From the middle to the end of May, Western commentators treated the working class, already stressed out and fed up with the rat race we know as capitalism, to a triple synopsis of doom.
In mid May, the International Institute of Strategic Studies revealed US concerns about China's $100 billion annual defence budget, the growing Chinese military assertiveness and their strong resemblance to a superpower.
Only two days after China had joined other nuclear powers in endorsing an indefinite extension of die Non-Proliferation Treaty, it carried out an underground atomic explosion that brought immediate international condemnation.
A few days later the Guardian reported China as setting "alarm bells ringing . . . with its military muscle flexing", and how there were "renewed anxieties about its willingness to live by international rules" (22 May).
China, it seems, had taken a sudden interest in the Spratley Islands and the mineral wealth beneath its reef. That this reef could provide China with oil revenues and access to wider Pacific Rim markets only added to Western fears of China becoming a rival superpower.
A few more days and the Guardian would run another panic-laden story about how "the West’s nightmare scenario of an alliance between Iraq and Iran moved a little closer . . . with the former enemies pledging to improve relations" (26 May).
The catalyst it appears has been the mutual acceptance of Iraq and Iran as the joint focus of Western economic boycotts.
If Iraq, with a population of 17 million, and with a rag-tag army, war-weary after an eight-year conflict with Iran, necessitated the mobilisation of 750,000 allied troops and accompanying hardware in 1990, what, analysts wonder, would be the consequences if Iran sided with Iraq?
Iran, for instance, with a population of 55 million, with a recently upgraded missile system and a nascent nuclear programme and an army of fundamentalists famous for their suicide missions, siding with a vengeful Iraq, could give Western governments and their masters the mother of all headaches.
War footing
On the last day of May, Britain declared it was sending 6,000 troops to the Balkans. The US also looked for ways of muscling in on the world publicity this would generate and NATO gave a sigh of relief, at last being given the chance to justify its existence.
The Guardian's front page headline—"Allies on war footing"—appeared a sad irony for those apologists who saw VE Day in May as a vindication of world peace thanks to Western liberal democracy.
May had also been the 50th anniversary of die United Nations—a contradiction in terms considering there have been over 300 conflicts since 1945. Nowhere has the futility of the UN been more apparent than in the Balkans in which the Croat-Bosnian-Serb war has exhausted every UN method of conflict resolution. Sanctions have been imposed, negotiators have redrawn maps and attempted to broker cease-fires while peacekeepers have been sent to see they are carried
Any credibility the UN had was lost when the UN pulled out 75 percent of its forces from Rwanda following the death of 10 Belgian peacekeepers, leaving the country to anarchy, starvation and the machete. This was followed by the UN pull-out from Somalia at the end of another attempt to bring stability to an African country.
It is a grave indictment of the capitalist system, that the initial relief and joy with which the demise of the cold war was greeted has melted into an increasing anxiety about the future. Within five years of the Berlin Wall falling, 25 new states have sprung up, only two minus the blood that accompanies such birth pangs. More await to be born.
The logic of capitalism is as insane as it is obscene. Conflict rages in 30 countries and much bigger ones await that gentle shove into motion, from Iraq to China. There are wars in Chechenya, Bosnia. The South China Seas seethe with tension. The time-honoured panacea remains military readiness and the threat of aggression. just as the nuclear bomb and the awareness of its destructive potential forced a 40-year stand-off between the US and the Soviet Union.
The 20th century, more than any period in history, should have taught the working class that bombs and borders do not solve problems or bring peace. They only stall war and make conflict, when it does come, more gruesome.
As we approach the millennium, we look back over 100 years that have witnessed more bloodshed than any other century in human history, on a world punctuated with 100 million land mines, on a world one fifth of whose population live in extreme poverty. What an indictment of capitalism.
John Bissett
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