May 5, 1998
ON MY MIND
/
By A.M. ROSENTHAL
The New World Order
April 30: U.S. approves another $1
billion in aid to Indonesia as part of
the international $40 billion economic bailout. President Suharto refuses
to break up the multibillion-dollar
monopolies controlled by himself,
family and friends. He says no political reforms until 2003, at earliest.
Police break up student protests.
May 1 -- Washington Times and
A.P. say C.I.A. reports China has
nuclear missiles targeted at U.S.
May 3 -- President Clinton's June
visit to China will include welcome
ceremonies at Tiananmen Square.
Washington preparing to allow U.S.
companies to sell nuclear reactors to
China.
May 4 -- Human rights workers
report continued oppression in China
and Indonesia; more executions in
China than in all the rest of the world.
The U.S., its democratic allies and
major dictatorships are rapidly building a new world order -- not quite
finished yet but already a central part
of international life and values.
Its ideology, powers, rewards and
punishments are supplanting those
that prevailed internationally until
1994, when President Clinton joined
the new order. If it continues, it will be
the most important new international
concept since the end of World War II.
The order was created without formal parliamentary approval by its
sponsors, or any treaty.
But every
week, sometimes every day, the underlying tenets are revealed, in action. See above.
The following description of objectives and goals of the new order is so
different from principles recently assumed in the West, though not always followed, that it may read as
satire. It is not.
The fundamental change, demanded by the dictatorships and agreed to
in practice by the democracies, is that
the internal policies of persecution by
the rulers, and the rights of the governed, are not a primary moral or
economic consideration of the world.
The democracies, under these values, can protest some internal acts of
the dictatorships -- torture and such.
But they must do so quietly, not
allowing these acts, or often even
security interests, to damage the
new overriding value of the democratic leaders.
That value is the trade and investment with the dictatorships that the
democracies believe important to
their national economies -- which
are sometimes called jobs, but usually interpreted as corporate profit.
In exchange, dictatorships allow
democracies to invest and trade in
enterprises the capitalists consider
profitable to their corporate
strength, although not necessarily to
their own employees or the national
economic health of their countries.
If the dictatorships, or authoritarian governments as some are known
more pleasantly, find their economies collapsing through the corruption generic to such societies, the
International Monetary Fund and individual democracies rush to arrive
with bailout.
The explanation given is that otherwise the dictatorships' economies
would disintegrate, bringing revolution. Now, the people of the dictatorships may long for revolution. Obviously that cannot be allowed to overcome saving the dictatorship and
thus rescuing the money invested by
nationals of democracies.
Accepting these values, the events
dated above become understandable,
and even neatly logical.
The Indonesian dictator, for instance, was installed by the army 33
years ago and has been in power ever
since. Now he needs scores of billions
with which to overcome his own ineptitude and family corruption, and do
the right thing by his foreign investors. Who can deny him?
The U.S. gets to sell strategic material to China, offering as an extra a
visit by the U.S. President to honor
the Communist leaders and expand
their power and political life span.
Religious and political mavericks
in the totalitarian partners of the
new world order get prison, or death,
often both.
The press of the democracies gets
to write stories about the growth of
order in the new order. Other citizens
of the democracies get to say costs of
imported goods are down, how nice.
Americans and Europeans may
come to object for political or moral
reasons, or because the new world
order may after all cost them their
jobs. But they will never be able to
say they never knew; see above.