There will be a brief period of opportunity, perhaps a decade, in which the post-Cold War world can make use of the present 'new concert of powers'. "If this new system is not firmly established... the world may again lapse into a balance of power or an unworkable multipolar deterrence by the year 2000".
Richard Rosecrance is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Director?Designate of the U.C.L.A. Center for International Relations.
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As Cold War threats have diminished, so-called weapons of mass destruction -- nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and ballistic missiles -- have become the new international bugbears. The irony is that the harm caused by these weapons pales in comparison to the havoc wreaked by a much more popular tool: economic sanctions. Tally up the casualties caused by rogue states, terrorists, and unconventional weapons, and the number is surprisingly small. The same cannot be said for deaths inflicted by international sanctions. The math is sobering and should lead the United States to reconsider its current policy of strangling Iraq.
No, it is not a silly question -- merely one that is not asked often enough. Odd as it may seem, the country that is home to a fifth of humankind is consistently overrated as an economy, a world power, and a source of ideas. Economically, China is a relatively unimportant small market; militarily, it is less a global rival like the Soviet Union than a regional menace like Iraq; and politically, its influence is puny. The Middle Kingdom is a middle power. China matters far less than it and most of the West think, and it is high time the West began treating it as such.
Advocates of "Europe" -- a united, federal European state -- tout their project as at once a noble political ideal and a pragmatic economic strategy. Both arguments are wrong. The European Union's bureaucrats will stifle the continent's economy, and its politicos will breed corruption and nationalist resentment. Letting the EU handle security matters would be equally disastrous, as the fiasco in Bosnia demonstrates. Despite all this, the partisans of "Europe" warn the skeptical that the train is pulling out of the station. Those who care about Europe will let it go.
