Meditations: Requiem for the Post-Cold War Order

You couldn’t make this stuff up. George Bush, who invokes 9/11 ad nauseam to stoke primal fears of Arab “lurkers” whenever his policies come under attack, has been hoisted on his own petard by a mishandled port leasing deal with the United Arab Emirates.

Members of Congress report getting more calls and letters on this issue than any other in 15 or more years. The xenophobic reaction from the American public has subsided somewhat, given Administration and UAE delaying tactics (the same kind of tricks the Bushites use when there’s a sudden rise in American casualties in Iraq). Even so, the homeland/fatherland echo has never been stronger in the USA.

Things hang in the balance. Will the next major terrorist attack in the ‘homeland’ send a fascistic America on a worldwide rampage to root out ‘the evildoers?’ Or will the Bush Administration be reduced to the incompetent rogues they actually are?

One of the leading proponents of “the war of choice” in Iraq (indeed, the person who coined the term), New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, now says, with a straight face, “the only country that can stem the toxic trend of religious and sectarian cleavage is America.”

Asserting ‘the indispensable nation’ rot to the bitter end, Friedman, speaking for the vast majority of the pundit class, ethnocentrically asserts, “If we go down the road of pitch-fork wielding xenophobes, then the whole world will go Dark Ages.” America under George Bush has spread the toxin of terror around the world, and yet Friedman says, “America is the only antidote.”

The dogs of war that the Bush Administration has unleashed, aided and abetted by self-promoters like Thomas Friedman, must run their course. Catastrophe is inevitable, and the post-Cold War world order will crumble into a heap. The question is, can enough people prepare the foundation for a true world order before that happens? Or will the easy targets of the Bush Administration and America prevent hard thinking about the global society by those who oppose militarism and authoritarianism?

Without being inwardly and intellectually prepared when the collapse of the shaky and short-lived post-Cold War order occurs, the opportunity for radical change will be precluded. Many progressives are still in denial, as they were before the Iraq war began when they thought the war could be stopped. Or in 2004 when they thought that Bush would not be reelected. But others see what is coming. However, forethought is the easy part. The hard part is preparation, and not just personally.

For me there is a disturbing precedent. After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, I saw that both the USSR and the US were going to collapse (the Soviet Union economically and politically, the United States morally and socially), and that the Cold War configuration would soon be history.

I was raised with the idea that if the Russians ever threw off the chains of communism, Americans would be there to help them build a democracy and free market. So in ’89 I started a joint-venture company with a Russian visiting from Moscow I met in San Francisco, an extremely competent and connected man touted as a leading businessman under Gorbachev’s perestroika. With a half a dozen partners in the US, our intent was to provide a model for “helping Russian people build a free market in an ecologically and ethically sound way.”

The motivation was not just altruistic. We felt that we could not help open up a new market in a new way. We also agreed that America was in free fall spiritually and intellectually, and that an infusion of Russian intellectual and spiritual energy could help bring about a rebirth. So in January of ’90, during the depths of the Russian winter, I traveled alone to the Soviet Union. It was a tremendous experience at every level. Though we came close to breaking through, needless to say, we failed.

I have much less optimism and naiveté regarding building something truly new after the train wreck engineered by Bush and Blair occurs. But I have the same feeling of imminent collapse about the post-Cold War order that I had about the Cold War order in ’89. Since pessimism and cynicism are self-fulfilling however, I’m still asking, can a new foundation be poured in time?

Desperately trying to shore up faith in reason and secularism, as an antidote to belief and sectarianism (or raw American power), just won’t cut it. A new order requires questioning together beyond comfortable categories of pluralism and ‘inter-faith dialogue.’ Above all, a new order needs new human beings, people who can reason well, but who are anchored in attention, feeling, and insight.

- Martin LeFevre is a contemplative, and non-academic religious and political philosopher. He has been publishing in North America, Latin America, Africa, and Europe (and now New Zealand) for 20 years. Email: martinlefevre@sbcglobal.net. The author welcomes comments.

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