca Empire. There is still much to be achieved, but the concept of unity is present. The idea is there.
The African Union, though not as developed as the South American dream, is also a work in progress that offers the hope of continental cohesion and unity. Other groups, some economic, others political, are springing up throughout the world. Some of these will fail and become new webs of corruption, but many will not. Enough will not.
Enough for a change, for hope, and for the dream to breathe again; for the dream to be uttered; for the dream to be palpable.
The developing nations must work together to bring their dreams to fruition, and they must do so without expecting support - as they have incorrectly expected it in opportunities long since missed - from the United States, a nation that has, since its inception, depended on the need and poverty of others in order to ensure its own growth and development, or even from the European Union, an entity that, though fairer than the Hegemon, has a record of, to put it lightly, saying one thing and doing another.
If we fail, however, we will condemn ourselves and our children to another long cycle of poverty.
