[PEN-L:1322] The angst of a ruling-class ideologue

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

FOREIGN AFFAIRS / THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Beware the Ides of August

Which do you think is scarier? Is it that Scott Ritter, the top U.N.
weapons inspector in Iraq, quit his job, accusing the U.S. and the U.N. of
surrendering to Saddam Hussein? Or is it the story told by Russian
economists about a Russian soldier behind the Urals who drove his army tank
to City Hall to demand months of back pay? The soldier said he drove the
tank not because he wanted to blow up the municipality but because he
didn't have any other way to get there and couldn't afford cab fare. Or is
it reading The Washington Post, where a State Department spokesman, James
Foley, was quoted as saying that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
couldn't possibly be going soft on Iraq because, after all, "Saddam Hussein
has called Secretary Albright a snake and a witch, among other things"?

What these disturbing stories suggest is that the basic pillars that have
stabilized the post-cold-war world are all either shaking or crumbling. And
that's scary.

Pillar number one was the notion that Russia had made an irreversible leap
from Communism to free-market capitalism, that it was basically on the
right track, albeit bumpy, that Boris Yeltsin was basically the right man
for the job, and that a little U.S., German and I.M.F. money could grease
the way.

Today, financial experts are at a loss as to how to deal with Russia, whose
future is anything but certain. Russia's crisis is primarily a governing
crisis. Russia lacks the institutions to properly manage a modern economy
linked to today's fast-paced global market, and the legitimacy of free
markets there is still shallow. If Russia goes bad, it's going go really
fast, and if it gets better, it's going to take a really long time.

The second pillar was America's defeat of Saddam in the gulf war. That
defeat resonated around the world. Those who supported Saddam, like Yasir
Arafat, had to literally apologize to their neighbors after the war. Those
who went on supporting him looked like fools, tilting against a Pax
Americana. Arab moderation spurred Israeli moderation. But today the Arab
center, not just the extremes, is again reconciling with Saddam. The
Clinton team says it has no allies anymore to confront Saddam and no
domestic support, and it's right. But neither did George Bush when he built
the anti-Iraq coalition.

The third pillar was the American economic model -- that liberal, open,
deregulated markets, with lots of free trade, will produce steadily rising
stock markets around the world. That model is now facing its biggest
challenge across the globe today, where investors and workers in every
emerging market are discovering that while the American model may be the
best thing going, it is much more difficult to reproduce than first thought.

"American credibility is being tested in every one of these areas," notes
Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International, "and the
stability of the world will depend, in part, on whether we pass that test."

Which brings us to the fourth shaky pillar, the leaders who made this
post-cold-war world. They are vanishing: Yitzhak Rabin was shot. Bill
Clinton shot himself. Boris Yeltsin lost his way. Helmut Kohl lost his
mandate. Japan is home alone. Who would have predicted that today's most
stable leaders would be China's President, Jiang Zemin, and its Prime
Minister, Zhu Rongji?

America is a superpower, but it's not omnipotent. It needs to decide where
it can make a difference, where it can only coach and where it is just
copping out. In Iraq, it is just copping out. In Asia the U.S. can make a
difference by encouraging governments there to broaden their social safety
nets to catch some of those brutalized and unemployed by the latest
economic meltdowns, so this transition to real free-market capitalism is
not derailed. In Russia, the U.S., Germany and the I.M.F. can offer aid,
but only if the Communist-led Duma passes all the necessary reforms and
Russia's greedy capitalist oligarchs are broken.

It's ironic: A strong Russia under Stalin could never bring the West to
heel, but a weak Russia under capitalism can, if the West doesn't insulate
itself. Which is why Bill Clinton needs to right himself fast, so that he
is not just occupying the Presidency but exercising it. America needs a
President. The world needs one even more.

Dear reader, this is my last regular column until January. I am taking a
four-month sabbatical to finish a book about the post-cold-war world.

Frank Rich is on vacation.

Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company


Louis Proyect
(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)