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GLOBAL VIEW
Remembrance of Times Past
In 1990 the world was full of promise. How does it look today?
BY GEORGE MELLOAN
Tuesday, April 25, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
When I launched this column in January of 1990 I thought the new decade held great promise. The Soviet Union was tottering, America had regained its economic and political footing under Ronald Reagan, and the European Union was making steady progress in removing barriers to trade and investment. But looking back, I see that human progress doesn't roll forward steadily; it suffers fits and starts.
My optimism back then about the land east of the Oder was justified. The Soviet "evil empire," as President Reagan described it, was falling apart and would finally collapse in late 1991, freeing 14 non-Russian republics from the control of the politburo in Moscow. The empire's captive nations in Central Europe were breaking free even as I wrote my first Global View. Only a few weeks before then, the East Germans had torn down the wall that separated them from freedom.
But today, déjà vu intrudes. Russian imperialism is again on the march, under the leadership of a KGB clique in the Kremlin who never quite lost their taste for authoritarianism.
The Israel-Arab relationship is worse than in 1990, at least in political terms. Bill Clinton and Yitzhak Rabin of Israel made a colossal mistake in 1994 of granting a lifelong terrorist, Yasser Arafat, power over Gaza and West Bank Arabs. His Oslo Treaty pledge to recognize Israel's right to exist was pure fakery, and today Palestinian terrorists are still striving to drive Israel into the sea.
Europe in 1990 was trying with mixed success to stabilize monetary exchange rates and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl was about to make a costly mistake in granting newly liberated East Germans a monetary regime that would effectively price their broken-down industries out of competition with the rest of Europe. But despite the huge bills the Germans footed after putting the east on the dole, Continental Europe finally solved the exchange-rate problem in 2002 by adopting a single currency, the euro.
Europe's major achievements since 1990 have been the single currency, further progress toward a single market, and a more than doubling of European Union membership to 25 states with a combined population of 460 million and economic output roughly equivalent to the U.S. But "Old Europe" still labors with high unemployment and sluggish economic growth, in part because its elaborate welfare benefits subsidize idleness. The frictions between native peoples and immigrants have become more acute. Europe is no longer as reliable a U.S. North Atlantic partner as it was in 1990.
Asia has produced the big surprises, of course. In April of 1990 on a visit to Tokyo, I wrote about how the Japanese "miracle" had peaked out and the "great heart of Japanese capitalism has been fibrillating." The Japanese asset bubble had been pricked deliberately by the central bank to avoid a later crash, leaving overextended banks in a slump that would last 15 years.
Next door, China was stirring from its long Maoist sleep, as I learned from a visit to a modern bicycle factory launched by a Hong Kong entrepreneur in Shenzhen, a former mainland fishing village just north of Hong Kong. I never imagined that by today, this city would have skyscrapers and a huge container port that would rival Hong Kong itself.
But things change. Japan is beginning to crawl out of its slump and there are signs that the internal contradictions of authoritarian rule may finally be catching up with China. Its massive growth was financed by the foreign capital it began to welcome in the 1980s, not by home-grown capitalism. But now the Beijing regime faces social unrest as the gap between rich and poor widens and a rising middle class demands greater political freedom.
An Oxford historian once told me that empires don't just rise and fall, they often undulate between highs and lows. The same might be said of nation states, as Japan is demonstrating. But sometimes appearances are deceiving. Russia's new prosperity is wholly the result of high oil prices, not economic policies that encourage enterprise. The Kremlin cashed in on the energy boom by expropriating the assets of a Yukos, a huge Russian oil company. The state-controlled Gazprom has become the main instrument of Russian foreign policy, strong-arming neighboring states by either offering or denying them natural gas.
Many of my columns have been about the U.S., of course. I have praised the Bush administration policy of promoting political freedom throughout the world. What other country would have the power and ambition to undertake this noble task? That it has attracted the enmity of tyrants and terrorists should be no surprise. But if the American people continue to hold to the convictions handed down from the founding fathers, freedom will continue to make inroads into dark and forbidding places. It is the wave of the future.
As readers may have suspected from the above, this is my last Global View column. After 54 years of joy at being part of a great news organization, I am retiring at the end of this week. I will keep myself busy writing a book about the 36 years I have spent writing and editing a portion of the copy you have read on the Journal editorial pages.
Part of the pleasure of this column has been the exchanges I've had with readers. Let me thank again those of you who have been generous with your time in sending me your thoughts and criticisms. A tiny few readers have expressed their disagreement in barnyard terms, but, having grown up on an Indiana farm, I long ago became familiar with that kind of discourse. I can quite understand hostile reactions to the preachments of a newspaper columnist, since I occasionally have tantrums myself when I disagree with a journo who sees the world in a different light. In America, neither side, thank goodness, can use the power of the state to suppress the other.
I will leave this column in the hands of a far younger and more talented writer. It has been fun, but all good things must end. Sayonara.
Mr. Melloan is retiring as deputy editor, international, of The Wall Street Journal.
Many of my columns have been about the U.S., of course. I have praised the Bush administration policy of promoting political freedom throughout the world. What other country would have the power and ambition to undertake this noble task? That it has attracted the enmity of tyrants and terrorists should be no surprise. But if the American people continue to hold to the convictions handed down from the founding fathers, freedom will continue to make inroads into dark and forbidding places. It is the wave of the future.
