Seize the Moment Read Free Page B

that possesses global economic, military, and political power, the United States stands at the apex of its geopolitical power. If its status as the world’s only superpower erodes, that will result from choice, not necessity.
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    The high expectations of a new era of peace and freedom in 1989 were crushed by the hard realities of 1990. The world saw its hopes for a more peaceful phase in world history dashed by a cascade of events from renewed repression in the Soviet Union to aggression in the Persian Gulf. Though developments around the world dealt severe blows to the dreams of 1989 in a new world order, these hopes were finally buried in the sands of Kuwait in 1990.
    After playing off the reformers against the hard-liners and vice versa for five years, Gorbachev decisively rejected accelerated reform and allied himself with holdovers from the oldregime in 1990, choosing reaction over reform. An improviser, not a strategist, he could not bring himself to bite the bullet on allowing private ownership of property and instead pursued the impossible objective of creating a halfway house between a market and planned economy. Having broken faith with the reformers, who then rallied to his rival, Russian federation president Boris Yeltsin, Gorbachev aligned himself with the reactionaries, who backed him not because of political loyalty but because they needed a front man to conceal their control of the levers of power.
    The renewed ascendancy of the hard-liners quickly checked progress toward a more cooperative U.S.-Soviet relationship. After signing the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty, Moscow brazenly violated its provisions, claiming that several armored divisions were exempt from treaty restrictions because they had been resubordinated to the Soviet Navy and Strategic Rocket Forces security units. In the START talks, Kremlin negotiators backpedaled on a succession of key compromises and obstructed the completion of the treaty for more than a year. Meanwhile, the relentless Soviet strategic forces modernization program continued unabated. More ominous, top Soviet leaders resuscitated Stalin-era rhetoric, accusing the United States of seeking to subvert their country. Though Gorbachev had denounced the “era of stagnation” under Brezhnev, he launched his own “era of reversion.”
    In Eastern Europe, euphoria gave way to a grim recognition of sobering realities. The odds against successful reform were stacked against the new democracies. A lack of domestic capital, willing foreign investors, modern technology, and well-trained managers was compounded by the loss of traditional markets and the danger of simultaneous hyperinflation and mass unemployment. To complicate matters further, allthese problems had to be solved while politicians who had more experience in Communist prisons than democratic parliaments put into place entirely new political systems. While the anticommunist revolutions of 1989 represented a great step forward, they were only a first step on the long road to stable democratic government and market-based prosperity.
    In third world regional conflicts, peace remained illusive. After the Red Army withdrew from Afghanistan, resistance forces liberated 80 percent of their country but failed to topple the Communist government in Kabul. Hunkered behind its Soviet-built fortifications and bankrolled with its $3-billion annual aid allotment, Kabul opted for stalemate instead of a just political settlement. In Cambodia, negotiations between the warring parties bogged down as their Communist leaders insisted on achieving through the fine print of an agreement what they had failed to win on the battlefield: uncontested power. In El Salvador, peace talks stalemated as the guerrillas tested U.S. staying power and escalated attacks and civil strife.
    Elsewhere, promising developments went sour and hopeless situations grew worse. In the Philippines, the Aquino