The Surprise
Is That There Is Less
And Less War in the World
By JONATHAN POWER
STOCKHOLM, Sweden-- Eight years on from the end of the
Cold War we seem to be mired, even entrapped, in a seamless
web of failures on the international scene. United Nations
peacekeeping, once the flagship, has been holed below the
waterline and is sinking fast--it doesn't even try to put in
a port call in bloody African conflicts these days. START 2
(the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) meant to cut the
over-large U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, first held
hostage by Senator Jesse Helms is now a prisoner of the
equally chauvinist Russian Duma. The Clinton
Administration's energies have been deployed almost
exclusively on the expansion of NATO--there are not many
beads of sweat to be seen in Washington from the pushing for
START 2, much less START 3. Elsewhere, Saddam Hussein is
still trying to build weapons of mass destruction, the
Middle East peace process is dead in the water...
But is this all? It is not, though to find a mention in
the press of another side of things is a laborious and
unrewarding task. The media appears to revel in its
melancholic view of life. Last week the Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute held its annual press
conference to launch its 830 page yearbook. Admittedly it is
a complex read, but is that a good enough reason for
ignoring the remarkable revelation made in its first chapter
that for every year since 1989, the last year of the Cold
War, the number of wars has fallen? In 1989 there were 36
major conflicts. In 1995 it was down to 30 and last year
down to 27, of which all but one, between India and Pakistan
over Kashmir, were domestic in nature.
Last year there was only one new conflict serious enough
(over 1,000 deaths) to be noted--the war in northern Uganda
between the government and the Lord's Resistance Army. This
was far outweighed by the four wars that were wound up by
negotiation, (at least for the time being). Two were in
ex-Yugoslavia, in Bosnia and Croatia. In Angola, the
UN-brokered peace finally took hold after 22 years of
continuous warfare. The fourth was in Liberia where despite
new fighting the implementation of the peace agreement
remains on track.
There were also two conflicts that were settled by
superior force of arms--the Indian government triumphed over
the Sikh rebellion in the Punjab and the Myanmar government
over the Mong Tai army.
The wars that did continue their course through 1996
experienced no dramatic signs of escalation. In most of the
ongoing conflicts the intensity waned, even in the most
serious--in Afghanistan, Algeria, Chechnya, Sri Lanka, Sudan
and Turkey.
The other major conflicts were all of low
intensity--Bangladesh, Guatemala, East Timor, Iran, Iraq and
the Philippines. In fact there was only one conflict in the
world last year that could be realistically described as
potentially unsettling to the world at large--that of Israel
and the Palestinians. Even here it is difficult to make a
case that the conflict is a military threat to any
outsiders, much less Russia and the major western powers who
nevertheless continue to maintain large and expensive
military establishments, left over from another era.
Last year was an historic watershed. It witnessed the end
of the post-Cold War period. Those conflicts where Cold War
superpower involvement had been greatest--in Southern
Africa, Central and South America--were finally wound up.
And the conflicts emanating from the breakup of the Soviet
Union and Yugoslavia were at last contained. Only the
continuing civil war in Afghanistan is a left-over from this
period.
The evidence appears conclusive that it was the Cold War
that was the greatest single stirrer of conflict. With that
out of the way it probably doesn't much matter so much if
the Clinton Administration still spends on defense at Cold
War levels or Russian and American missiles stay nuclear
armed in their silos. Since America and Russia are no longer
engaged in proxy wars it doesn't any more weigh on the rest
of the world, only on the American and Russian taxpayers who
should wake up and ask what it's all for.
We are now living in a very different kind of world than
humanity has long been used to and the question is can we
keep it that way--can the momentum of declining conflicts be
sustained?
Africa and an arc of instability around the Russian
periphery remain the most troubled regions. But who can help
them? The most single successful arbitrator of disputes, for
all its setbacks in Somalia, Rwanda and ex-Yugoslavia,
remains the UN. These days, however, the Security Council
remains shy of launching new initiatives. UN peacekeeping
continues its dramatic decline and all the remaining
large-scale UN operations are set to be terminated this
year.
Yet, even though it is a truism to say it, peace must be
struggled for continuously. A small band of UN enthusiasts,
determined and skilled diplomats and, increasingly,
voluntary organizations carry on with their unremarked upon
good works of arbitration and interposition. No other
generation in humankind's history has been so close to a
world-wide peace. Are we going to go for the final push or
are we not? Why on earth at just this moment are we losing
our nerve?
July 2, 1997,
STOCKHOLM
Copyright © 1997 By JONATHAN POWER
Note: I can be reached by phone +44 385 351172
and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
|