As We Go Into the Nineties

...In almost no country had there been strong, indigenous communist forces...

...The West vs...

...The issues here were economic and ideological...

...and the regime, particularly under Stalin, resorted to terror as a means of forcing compliance with its demands...

...In some instances, as the twenty-first century unfolds, they may, indeed, prove to be the most disruptive...

...The second "structural" problem is the rising tension between the contrary pulls of the global economy and the national polities...

...4. East vs...

...These closer bonds would mean the destruction of the older NATO and Warsaw Pact configurations...

...Trouble arose and the envelope was opened...

...And now it has collapsed, in less than a decade, like a house of cards...

...Japan, for example, has had strong universities but almost no graduate schools of any consequence...

...East is, for the while, in stasis, and much will depend upon the successors of Deng and even Gorbachev (who is likely to last, if he can surmount his difficulties, to the end of the century...

...What was little known is that the Soviet Union was the only nation that came out of World War II with extensive territorial gains, at a time when almost all the other imperial and colonial powers were surrendering their control over lands in Asia and Africa...

...But there was no price mechanism to judge whether resources were being used efficiently...

...At the same time there were heavy subsidies on such items as bread and housing rents...

...And East vs...

...nor are many countries prepared to take them...

...The reasons are fairly clear...

...The United States still maintains the general lead in technological innovation—if not always in development...

...More trouble came and the second envelope was opened...

...The new free-trade pact with Canada and the growing integration of Mexican manufacture with U.S...

...It said, "Do as I did...

...One is the reduction of the Soviet military threat...

...Logically there are only three things one can do: take their people, buy their goods, or give them capital...

...Almost twenty years ago, the Soviet dissident and writer Andrei Amalrik (who spent many years in the gulag and was killed tragically in an automobile accident) wrote a tract, Will Russia Survive Until 1984...

...In Hungary, the Communist party has dissolved itself, and only 5 percent of its former members have joined a new Communist party...

...more resources were devoted to bread, and because it was relatively cheap, the product was misused...

...That is now impossible...

...No nation today controls its own currency and capital flows to take advantage of differential interest rates, cheaper labor, and better investment opportunities...

...The failure of ideology, when there are no other justifications, means a loss of legitimacy and the beliefs of the rulers and the ruled in their "right" to rule...

...West...

...Historically, the two have been antagonists, even though a different set of dreamers, the German geopolitical strategists, such as Karl Haushofer, envisioned a new Eurasia, spanning the heartland of Europe and Asia and becoming the center of world power...

...Once glasnost and political reforms had begun in the Soviet Union, how could the older regimes hold out against change...

...These are the undertows and riptides in the world society...

...West axis dominated all others...

...The major new alignments that are coming into place are the regional blocs...

...But both economies have become increasingly outmoded and incapable of supplying the Soviet Union with the new modern technology that it needs, particularly computer technology and telecommunications...

...Yet if Gorbachev fails, the greater likelihood is that of a right-wing, nationalist reaction, using the symbols of old Russia and seeking to mobilize the Soviet people on the basis of traditional symbols...

...2. West vs...

...It would mean, if economic logic also followed, the replacement of the dollar by a managed basket of the ECU (European currency unit), the dollar, and the yen as the mechanisms of exchange and trade balance...

...History has been important when land and territory were the goals of national states...

...That would be misleading...

...The second "reprieve" is China...

...And East vs...

...Let me turn, now, to the new configurations: 1. The reunification of Europe...

...They could not...

...industries provide a possible foundation for economic expansion...

...Events of the Past Decade For almost fifty years after the Russian Revolution of October 1917, it seemed as if Marxism would sweep the world...

...The second is the inclusion of Eastern Europe in a European trade bloc...

...This rivalry was the Soviet Union against China, where the competitions were ideological and political with a thin threat of military conflict...

...With the reduction of the Soviet threat, Japan is in a better position to resist American political and economic pressure on trade...

...Is there some framework that allows us to order them in some explanatory fashion...

...North and South remain as an axis of SPRING • 1990 • 175 Into the Nineties division, which will likely become increasingly threatening after the first quarter of the twenty-first century...

...At the same time, the military has been an important power base for him—especially as the Communist party itself has become weakened...

...For a period of time, the "patriotic war" against Nazi Germany provided a social cement...

...Luce, the son of Christian missionaries, whose early years had been spent in China, saw the American Century as fulfilling the Christian obligations of the United States to be "the good Samaritan," the helper of the poor and the needy...

...What the Soviet Union had, in the early five-year plans, was not "planning" but a mobilized economy based on physical targets...

...His destruction of Stalin and the legitimacy of that "revolution" makes it impossible...

...But the "revolutionary" goals of egalitarianism and of a classless society, and the ideas of socialized property, gave way, increasingly, to a "new class" of privileged, the nomenklatura...

...In Poland, the Communist party, though nominally guaranteed a majority of seats in the lower house, could not even gain enough votes to ratify that agreement, and a non-Communist is the prime minister of Poland, received with amiable greeting by Gorbachev himself...

...And fourth comes the increasing difficulty of coping with domestic social problems such as crime and drugs, the aging infrastructures, and the declining quality of life in the central cities...

...What is evident here is the centrality of Japan as the major economic and financial power in the Pacific...

...But there is now a new * Much of this scheme was elaborated in my essay "The Future World Disorder" (1977), reprinted in my book The Winding Passage (Basic Books, 1980...

...If there were 200 million Russians and each one needed two pairs of shoes, one produced 400 million pairs...

...The United States remains the largest market for many export-led countries such as Korea to sell their products to...

...And events in the last year have given Japan two "reprieves...

...When this was first presented it was obvious that the East vs...

...England and France were enemies at the beginning of the nineteenth century and allies at the beginning of the twentieth...

...One is the possible—and probable— reunification of the two Germanys into a single entity of eighty million persons, which will make it the most powerful economic unit of Europe...

...Here the key is the Soviet Union...

...What of the Future...

...A recent report of the Japan Center for Economic Research (October 1989) points out that in fiscal 1985 Japanese investments in manufacturing in Asian firms totaled $460 million...

...Nothing so blazing as revolutionary Marxism had been seen, as some historians compared it, since the rise of Islam more than a millennium before...

...This was the cold war...

...Third are the low investment and productivity features of the American economy, which begin to sap its strength...

...South at the moment is somewhat muted...

...Here was a new faith system that had inspired working-class movements in Europe, sparked a revolution in China, become a model for intellectuals in Latin America and new elites in Africa, and so on...

...The American Century was a phrase fashioned by Henry Luce—proprietor of Time, Life and Fortune, the most influential periodicals of their day—during World War II to herald a new and majestic role for the United States...

...This was, particularly, the grand design of Henry Kissinger...

...One said, "In case of trouble, open this...

...And as for East vs...

...In it was a message that said, "Blame me...

...East was very strained...

...SPRING • 1990 • 171 Into the Nineties intellectual challenge to provide a different, coherent framework to encompass the new alignments as they are emerging...

...Whatever the formal adherence to the Warsaw Pact may mean, Eastern Europe is no longer a reliable force for the Soviet Union...

...If Gorbachev takes convincing steps to reduce the Soviet military posture, then the economic logic can begin to operate...

...In Hungary, the Rajk trial...

...VCRs, facsimile, multivalve engines, and dozens of other products were created in the United States, though quickly developed elsewhere, as in Japan...

...More than that, as jobs slip away, the question before a regime is does it protect capital or people...

...Reducing the military sector means freeing resources for the consumer sector...

...Today it is likely that the cold war is finished...

...The framework with which we have all been operating has been the idea of the European Economic Community, the twelve-nation "commonSPRING • 1990 • 173 Into the Nineties wealth" scheduled to come to fruition in 1992 and that, already, has taken distinct shape...

...In the United States we have seen this in the textile and automobile business and now in semiconductors...

...One is demographic...

...I leave aside the intractable passions of the Middle East...

...And here, Germany, even a reunified Germany, becomes a useful partner...

...The United States maintains the foremost graduate education and scientific power of any country in the world...

...3. The crumbling of "empire...

...Since 1940, starting with the Nazi-Soviet pact, the Soviet Union annexed Finnish Karelia, the Republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, the Koenigsberg district of East Prussia, the eastern provinces of Poland, the sub-Carpathian district of Ruthenia from Czechoslovakia, Bukovina and Bessarabia from Romania, and the Sakhalin and Kurile islands from Japan...

...But no one knew the true costs...

...These issues are the following: the problems of poverty in the Third World (exempting East Asia now from that configuration), the fratricidal rivalries in the Middle East, and the rising ethnic and nationalist rivalries in many different parts of the world, as the older issues of class and imperialism recede...

...But as for Japan—and other East Asian countries—what is also evident is the recreation, with the cooperation of Australia and the Asian countries, of the old East Asia Co-Prosperity scheme...

...The military remains the major organized base of power within the Soviet Union...

...About Eastern Europe: the news has been electrifying...

...The interplay of demography, global economy, and national polity becomes the framework for trying to understand the problems of the twenty-first century...

...And in military and space technology, including aircraft, the United States maintains sizable leads...

...176 • DISSENT...

...people cannot...

...North vs...

...It was, and still is to some extent, a useful frame of reference...

...From his point of view, there is a contradictory problem...

...While military expenditure has never been the necessary basis for America's continuing economic growth, it has been an important one...

...The industrialization of East Asia is proceeding rapidly, with Japan supplying most of the capital...

...There are, I would say, three factors, now conjoined, that account for the crisis in the Soviet Union: 1. The failure of the economic model...

...West, the United States and the Soviet Union may enter a period of détente...

...Given these emerging frameworks, what can one say, in summary, regarding the configuration of the twenty-first century as it is now appearing...

...Four elements conjoin to reduce the centrality and power of the United States as the twenty-first century emerges: One is the reduction of the great power confrontations, 174 • DISSENT Into the Nineties and therefore the decisive political role of the United States as the "leader" of the world...

...for example, the direction of China with the passing of Deng Xiaoping and his generation...

...Its economic role became intertwined with its military role, creating what President Eisenhower called "the military-industrial complex...

...How can we understand these new forces in some systematic way...

...South...

...In Bulgaria, the Petkov trial, and so on...

...On the Black Sea, the small area of Abkazia wishes to secede from neighboring Georgia, while Georgia itself wants autonomy within the Soviet Union...

...Today these are less important than technology...

...The intention was to see which axis was salient, at what time...

...3. North vs...

...And the Soviet Union has even been making noises about returning some of the islands near Hokkaido to Japan, as a gesture of goodwill, and is seeking financial credits and technology from Japan...

...Capital can flow easily...

...The other envelope said, "In the event of more trouble, open this...

...One of the "cards" open to the United States in recent years vis-a-vis Japan has been to develop political and economic relations with China...

...In an early essay Lenin said that planning was a simple affair...

...There is, paradoxically enough, a surplus of shoes today in Soviet warehouses...

...In fact, for dogmatic reasons, Soviet planners did not use the mechanism of interest rates (since interest was usury and exploitative) as a measure of the relative efficiency of capital...

...West vs...

...Ideologies are worldviews (weltanschaunungen) that mobilize their believers for a "cause" and provide a set of justifications on the basis of the "higher" goals...

...More than fifteen years ago, in seeking to provide a coherent picture of the world at that time, I set forth four "axes" along which the alignments might be understood...

...These are economicpolitical units of a larger viability for nations to manage their problems of economic transition...

...Historically, the Soviet Union has feared the emergence of a new, unified Germany...

...West, in particular the rivalry between Japan and the United States on economic issues, has become highly salient...

...Like all such ambitions, it had a mixture of idealism and economic self-interest...

...Nor should one ignore the political stability that provides a haven for jittery capital in other countries...

...Although history has always been important in understanding the destinies of nations, it can also be misleading...

...If he fails...

...In most of the Third World countries—Algeria and Mexico are the prime examples—the youth cohort under seventeen years of age is between 40 to 50 percent of the population...

...North vs...

...East...

...But nobody wants them...

...In recent years, Japan has been under pressure from the United States to spend more on defense and military security...

...Even if Gorbachev succeeds, it is evident that the Soviet Union cannot remain an effective superpower and that the military and ideological threat it once posed, especially to Europe, has now largely receded...

...The overriding need of the Soviet Union is for technology...

...West Germany becomes the "natural" source of this technology...

...East is, for the while, quiet...

...Nor is East Germany So far as Europe is concerned, the cold war is over and new configurations are about to begin...

...However, there has been a tendency, of late, to assume that the United States is almost "finished" as a major power...

...This increased 80 percent in the next year, and doubled the following one, and rose again by 40 percent in fiscal 1988...

...But the resumptions of terror and privilege eroded those commitments...

...I leave aside, as I said previously, the difficult questions of the increasing poverty and the widening gaps between the developed and the developing worlds, particularly in Africa...

...In 1968, the Prague Spring, the effort of Alexander Dubcek to put forth the new idea of "socialism with a human face," was smashed by Soviet tanks...

...And it would have led to a counterweight of U S -China relations to Japan and to the Soviet Union...

...Until now, the Soviet Union has depended upon Czechoslovakia and East Germany for much of its manufactured products and for steel and machine tools...

...One can only, as I have tried to do here, define "structural arrangements" to provide a grid for analysis...

...It has been the genius of Mikhail Gorbachev that he has recognized all the problems and sought to provide reforms through perestroika...

...Soviet planning was rigid and inflexible and, beyond an initial start, it could not manage a large and complex economy...

...Within a few months the communist regimes of Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia have crumbled...

...And, more to the point, the most successful economic region of the Soviet 172 • DISSENT Into the Nineties Union, the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, are now demanding, if not freedom, then almost complete autonomy...

...If one looks ahead to the end of the century, there are two "structural" problems that loom quite large...

...We can identify four: 1. The collapse of communism 2. The reunification of Europe 3. The end of "The American Century" 4. The rise of the Pacific rim Beyond these are other, more inchoate and indistinct forms, whose outlines are not as clear, though this does not mean they are of lesser importance...

...And the third is the relation of the Soviet Union to Europe...

...In effect, the logic of the economic interdependencies and needs, the huge timber, oil and gas, and mineral resources of the Soviet Union and the technology of Western Europe, dovetail into a pattern...

...The events in Tiananmen Square have, for the while, cut China off from the rest of the world...

...Now Russian politicians such as Boris Yeltsin (himself somewhat of an opportunist and demagogue) ask seriously whether the Soviet Union can last until 1994...

...No one can provide an answer...

...In Czechoslovakia, there was the Slansky trial...

...The total investments by electrical-machinery makers rose more than five times from 1985 to 1986 and have been increasing by 80 percent a year since then...

...And there is the difficult question of the stability of the Soviet Union, given its economic and empire tensions...

...All three pose difficulties that are not easy to resolve...

...England and Europe, also with strong universities, do not have the scientific manpower and talent or the graduate schools of the United States...

...3. The Pacific Rim...

...2. The failure of ideology...

...Lacking a true cost and accounting system (and using a double-ruble system to divert resources for military use) Soviet planners had no measures of the deficits they were running and the inflation that was hidden...

...A united Europe, a Continental North American economy, and a Japan-dominated Pacific region become the great land-mass units for economic, and even political, power...

...More than that, in the first decade after World War II, Stalin purged the leadership of most of the native Communist parties in a sweeping set of trials...

...West was only a dim cloud, and some writers thought it improbable...

...But before we can do so, there is much detailed analysis to explore...

...The regimes were imposed almost entirely from the outside and reinforced by Soviet troops...

...In the United States, Western Europe, and Japan, we have aging populations...

...But people, unless destitute or highly skilled, cannot move as readily...

...This rivalry was principally between the United States on the one side and, on the other, Japan (putting her in this context within the West) and Germany...

...Now there is much less of that need...

...From all that political rubble, one thing is clear...

...There was once an old Soviet joke that said that when Stalin died he left two envelopes...

...South was very strident...

...But such a move would alienate the intelligentsia and the modernizing elements in the Soviet Union, and even if a right-wing force came into power, its economic base would still be weak...

...A large economy such as ours may be able to manage such transitions, but many cannot, and the fragmentation of many polities around the world because of economic difficulties, multiplied subsequently by ethnic clashes, increases the chances for what is called in the jargon of the Pentagon planner, "low-intensity conflicts...

...He has, at the same time, recognized that the party cannot rule alone and has begun to create political structures with a degree of independent power...

...Here were the OECD, or industrialized countries, versus the newly industrializing societies, the "Group of 77" within the United Nations, who were demanding a redistribution of world manufacturing capacity...

...It has been yielding to that pressure...

...It seemed odd and fanciful at the time...

...In addition, badly drawn boundary lines within the older Soviet Union have left large pockets of ethnic rivalries, such as the Caucasus territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is heavily Armenian and Christian within the republic of Azerbaijan, which is Muslim...

...These were, schematically put: 1. East vs...

...The rivalries here were political and ideological, with the constant threat of military confrontation...

...Gorbachev cannot...

...They are too ungainly, shoddily constructed, and of poor quality...

...2. The end of "The American Century...

...In 1956, an independent Hungarian regime led by communists, such as the premier Imre Nagy, was suppressed by Soviet tanks, and Nagy was executed and buried in an unmarked grave until the poignant moment last summer when his remains were given a public, ceremonial funeral...

...England and France are bound to be wary of such moves—unless the security issue is completely resolved...

...Already a deal had been struck ten years ago for a new pipeline that would bring natural gas from Siberia to Germany...

...It would take many volumes to analyze the reasons why...

...Second is the rise of Japanese economic power, especially in the central high-technology sectors...

...Eastern Europe itself, if its industries are modernized, can provide the light industry (shoes and textiles) as well as the older manufactured products, including steel, as well as cheaper labor, for Western Europe...

...Deng Xiaoping could still have the authority among the veterans of the Chinese revolution to give an order to shoot...

...Whether this can be done remains to be seen...

...This rivalry was principally between the United States and the Soviet Union and the forces grouped behind them in the NATO and Warsaw Pact alliances...

...But there is also now the rise of the various East Asian "tigers," such as Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand, to add to that competition...

...At its best, this was expressed politically by the Marshall Plan, which led to the economic reconstruction of Europe, and by substantial aid to Japan...

...Now three new factors have to be taken into account...

...Historically, the United States, going back to the American Secretary of State John Hay, has always been pro-China in its policy...

...Today the economy is in shambles...

...How Gorbachev manages these tasks will be decisive for his own retention of power, as well as for the necessary economic moves he has to make vis-à-vis Europe...

...The rivalry here was economic...

...As the cold war developed, the United States—which had begun to disarm after World War II—became the military protector of both Europe and Japan against the Soviet Union...

...East vs...

...That analytical framework may still have some limited use...

...For the moment, let us deal with two related groups, one the Soviet Union, the other Eastern Europe...

...West...

...One major caution: one cannot "predict" events and their outcomes, crucial as they may be...