Today the world is gripped by fear of terrorist attack as we cannot predict where they will hit the next minute. Most Western countries and United States have been the target of terrorism and we are seeing the rise of this kind of war in Southeast Asia where dozens of people are being killed everyday in Pakistan, India, Indonesia and Sri Lanka.
Before the fall of communism, terrorism I would say was either absent or not so pronounced, but since 2001, we have seen the rise of terrorism all over, even Africa has not been spared.
The Soviet Union’s domination of Eastern Europe for about 40 years saw a united force. In 1948, Tito’s Yugoslavia refused to be part of the communist bloc, instead he embarked on a more flexible communist experiment, with firmer links with the West and less rigid economic controls.
History tells us that in 1958, the Soviet Union’s relationship with China deteriorated sharply when Mao Ze Dong launched the Great Leap Forward to modernize the Chinese economy. This created an open rupture between the two powers. Some Countries in the communist world accepted Mao’s lead and this brought a division between allegiance to either Moscow or Beijing.
Also during that period and after, Western Europe communist parties became increasingly critical of the crude authoritarianism of the Soviet model and by 1980. Communist nations were forced to the realities of the prosperous West. When Mikhail Gorbachev assumed the throne in the Soviet Union in 1985, he embarked on a new policy of openness and restructuring which was referred to as ‘glasnost and perestroika’. He tried to reform communism with greater economic freedoms and this encouraged other Soviet bloc nations to question the communist system.
In 1989 when Gorbachev encouraged the other communist regimes to accept the change, there was widespread upheaval. This gave rise to Poland to have a non-communist government in August 1989. Four months later, every Soviet bloc regime collapsed. Finally we saw the Berlin Wall crumble and the two Germanys became united in 1990.
The Soviet Union itself crumbled as separate republics demanded independence, and in 1991, the Union was scrapped. The Communist parties were at least nominally dissolved and Parliamentary systems were adopted throughout the former Soviet bloc, bringing to an end a long era of European dictatorships. Boris Yeltsin was elected the first President of Russia on June 12, 1991.
The current problems the world is facing after the fall of communism to date were not inherited from World War II. Global warming, environmental crises, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, the turmoil in the Middle East and the emergence of China as an economic super power were the products of the post war transformation of industrial and political landscape. The ‘war on terror’, provoked by the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001, is quite different from World War II.
The new war is now set in an unfamiliar setting in which we have only one major power since the fall of communism and the Soviet Bloc. United States of America defense spending is said to equal the combined spending of the world. But with such astronomical defense budget, they have been failing in Afghanistan and Iraq. With the contest taking place on a global scale, with the latest technology against primitive bomb attacks and ambushes, yet this enormous technological military gap has not produced the assurance of victory as it did in 1945.
The fall of communism has left Russia wounded and China very alert. Russia still believes that they have what it takes to return to the top, while China will never allow any nation to disintegrate the vast country.
The Tibetan issue that some powers want to use against China will definitely cause the world to go back to another World War III.
China has seen what happened to Soviet Union and they have secretly and steadily moved right to the top of the world economy and politics as they have become a main player and even analysts are envisaging that in the next 20 years they will rule the world.
The West has to be very careful the way they handle the Tibetan issue or else.
Many countries have joined the United States on waging war on terrorism, but, however, little thought is being given to the question of the causes of terrorism. We need to know the root cause of it before it can be eliminated. The war will continue for as long as we live if we refuse to pinpoint where it arose from. History has taught us that fighting the symptoms rather than the cause is ineffective.
Many analysts in and out of America believe that terrorism was the brain child of the American defense system, because after the fall of communism, the astronomical defense spending by the Pentagon should cut drastically thereby reducing the budget as well as affecting the multinational companies that produces these weapons and equipment.
According to a front page article written in June 2005 by Los Angeles Times reported that 20 months before the 9/11 attack the CIA knew that two Al Qaeda operatives had entered USA, but this report never reached the FBI who would have tracked them down and averted such collateral damage.
Also there is another report that said these operatives were trained in CIA training camps without the knowledge of the Feds. So analysts alleged that the Pentagon needed a way out to continue their big spending on security.
The fall of communism would have been the end of the security problems between the two powers as the US federal government no longer had an official enemy to justify such big spending. Before 9/11, the concentration was on illegal drugs and if it has been pursued with the same determination as the war on terror, the world would have been a safer place.
Soviet Union was no more; China was not a threat, so the US knew exactly where to turn to stir up trouble and they went to the Middle East, despite repeated warnings that an interventionist and pro-empire foreign policy would result in blowback terrorist attacks on their soil.
The report by Los Angeles Times blamed the CIA and the FBI for failing to prevent 9/11 which they believe any reasonable observer would ask the question what good are the intelligence-gathering agencies are doing until such damage occurred.
The 9/11 attacks were then blamed on hatred for America’s ‘freedom and values’ rather than on U.S. foreign policy and used to justify the federal government’s ‘war on terrorism.
According to the Los Angeles Times of June 10, 2005 the following reasons were given to justify the war on terror.
The “war on terrorism” was used to justify a huge federal assault on the civil liberties of the American people, primarily through the so-called USA PATRIOT Act, along with “patriotic” suggestions to support the “war on terrorism” by withholding criticism of the federal government. The “war on terrorism” was used to justify a bombing campaign in Afghanistan that killed thousands of innocent people, thereby inciting even more anger and hatred against the United States, while resulting in the non-capture of the principal suspect in the 9/11 attacks Osama bin Laden. Also, the “regime change” achieved in Afghanistan succeeded in converting that country into an opium-producing narco-state whose exorbitant drug-war profits are financing terrorist activity against the United States, thereby justifying even more stringent U.S. efforts (and higher budgets) to fight both the “war on drugs” and the “war on terrorism.”
The “war on terrorism” was then used to incite massive fear within the American people about Saddam Hussein’s WMD in order to garner support for an invasion and occupation of Iraq, a country that had never attacked the United States and that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. The war on Iraq, including the resulting horrific death and destruction caused by the invasion and occupation, have given rise to even more anger and hatred against the United States, which will likely result in even more terrorism, which will lead to renewed efforts to win the “war on terrorism,” along with more assaults on civil liberties and renewed calls to support the government and the troops.
The never-ending “war on terrorism” and the indefinite occupation of Iraq have given rise to perpetually growing big-government budgets for the Pentagon, bigger even than when communism was the official threat during the Cold War.
How many federal officials have been fired, punished, or disciplined for any of this? It would seem that most, if not all, of them have had nothing but praise, adoration, promotion, power, and ever-growing heaps of U.S. taxpayer money heaped upon them.
The war on terror is far from over as the Islamic nations affected will continue to misuse and abuse the innocent, sending them to their untimely grave in the name of Jihad because of illiteracy and wrong indoctrination.
Is the God we serve so wicked that He will ask us to sacrifice our lives in such degrading and shameful death? Does the God we serve need his creation to fight for Him? Does the God we serve like to see the spill of human blood? Whatever the religion or denomination we find ourselves, the God we serve is a God of love and peace, a God that has the power to fight for Himself and the God that need no human sacrifices.
Maybe it would have been better if communism was still a force to democracy, because during the cold war, terrorism was absent although we had rebellion, but in my own humble opinion, terrorism is the most dangerous of the three. We hope that those who fan the flames will be able to design a formula to put it off and let the world know peace. Whatever else might be said of the big spending Americans, we can’t say they are dumb; in fact we will have to commend their brilliancy in keeping the multinational companies that produces the weaponry alive and creating jobs for their citizens and they that are in charge receiving healthy kickbacks from the contracts.
By Austin Thomas