It is strange that at about the time of a new
century the world moves in a different direction,
not exactly in 1901 or 2001 but close to it. New
directions were charted in 1789, 1914 and then
twice in the last century, in 1945 and the mid-
1990s. As the twenty-first century unfolds, the
threat of great global wars over ideological and
power conflicts has passed and with it the danger
of a nuclear holocaust. Conflicts have not suddenly
disappeared – far from it, but they are contained
and unlike 1914 or 1945 are not spreading
globally between the most powerful nations.
Bilateral wars will continue to break out especially
on the African continent, but the international
community has the means to end them if
it so wills. The loss of human lives will occur far
more through internal wars and ethnic hatreds
and if the international community does not step
in these can still cause hundreds of thousands of
deaths as in Rwanda. The ‘war’ on terror, the
so called ‘clash of civilisations’ is of an entirely
different order. Because the casualties are in the
West with death tolls in the tens or hundreds – the
Twin Towers so far uniquely in the thousands –
this ‘war’ attracts more attention than the hundreds
of thousands in the Sudan or the estimated
4 million over the past years in the Congo.
Disease, hunger and the lack of a tolerable human
environment in many parts of the world cause
continuous suffering and mortality. Compared
to the blood-soaked twentieth century no wars
between nations are being fought in Asia, the
Americas and Europe.
In the new millennium the downturn of the
world economy from its low point in 2001 has
been overcome. But the World Trade Organisations
talks – the Doha round in September 2003 –
made no progress in liberalising trade further. The
rich and poor countries are at loggerheads. The
European Union and the US would not abandon
export subsidies of farm products, the most contentious
issue. Rich countries subsidise cotton,
crushing poor West African growers. The US
appeared to be determined to protect its cotton
farmers. The concessions by the US and EU were
too small to satisfy the poor countries. Then in the
spring of 2004 the EU offered major concessions
and the US promised to match them. Suddenly
prospects improved. Global freeing of trade is
being supplemented by regional and bilateral
deals.
The upturn in world trade in general has benefited
both rich and poor. The improvements of
two countries have pulled the rest of the world
forwards – the US and China. The possibility of a
recession in the US in 2000 and 2001 was avoided
by setting interest rates at the lowest point ever.
Consumer spending and housing allowed the
economy to grow by a modest percentage, but as
it is the biggest economy in the world even a small
percentage translates into a large absolute amount
of goods and services. George W. Bush has benefited
from the upturn. The good feeling at home,
and greater confidence in his firm leadership in the
fight against terrorist groups outweighed dissatisfaction
with developments in Iraq. Bush won the
elections for the presidency in November 2004
convincingly against Senator John Kerry, the
Democratic contender. It was a victory not so
much for conservatism or the moral Christian
alliance, as for a decisive leader. But the US is
clearly geographically divided. At least there was
no repeat of the uncertainties of 2000.
Across the Pacific, China has maintained an
astonishing rate of growth. The Chinese way has
been to open the economy to foreign investment,
to join the World Trade Organisation and, with
the advantages of its vast supply of cheap labour
and lack of concern for the environment, to
become the ‘workshop of the world’ in many
branches of manufacture. As Japan and the West
outsource production and invest in China, the
rate of growth is continuing as the vast country
is perceived to be stable.
Stability is secured at the expense of democracy.
The Western clamour for reform soon subsided
after the Tiananmen uprising, China is too
valuable a trading partner. China is also appeased
by the Western rejection of Taiwanese independence,
potentially the most inflammatory issue in
the eastern Pacific. The US has an undertaking to
defend Taiwan against an attempt by the People’s
Republic of China to take the island by force.
This provides the US with leverage and restrained
Prime Minister Chen Shui-bian whose party narrowly
defeated the more moderate Kuomintang
in the March 2004 elections.
In facing North Korea, a military state with
nuclear capability, the US has found in China a
useful partner counselling restraint on North
Korea’s leader. China has become a respected
global partner integrated in the world economy.
There are still huge problems. The glittering
wealth of Shanghai and coastal China contrasts
with the poverty of much of the hinterland. The
sector of state firms remains uncompetitive, but
progress has been achieved. Over the decade
employment in the state sector has been halved,
though it still accounts for a third of all urban
employment. The Chinese banking system sits on
top of a huge non-performing debt that in a
normal market economy would have led to a financial
crisis. Corruption remains widespread, it
matters who you know.
The leadership papers over the contradictions
between the official ideology and realities. Thus
in the supposedly communist state privately
owned businesses increase year by year by 20 per
cent creating employment and drawing in investment.
The leadership supports the private sector,
recognising that the future of China depends on
it. In March 2004 private property rights were
declared ‘inviolable’.
What is left of the former Marxist state is the
one-party system. Hu Jintao replaced Jiang
Zemin as party chief in 2002 and president in
2003. His style is more in conformity with a
modern leader, dispensing with a fawning media.
The Chinese people enjoy greater personal freedom.
But the reform of the party, despite Hu
Jintao’s call encapsulated in the exhortation of the
‘Three Represents’ that the party should ‘represent’
advanced productive forces, advanced
culture and serve the people, remains no more
than a vague aspiration. The leadership fears that
genuine encouragement at the grass roots of electoral
choice, even within the party would open
the floodgates. The pressures for reform come
from the intellectuals, a small group that can be
contained. The Chinese leadership is not prepared
to take risks when so much progress has been
achieved. Higher living standards have engendered
compliance with the system, protected by
a large army. The new urban middle class is
content to enjoy the fruits of their enterprise.
While Japan’s annual economic growth
remained sluggish, about a fifth of China’s, its
economic output (GDP) is five times as large as
China’s with a population of 127 million compared
with China’s 1,300 million. Japan’s economy
is the second largest in the world after that of
the US. But Japan has contributed little to global
growth. Is the once dynamic tiger permanently
slowed by old age? Since 1990 an upturn was
anticipated almost every year and never happened.
In 2004 the economy finally did manage to perk
up, not spectacularly, but for Japan in comparison
to earlier years a steady growth of 1.5 to 2 per cent
a year would mark a significant change.
What has also begun to change is the political
system dominated for most of the post-war years
by factions of the Liberal Democratic Party
(LDP). In the past, policy conflicts were fought
out within the LDP by the most powerful factions,
the prime minister was usually a front man of short
duration and disposable. Junichiro Koizumi is the
first ‘modern’ leader who has courted the people
and made good use of the media, a personable and
striking figure with his coif of hair, youthful in his
sixties compared with his tired predecessors, and
nicknamed ‘Lionheart’. His notable achievement
when he first became party leader and so prime
minister in 2001 was to face down the factions and
to rely for his political power on ‘people power’
and the electoral system. He promised deep
reforms of the economy, privatisation, competition
of business at home, reform of the banking
sector and an end of the wasteful corruption and
public spending. But the Japanese people are
afraid of change and the inevitable loss of security
it entails, deploring rising unemployment and
fearful of restructuring. In the domestic economy
only comparatively small progress was achieved,
while efficient big business which exports to the
world did not wait on government reforms to
maintain its competitiveness.
Koizumi’s popularity was put to the test in the
November 2003 elections to the lower house.
Despite fears of his promised ‘structural reforms’,
the LDP remained the largest single party with
half of the 480 seats. But another new feature has
been the emergence of the Democratic Party of
Japan (DPJ) as a credible opposition party. The
gain is the evolution of a two-party system
strengthening democratic choice. Koizumi’s
other aim is to shed Japan’s subservient international
pacifism in the face of North Korea’s military
threat – North Korea not only has developed
nuclear weapons which Japan has forsworn, but
missiles which it demonstrated could reach Japan.
A symbolic step of his new thinking was to deploy
a small force of troops of the self-defence forces
outside Japan in southern Iraq. The signs are that
Koizumi will not be another in a long line of
short-lived prime ministers.
South Korea, once Japan’s follower in economic
development, contrasts with Japan in having
undertaken radical reform to restructure its
economy with spectacular success. After the dip in
2003, the economy is growing strongly dominated
by restructured efficient big business, the chaebols.
But politics are more tumultuous. After one year in
office the opposition parties impeached President
Roh Moo Hyun on the flimsiest of pretexts in
March 2004, a gambit that backfired when in the
national elections the following month his Uri
Party was returned with an increased majority.
With a four-year term and a working majority Roh
is in a position to push through promised reforms
but so far has lacked the determination and steadiness
to achieve much. For South Korea the nightmare
remains – the militarised North which the
South has tried to placate with aid. Possibly even in
the North in 2004 tiny shoots of change have
begun to sprout to bring the country out of its isolation.
North Korea’s nuclear plans create the most
uncertainty and tension in the region.
Philippine democracy is in a parlous state. The
people’s choice of president has, in the past,
proved unfortunate. President Gloria Arroyo’s
qualifications as a sound economist seem less
important than the handsome media image of the
best known B-film actor, a Mr Poe, totally inexperienced
in politics. Memories of the impeached
predecessor of President Arroyo were enough,
however, for the majority to vote for her. The
better news in 2004 is that a peace deal might be
done with the Muslim separatists on the island of
Minndanao and their assurance that their links
with al-Qaeda will be severed.
Voting for changes of government in elections,
however imperfect the process, has become the
norm in Asia except in China and North Korea
and in Pakistan, which has more a tradition of military
rulers than democratic elected ones, as well as
in Myanmar. Indonesia went to the polls in April
2004 with President Megawati Sukarnoputri, the
daughter of the nation’s founding father, hoping
to maintain her position. The Bali bombing in
2002 demonstrated that Islamic terrorists are
active. Despite the economic recovery bringing
Indonesia back from the brink, she is blamed for a
lack of determination to stamp out corruption.
Elections in 2004 voted her out of office.
In Malaysia there have been no great changes
since Mahathir’s retirement. The once-popular
deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim remains in prison.
Here there are more elections and calls for an end
of corruption, inevitable when one party and one
leader holds power for two decades as Mahathir
did. With the rest of Asia, Malaysia’s economy too
has recovered.
The two most important countries of southern
Asia, India and Pakistan are moving toward
peaceful coexistence, working for a compromise
on Kashmir after coming close to war at the close
of the twentieth century. The declaration in 2004
of the President of Pakistan, General Pervez
Musharraf, that he would not permit any territory
of Pakistan to become a home for terrorism broke
the stalemate. The danger of a conflict escalating
to a nuclear exchange drew the political leaderships
on both sides back from the brink. Nuclear
weapons cast a black shadow over the world but
the hope must be that Alfred Nobel’s dream that
the destructive capacity of mankind would be so
great that there would be no alternative to peace
will be realised. Dynamite and the weapons of
two world wars were not sufficient to deter, but
no two countries possessing nuclear weapons have
ever fought each other.
Alliances and friendships internationally are
based less on what countries have in common
than in identifying common enemies. When the
president General Musharraf seized power in
1999 he first backed the Taliban regime in
Afghanistan but then changed sides two years
later and became America’s ally. This earned him
the enmity of Muslim radicals of the Pushtun
minority he had earlier supported. But he struck
a deal with moderate Islamists that would enable
him to remain president until 2007. With the
backing of the army and adroit politics, which
enabled him to persuade parliament to allow a
military-dominated National Security Council to
be created, he will remain in power unless assassinated
by an extremist. Internationally, with its
successful nuclear weapons programme and the
secret spread of nuclear technology to Libya, Iran,
Malaysia and to North Korea in return for North
Korean missile technology, Pakistan should have
been branded a ‘rogue state’. But as an essential
US ally in the ‘war against terrorism’, hunting bin
Laden, no sanctions will be inflicted, nor will the
human-rights records be challenged by the West.
Common enemies make for strange bedfellows.
India began its marathon elections in the
spring of 2004. The Congress Party, which previously
ruled India, has made a comeback with a
young Ghandi generation set to revive its fortunes.
Hindu extremism has marred the otherwise
successful coalition government led by the Hindu
nationalist BJP. India’s prime minister Atal Behari
Vajpayee has presided over an economic boom in
2003 and 2004 that has benefited 300 million
urban middle-class Indians. But India has two
faces. Rural India lacks electric power, adequate
roads, medical and social services and the majority
living in the countryside have secured little benefit
from the boom that is raising living standards
for others. In a result that surprised the pundits,
Sonya Ghandi, wife of the assassinated Congress
prime minister Rajiv Ghandi, won the elections
then unexpectedly withdrew leaving the premiership
to Manmohan Singh. Congress won through
support of the rural power who did not benefit
from the growing prosperity of the urban middle
class. India’s population growth still outstrips the
creation of new employment and foreign investment;
though this has increased strongly compared
with the earlier years of stifling planning, it is
only a fraction of investments flowing into China.
Still there is in the twenty-first century hope where
there was little before the last ten years.
The same cannot be said of India’s neighbour
Myanmar where the ruling military have no intention
of relinquishing power to Aung Sun Kyi the
popular dissident leader of the repressed National
League for Democracy. It will not be given the
opportunity to repeat its overwhelming success in
the 1990 elections and has suffered various forms
of restraint and arrest ever since. Even so, in Asia
the rulers are beginning to win more acceptance.
Afghanistan on Pakistan’s border has remained
divided into warlord fiefs. The ravages of twentythree
years of conflict cannot be quickly repaired.
The leader Hamid Karzai has persuaded Afghan
representatives to approve a new constitution for
an Islamic republic. It looked fine on paper but
expressed aspirations rather than reality. The
national army is too weak to control the country,
the US forces are essential to bolster some security
and, for the poverty-stricken Afghans, opium poppies
are the most reliable cash crop. But the first
democratic elections in October 2004, though
flawed, showed that the Afghan people were
keen to go to the polls, including, for the first
time, women. Karzai, the interim leader, was
elected president. Progress has been achieved.
Afghanistan requires massive foreign aid, not
enough will be provided as the Western focus has
shifted to the Middle East. Since the end of the
Cold War Latin America too is no longer, in
Western eyes, a crucial region and battleground.
The principal Western interest in Latin America is
financial and trade based. The long-term aim of
the US is to create an inter-American free trade
area. But fears and suspicion of US dominance
remain an obstacle. Instead, larger trading blocs
have been created among Latin American states,
such as Mercosur and the Central American Free
Trade Area, which may eventually act as stepping
stones to a continental-wide free trade area. In
South America, Chile is the only country to have
a free trade agreement with the US. In the north,
Mexico and Canada remain closely linked in the
North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA). More
than four-fifths of Canadian exports go to the US.
Radical change in Canadian politics after the
retirement in December 2003 of Jean Chrétien is
not on the cards. Jean Chrétien’s government
brought Canada a decade of growth and prosperity.
His long-time finance minister Paul Martin,
leading the Liberal Party, became his successor.
He has proved disappointingly lacklustre. The
Quebec issue is dead for the foreseeable future.
Mexico has not undergone the radical change
expected after ending PRI’s monopoly of power
in the 2000 elections. The PRI was able to win
back seats which enabled it to block the reforms
President Vicente Fox would like to legislate. By
2005, with his term of office drawing to an end,
domestically he is unlikely to achieve much.
Meanwhile, the president is anxious to maintain
good relations with the Bush administration
which received a setback when, despite heavy
arm-twisting, Mexico was not willing to back
Washington and London’s efforts at the UN to
secure a second Iraq resolution unequivocally justifying
the invasion. The increasing importance of
the Hispanic vote in US elections helps to smooth
relations between the US and Latin America.
Bush’s efforts to legalise the Mexican immigrants
appeals to the Hispanic voters and improves relations
with Mexico. There is plenty to ruffle them
still as Latin American politics in Brazil and
Venezuela capitalise on anti-American feeling
Brazil is the giant among the Latin American
states with a population (179 million) almost five
times as large as Argentina’s (39 million) and
an economy more than three times the size.
President Luis Inàcio Lula da Silva, promising a
new fair deal, was brought to power by the poor.
His left-wing credentials have not made him an
obvious partner of the US which, through the
International Monetary Fund, can exercise financial
muscle to facilitate or obstruct loans. Nor is
Lula da Silva an obvious disciple of IMF remedies
– cutting government deficits, responsible finance
and freeing trade and competition. Nevertheless,
in his first two years of power the president began
to tackle Brazil’s ills; the need to bring down
inflation and to curb profligacy by imposing high
interest rates. Better credit rating and a weaker
currency have boosted Brazil’s exports. None of
this has immediately helped the poor, one in eight
are unemployed. The rewards lie in the future as
the economy resumes growth and investor confidence
returns. Inevitably, the president’s popularity
plummeted.
Argentina could hardly fall lower than it did in
2001. President Néstar Kirchner gained popularity
in threatening not to repay Argentina’s private
creditors and the IMF at the expense of bankrupt
Argentineans. But wiser counsels prevailed.
Agreement was reached with the IMF in 2004
and a new loan secured and negotiations continued
with private investors. Fortunately, the
economy grew strongly in 2003 and 2004 and,
with a determined president willing to reform, the
future began to look much brighter.
Chile is the one South American state that is
close to the US. The country continued to be
ruled by the centre-left after the fall of Pinochet
in 1990. Though human rights are secure, democratic
parliamentary rule suffers from the lack of
a credible opposition.
The two most turbulent countries of the
southern hemisphere were Venezuela and Haiti.
President Hugo Chavez’s Bolívarian revolution
resulted in catastrophic strikes and opposition and
a campaign to oust him by democratic means.
From a low base Venezuela’s economy has begun
to recover and Chavez in 2004 convincingly won
a referendum confirming him in the presidency.
In Haiti in 2004 Jean-Bertrand Aristide was
ousted from power by a violent rebellion. A UN
force with US and allied troops restored order,
but the roots of violence and the abject poverty
of the mass of population remain even when the
troops depart.
So what is happening in Latin America? Has
the new century broken the mould of the old? In
one way it appears to have done so, elections and
democracy are the norm; the rise of commodity
prices fuelled by China and the world recovery
have lifted the economies from the abyss. But the
very dependence on commodities makes Latin
America vulnerable to the next downturn. Bust
may follow boom again. The overwhelming
majority of the people live in poverty which provides
no stable foundation for democracy as desperate
people turn to charismatic leaders who, in
turn, stimulate repression of rights. Latin America
depends on the judgement of private investors
and the willingness of the US to risk the funds of
the International Monetary Fund. The massive
aid needed is not forthcoming. Below the surface
the new century marks more continuity than
change. The real lift-off lies in the future.
No continent’s misery has been greater than that
of Africa or, more accurately, sub-Saharan Africa
which comprises most of the continent and its
people. Somalia has been practically left to fight
out its own warlord wars. Robert Mugabe in
Zimbabwe has made a mockery of democratic rule
and civil rights. Distributing the estates of the
white farmers to some 134,000 black Zimbabweans
without adequate training has reduced
Zimbabwe from an exporting country to one
dependent on foreign aid to stave off famine. In
acting as he did, encouraging violence against the
white population, he completely reversed the role
he played when first coming to power. Zimbabwe
has been suspended from the Commonwealth, but
enjoys the protection of South Africa’s president,
Thabo Mbeki. Without more aid millions of
Zimbabweans face starvation which may force
Mugabe to moderate or even hand over power.
Brave Zimbabweans who formed the Movement
for Democratic Reform, a dwindling group who
are beaten up and persecuted, continue to chal-
lenge Mugabe. The first treason trial in October
2004 of their leader Morgan Tsuangirai collapsed;
his conviction on flimsy evidence Mugabe probably
had decided would unnecessarily outrage international
opinion and create a martyr; Tsuangirai
faced another trial. Mugabe’s control is so complete
that he probably decided the Movement for
Democratic Reform no longer was a threat to him.
Zimbabwe can hardly sink lower, there remains
only the hope that when Mugabe goes, the
stricken country can begin to recover. The vast
Congo is not under the complete control of
Kinshara and rebels hold sway in the east on the
borders of Uganda. War, disease and poverty, by
the end of 2005, will have killed 4 million, half of
them children.
Every year hope is renewed that the Arab
Muslim north of Sudan will reach a settlement
with the rebellion of mainly black Christians and
animists in the south but the conflict has continued.
Peace can come none too soon after forty
years of war and 2 million dead victims. It has
come tantalisingly near with the help of the UN.
In 2004 a new rebellion broke out in western
Sudan in the Darfur province bordering on Libya
and Chad with over one million peasants fleeing
the fighting. Arab militias backed by the government
burnt their villages, terrified the black
African Sudanese, murdering 50,000. Aid agencies
struggle with inadequate resources in the
refugee camps in Chad where thousands have
died from disease and malnutrition while the UN
threatens sanctions, diplomats talk, and no
country wishes to intervene seriously. These are
all major catastrophes against which the casualties
in Iraq pale, but they are in regions less important
to the powerful nations of the world.
Against the wars that persist, the threat of the
devastation wrought by AIDS looms even larger.
In Africa as a whole the infection rate had not
lessened by 2005. More than 25 million are
estimated to be HIV positive. In the worst
affected countries a third of the adults carry HIV
and in Botswana it is nearly 40 per cent. Wars and
migrant labour have spread disease, and poverty
and lack of health care have led to early death,
especially of the young productive population. In
Malawi, for instance, there is only one doctor for
every 50,000 people and only one dollar is allocated
for health spending on each person. Clean
water and sanitation are lacking. AIDS is the
biggest threat to Africa’s future; tuberculosis,
malaria and malnutrition still unnecessarily claim
lives. For the past few years President Mbeki has
been in denial about the true cause of AIDS and
drugs have only recently been made available on
a wider scale. In standards of living for the majority
of the people Africa has gone backwards. The
last two decades have been catastrophic for much
of the continent. Is, then, everything gloomy?
There is also better news from the continent’s
most populous countries south of the Sahara,
South Africa and Nigeria. As South Africa moves
into the new millennium Thabo Mbeki was
elected in democratic elections to a second term
as president. Who would have forecast that racial
harmony would follow the oppressive decades
of white rule? It is a remarkable achievement,
Mandela’s legacy. Huge challenges remain, reduction
of unemployment and the need for better
educational opportunities and social care to stop
the decline of living standards among the poor.
The white South Africans are largely responsible
for economic growth though a black middle class
is increasing. With the blessings of internal peace
South Africa’s future begins to look brighter.
In Nigeria democratic rule was re-established
and the cultural and ethnic rifts had been contained
by President Olusegum Obasanjo, elected
for a second term. The rise in the price of oil has
benefited the economy but not the poor majority.
Much needs to be done to root out corruption
and persevere with reforms. Corruption has
blighted Nigeria for decades, the oil riches reaching
the few at the expense of the many. Oil too
should have lifted Angola, now at peace, out of
the devastation of decades of civil war, but again
corrupt dealings by the few remain a barrier to
improving standards of living. The West may help
to raise Africa out of the depths with aid, more
importantly by reforming its own farming subsidies,
but in the end it will be up to African leaders
and African enterprise to fashion a better future.
During the last decade of the twentieth century
attention in Europe was focused on the wars in
Yugoslavia. Now there is peace, not perfect harmony.
In 2004, Kosovo and flared into violence
to oust Serbian remnants there, NATO peacekeepers
continued to ensure stability in Bosnia.
The 17,000 strong force in December 2004 was
taken under the command of the EU after a
decade of peace keeping. Serbia post-Milosˇevic´
has not moved forward and is politically unstable,
and relations with the West are soured over the
one-sided war crimes trials they perceive. But
nowhere in Europe in the new millennium is there
war. The one war in which a European country is
engaged is Russia’s conflict in Chechnya.
Putin had declared it to be over but in reality
peace has not come to Chechnya and Chechnyan
militants have staged spectacular terrorist attacks
in the heart of Moscow in revenge. The conflict
spread to the Caucasus. Apart from Chechnya
Russia has changed remarkably under the strong
lead of President Putin. Putin’s handling won him
popular support and a second presidential term
in March 2004 against weak opponents. The
imprisonment of the Yukos oil magnet Mikhail
Khordorkovsky and control of the media show
that he will allow no rival power basis and in the
Duma Putin’s United Russia Party had won
control in elections in December 2003. The world
was reminded of the brutal struggle in Chechnya
when terrorists occupied a school massacring
children and teachers. In the aftermath Putin
tightened his hold on Russia by insisting on farreaching
constitutional changes: members of the
Duma will be elected from party lists and not
directly from constituencies and the eighty-nine
regional governors will no longer be elected either
but appointed by the Kremlin. With the rise in
the price of oil and better budgetary controls the
economy has recovered and stabilised. Relations
with the West are good, and many contentious
issues lie in the past, peace is essential if Russia
is to continue to progress.
Events in the Ukraine in November 2004
showed that differences, west and east, had not
been totally overcome and could suddenly cloud
relations. The Ukraine is a country with a population
of more than 35 million, geographically
and culturally split between the west and east; the
west looking to the EU and the east to continuing
close ties with Russia. The elections for the
presidency underlined this division with Putin
backing the pro-Russian candidate against the
opposition. To ensure the victory of the pro-
Russian candidate there was massive electoral
fraud and he was declared the winner. People took
to the streets in Kiev; people power prevailed once
again. Compromise and unity are the most likely
outcome after new elections; the opposition candidate
won the rerun elections in January 2005.
There is a long way to go to overcome Russia’s
health problems, security with peace in Chechnya,
ending the corruption, strengthening business
law, and lifting all of the people out of poverty.
Russia, though its democracy is flawed by Western
standards, requires strong leadership and is
moving in the right direction. For the great majority
of Russian people decent standards of living,
security and civil liberty are more immediately
important than democracy.
The continental European countries are all struggling
to maintain the expensive burdens of a
welfare state, the prospect of having to fund the
pensions of an ageing population, and unemployment
at around 9 per cent is too high in
France, Germany and Italy and even higher in
Spain. To regain more robust growth painful
changes are needed. Britain stands out among the
bigger European countries with low unemployment
and reasonable growth. The policies of the
centre-right government in President Chirac’s
France, Schröder’s social democratic Germany,
right-wing Berlesconi’s government in Italy and
the new socialist government of José Zapatero in
Spain do not differ that much, nor do the challenges
facing them.
In foreign relations they had parted company
from Blair’s Labour Britain which had backed
Bush’s policy in Iraq and shared its aims. In 2004
Blair’s reputation suffered from the difficulties
the coalition ran into in Iraq and from the loss of
credibility for going to war in the first place when
no weapons of mass destruction were found or
believed to have existed after the first Gulf War.
Over closer union with Europe the majority of the
British electorate remained sceptical and Blair’s
belated conversion to allowing the electorate a say
in a referendum was a further blow to the belief
which had sustained him: that he was not like
other politicians. Need for a referendum was the
one issue on which the Conservatives would have
enjoyed overwhelming support in a general election,
and it was now snatched from them. It
looked more like a cynical political manoeuvre
than a genuine change of heart. Blair survived and
Labour remained well ahead of the Conservatives
as the next general election loomed. Tensions
became more evident between Chancellor Brown
and the prime minister as Blair embraced the
‘New Labour’ policies once more for an expected
third term, thwarting the more left-inclined
Gordon Brown. The Conservatives, meanwhile,
had found an effective parliamentary leader in
Michael Howard. Their problem was to find a
cause, another mission, as Blair straddled the
centre ground of policies.
For Europe the culminating achievement in
the new millennium has been its coming together
into a peaceful partnership – the European Union.
The divisions of Yalta, which left central and
Eastern Europe in Soviet control against their will,
have ended. The enmities of the Second World
War finally lie buried. There is no more amicable
and close partnership than that between Germany
and France, overriding political differences.
On 1 May 2004 eight continental European
countries and two islands in the Mediterranean
joined the Union. The largest and most important
new member was Poland with a population
(38.2 million) almost as large as Spain’s. With a
failing government and a large farming population,
joining will cause painful adjustments. None
of the countries that join enjoy the full benefits
of subsidies from the start or are completely free
to seek employment in the West before 2007.
There is particular anxiety that persecuted minorities,
such as the Roma in Slovakia, will embark
on mass migrations. Even though growth has
resumed, all the new members except Slovenia
will take decades to reach the living standards of
the more prosperous West.
The economics of all the new ten members –
Slovakia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland,
Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Cyprus and
Malta, however, are growing faster than the stagnant
continental Western countries. The free trade
market has become the largest in the world. It
seems inevitable that the twenty-five members will
group themselves into different blocs within the
EU. None of the new members, for instance, will
join the Monetary Union in the immediate future.
With a new decision procedure in the EU still to
be worked out so that policy is not paralysed, new
alignments will be formed. The draft constitution
will require ratification and some ten members,
including Britain, will submit the decision to a
referendum. If one member state or more fails to
ratify, the EU faces a new crisis. The new president
of the commission José Manuel Barroso also faced
the embarrassment, in November 2004, of having
to withdraw the line up of his new commissioners,
anticipating a European parliamentary rejection.
Dropping two commissioners and realigning the
rest won approval, but it was a significant victory
for parliamentary power. Intractable differences
have occurred before during the half century of
the community’s existence and ways have always,
in the past, been found to overcome them.
When on 1 May 2004 all the ten new members
celebrated their entry, there was one sour note. It
was hoped that all the people on the divided
island of Cyprus would agree to the UN-brokered
peace plan to unify the government. The Turks
said yes to the proposed settlement, the Greek
Cypriots said no. They felt they had little to lose
as the Greek Cypriot part of the island had been
promised membership anyway.
Not all of Europe is united yet. Bosnia remains
under the control of an EU peacekeeping force;
Serbian politics are turbulent and popular resistance
to compliance to hand over the chief perpetrators
of war crimes to The Hague court has
impeded relations with the West. Milosˇevic´ who
was sent to The Hague has inspired defiance
rather than compliance. Bulgaria and Romania are
not yet considered to be far enough on the road
to reform and adjustment to become members
and have been set a target date of 2007. But
looking at the wider picture the transformation of
central and northern Europe has been astonishing.
The brutal communist dictatorships, secret
police, the dead hand of state control, bureaucracy,
class discrimination, and party regimenta-
tion have been swept away. Civic freedom and
democratic government, the basic requirements
of membership, are being anchored in. Even with
all the difficulties ahead still to be overcome, who
can doubt that this is a better world for the
people of Europe?
The largest applicant of all, Turkey, with a population
of almost 70 million, is keen to join but
arouses the most contention within the EU.
Ninety-eight of every hundred people living in
Turkey are Muslims. Can a Muslim country be
regarded as ‘European’? Should Europe remain a
union of overwhelmingly Christian countries?
That is the view of the former French president
Giscard d’Estaing who chaired the committee
drafting the proposed constitution. The centreleft
government of Gerhard Schröder, however, is
in favour. In this it differs from France’s right.
With Muslim problems at home, President Chirac
is more ambivalent. In ‘principle’ the EU is committed
to admitting Turkey when all the conditions
are fulfilled. Turkey is governed by a
moderate Islamic party. Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan has legislated many reforms to
meet EU standards. There are three major obstacles
to be overcome. The economy is weak and
unstable and the country is far poorer than the
existing members; question marks over the durability
of Turkish democracy linger; so as not to
impede the entry progress, the once all-powerful
army command has held back but continues to see
itself as the guardian of the Ataturk legacy; the
relationship with the Kurdish minority has eased
with a lessening of their harsh treatment but is not
completely solved. One big step forward was
Turkey’s pressure on the Turkish Cypriot leaders
to accept the UN plan even though it failed due to
the Greek Cypriot no vote. The Greek mainland
government acknowledged Turkey’s new stance
and, once the most determined opponents to
Turkey’s entry, have declared they will support
it. Turkey’s possible membership still lies some
years in the future. A democratic, Muslim, secular
Turkey, would help to change any Muslim perceptions
in the Middle East and beyond that a
‘clash’ between a Christian West and the Muslim
world exists. A new pattern in global relations is
emerging in the twenty-first century.
There are increasing global interrelations, good
and bad, such as trade liberalisation through
negotiations at the World Trade Organisation,
efforts to save the environment, the depletion of
world resources in the sea and on land, refugees,
human rights and the limitation of nuclear
weapons and weapons of mass destruction. More
global issues are dealt with by specific organisations
and through UN agencies. Agreements are
hammered out reconciling national interests.
Peacekeeping, too, is an international concern but
international action through the UN is dependent
on none of the countries holding a veto
blocking it. Then individual countries will act on
their own or with partners even when they cannot
secure UN backing – the Kosovo war and the war
against Iraq are recent instances. No country will
accept being blocked by disagreement on the
Security Council if it believes rightly or wrongly
that its vital national interests are at stake. That is
a reality in an imperfect world. Kofi Annan, the
secretary-general of the UN has grasped the difficult
nettle of reform. There is no African permanent
member on the Security Council; neither
India nor Japan have permanent representation,
yet two European countries, Britain and France
each have veto powers; Germany, much larger
than either, has no voice. The distribution of
power dates back to the end of the Second World
War and no longer reflects the world half a
century later. That weakens the authority of the
UN, already undermined by Iraq, where the US
and Britain led a war declared illegal by Kofi
Annan. But Kofi Annan’s own standing has
suffered from the massive frauds of the oil for
humanitarian assistance to Iraq programme overseen
by the UN, which enabled Saddam Hussein
to skim-off millions to bribe and corrupt foreign
‘friends’ of his regime.
Countries will take the lead in sending troops to
regions of traditional concern or for humanitarian
reasons later securing UN backing or acting for the
UN. Britain undertook intervention in Sierra
Leone, the US in Grenada, Haiti, Panama and
Liberia. But countries will also simply be left to
fight out each other’s conflicts, as during the wars
between India and Pakistan, at best they will be
offered diplomatic mediation. Nor is there any
keenness to send troops to countries whose rulers
perpetrate human catastrophes on their own
people. The example of Rwanda was repeated in
Darfur, western Sudan in 2004. There are no universal
peacekeepers even though there is one country,
the US, more powerful than all the others.
The US neither has the resources nor is it
willing to sacrifice young men and women to act
as policemen everywhere in the world. So a
pattern is gradually becoming clearer that harks
back to the close of the Second World War. The
idea of the regional policemen, then, was that
China, Britain, the US and Russia would each be
responsible for peace in their own parts of the
world. Half a century later the ‘regional policemen’
are more numerous. Russia still controls a
vast land of different peoples and cultures, NATO
has replaced Britain and links Europe and the US,
the European Union is emerging with its own
rapid reaction force, but China is reluctant to act
as a policeman outside its borders; it has enough
problems at home. African countries cannot do so
even if they want to unless given financial and
logistical support. ‘Ethical’ or ‘moral’ foreign
policies have not dominated international action
and are unlikely to do so in the future.
In the sub-Sahara, South Africa is another
reluctant participant; in West Africa, Nigeria has
led a West African joint effort as it did from 1990
to 1997 in Liberia and again in 2003. The West
African force, too, lacks resources but on occasion
the US will provide a logistics and financial backup
while rejecting a leading role. There are no set
patterns in some regions of the world where no
force of ‘regional policemen’ can be formed
because they are too divided. If at the same time
it is a region of vital interest to one or more of
the powerful countries of the world the outcome
is even more difficult to predict. The most volatile
area fitting this characterisation is the Middle
East. The international vacuum is partially filled
in the Middle East by the US and partners willing
to act with it. But much will depend on the outcome
of the US-led intervention in Iraq where
the peaceful evolution of some form of democratic
government is threatened by the resistance
of militant Sunnis. In the new millennium the
hope is for the peaceful resolutions of conflicts
and regional actions in line with the ideals of the
United Nations. Inevitably realities will frequently
fall short of high ethical purposes.
The dangers to peace have radically changed.
The shadow of nuclear holocaust between the
Soviet Union and the West has been lifted.
Today technological weapon advances allow small
groups of terrorists to inflict injury to every country
on the globe. It will always be possible to
inspire groups to identify hated enemies and to
brainwash individuals to accept that any means are
justified to hit the targeted enemy. Martyrdom for
a cause has become more widespread, born out of
frustration and hatred from Chechnya to Israel,
New York to Nairobi. Al-Qaeda has been the
focus of the war against terror. In fact, hundreds
of groups act on their own or in loose touch with
each other. It is not a war that has a definite start
date or will end on a day with a surrender. It is
a continuous struggle on two fronts – to try
to remove the causes where there is a will to do so
and to strike against terrorists to reduce their
destructiveness. The struggle with terrorists and
their ‘successes’ makes headlines but the direct
loss of life has run into thousands over a decade
not comparable to the wars of the twentieth century
with the deaths of millions. The nightmare
scenario of the future is that a terror group could
obtain nuclear or biological weapons of mass
destruction. A foretaste was the attack by one
group with nerve gas in the Tokyo subway or
Saddam’s use of killer gas against the Kurds. For
several years before 2003 a Pakistani scientist
Abdul Khan, through a network of agents, distributed
nuclear know-how and even components
to build a bomb to Iran, North Korea and Libya,
and other countries as well. More immediate is the
danger from a nuclear ‘dirty bomb’ far easier to
construct. Striking successfully against terrorists
in hiding protected by sections of the local population
has always proved to be extraordinarily hazardous
and difficult. Such conflicts all over the
world can continue for decades. When leaders of
countries support them, the blunt instrument of
war as in Afghanistan can hinder the terrorists’
ability to strike but not to inspire others. Sanctions
are another weapon which in the end proved
effective in Libya.
It is justifiable to end a history of the world with
more positive reflections. During the century that
now lies behind, wars and tyrannical regimes
resulted in the deaths of at least 200 million
people, most of them civilians, and even more
millions suffered injury and loss. The century that
saw so much material progress for the survivors
was a graveyard for others.
The threat to life has been reduced to a fraction
of the cataclysmic total of the twentieth
century. Europe, in the past a cauldron of wars,
is peacefully coming together for common purposes.
Russia has ceased to be a threat and, in
turn, has ceased to feel threatened by the West.
The alliance of NATO against the Soviet Union
has been transformed into an association with it.
The Balkan fires have been smothered.
There are dangers in Asia. India and Pakistan,
both nuclear powers, are still unable to settle their
Kashmir dispute, but the nuclear stand-off, like
a mini-Cold War situation of mutual assured
destruction, makes their leaders draw back from
the brink. Their economies are growing though
many obstacles to more rapid development
persist. Perhaps the most unexpected change has
been the global integration of China just a decade
and a half after the brutal Tiananmen suppression.
The Chinese people enjoy more freedoms, as long
as they accept the control of the one-party communist
leadership. The most severe curtailment of
personal freedom was the draconian one child per
couple policy to limit population growth. Its
success is leading to relaxation. The Chinese army
is the regime’s safeguard of internal control and
is not intended as a means of external aggression.
Bitter ideological differences with Taiwan have
been papered over internationally and the war of
words has remained just that.
The Japanese people who, alone, have suffered
the devastation of a nuclear attack, like the
Germans, have purged themselves of ambitions of
war and aggression. Though their economy has
stagnated for a decade, Japan remains by far the
wealthiest and most powerful economy in Asia, an
important partner of global economic health. The
superiority of a market economy over rigid communist
state control, of representative institutions
over tyranny, is demonstrated by the contrast
between South Korea and North Korea. North
Korea, with a nuclear programme and a millionstrong
army, is a threat, but the North Korean
regime is isolated, economically a disaster, and
desperately needs Western help and relief: a
‘rogue state’ that is being, and has to be, contained.
Tyrannical regimes have become the
exception and are no longer spreading like cancer
across the globe. The benefits of the market
economy and governments accountable to the
people are becoming dominant. Possibly it is a
hopeful pointer to a better future globally that
some conflicts which only a short while ago
seemed incapable of any resolution have ended in
a truce in regions widely apart. The fighting
between the Sri Lankan government and the
Tamil Tigers ended in 2002, the IRA ceased
its bombing and violence in Northern Ireland
in 1994, and the conflict between Taiwan and
the People’s Republic of China remains a war of
words; in the Sudan the Muslim government in
the north ended the war in the south by negotiation
with the help of the UN.
The fears that population growth which passed
the six billion mark at the turn of the twenty-first
century could outstrip the planet’s resources have
once again been found to be misplaced. Although
the world’s population astonishingly doubled in
just the last forty years the increase has slowed.
There is, in the twenty-first century, a growing
awareness of dangers ahead and the world leaders
are making efforts to meet them. Standards of
living are rising, though unevenly in different
regions; they are accelerating faster in the developed
world with the gap between rich and poor
widening. That issue, too, is on the world agenda.
This disparity, more than wars and persecution
has led to the enterprising seeking better opportunities
and a better life for themselves and their
families. Opportunities for migration to the developed
world for those without means of skills in
demand are severely restricted. The poor countries
suffer from the brain drain of, for instance,
the skilled and doctors and nurses they have
trained at home who fill the gaps in developed
nations, but no one wants large numbers of
unskilled. The only way in for the great majority
is to take advantage of international obligations
for countries to accept people in danger of harm
in their own countries – these are the asylum
seekers. Large numbers apply annually to Western
European countries which are unwilling to absorb
them and try to distinguish between those genuinely
in danger and those who are not but are
seeking a better life, the so-called economic
migrants. Thousands of tragedies result daily.
Governments find themselves under popular pressure
to limit entry though historically immigrants
have benefited the countries they enter once they
have been able to establish themselves. The perception
is that they cost the state money and use
resources already inadequate for the indigenous
populations. Often of different race and culture,
they start as strangers who have to assimilate and
it is difficult for many to accept those different to
themselves. The influx of migrants, whether
Mexican in California or Afghans in Britain, is a
major domestic issue. Actually in a global perspective
the numbers are minuscule.
Even adding illegal immigrants, the eight
wealthy countries between them receive less than
400,000 applications, reject most and, with illegal
immigrants, probably absorb less than half a
million in a population of over 600 million.
Medical advances are able to keep pace with diseases,
though remedies are not available everywhere.
That lack, too, is slowly improving. Racial
discrimination has not ceased but has lessened
and is recognised for the evil it is.
Has the world become a better place in the
new century? The global response of generosity
to help the victims of the earthquake in the
Indian Ocean, which struck with especially devastating
force the Aceh province of Indonesia and
the Tamil region of Sri Lanka on 26 December
2004, showed that on occasions when the world’s
media are fully engaged, common feelings of
humanity break through. The death toll on that
single day reached at least a quarter of a million
and millions more lost everything, perhaps just
one member of a family survived with tens of
thousands of children orphaned. Nature cannot
be tamed, but the death toll of man’s conflicts
exceed many times those of nature and attract less
attention and response from the wealthy nations:
the millions of dead in the civil wars of the
Congo, the millions in the southern Sudan, which
hopefully can make a UN brokered peace reached
in January 2005 work, while in the western
Darfur region more than a million have fled and
tens of thousands have been killed and there is no
end in sight.
There are too many conflicts in Africa, Asia
and the Middle East raging simultaneously for
any one nation, even the most powerful, the US
and allies, to engage simultaneously. The role of
the UN is dependent on the backing of its
members especially the permanent representatives
of the Security Council. The UN has often shown
a readiness to agree on resolutions, to offer peacekeeping
international forces, on occasion to
impose sanctions, to act as mediators, to provide
humanitarian aid, all functions of great value, but
can rarely agree to intervene with military force.
Nations pursue their self-interests above common
global goals unless the global goals are perceived
as in their own interest. Nor can governments set
themselves against the popular will for the more
than a limited time even in more authoritarian
societies. There is no prospect for universal peace,
but the possibility of warfare on a global scale
between the most powerful nations of the world,
which caused such human and material ravages
during the course of the twentieth century, has
receded. Peace is the only option between nuclear
armed Russia, the US, China, and Europe, global
trade a necessity for their mutual prosperity.
Representative government based on the consent
of the people, however, remains far from universal.
Europe is no longer the cauldron from whose
centre global wars have spread, but it is at peace,
bound by treaties requiring respect for human
values and backed by economic union and law.
For peoples in the greater part of the world the
future holds the promise of better times even in
the less developed and poorest regions. But there
is a long way to go before basic human rights are
enjoyed by all and poverty, disease and the millions
of unnecessary deaths they cause no longer
blight the lives of those not fortunate enough to
be born in better governed and more prosperous
countries, a long way to go before a meaningful
global community emerges.
Millions the world over follow the teachings of
the Catholic Church and were affected by the
death of the Pope, John Paul II in April 2005.
He had made a huge impact on their lives. What
is his legacy? John Paul II condemned artificial
birth control and the use of condoms to combat
the plagues of Aids; the priesthood remained celibate
and male; homosexuality continued to be
morally unacceptable; in all this he followed the
traditional teaching of the Church. Power was
centralised in the Vatican to ensure conformity to
doctrine. John Paul II was revered for his moral
strength and clarity, his courage resisting communism
in his native Poland, his outreach visiting
every continent despite failing health, his condemnation
of centuries of persecution of the
Jews, his conciliation of other faiths sharing
common foundations. His death attracted pilgrims
in unprecedented numbers and marked the
end of an era.
In a world far from perfect and scarred by many
conflicts the words of Nelson Mandela ring out
as a fitting inspiration for the new century:
No one is born hating another person because
of the colour of his skin, or his background,
or his religion. People must learn to hate,
they can be taught to love for love comes more
naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
World History
