 
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
              
|
Ten years later: Berlin Wall's fall meant freedom, confusion
Sunday, November 07, 1999 By Jack Kelly, Post-Gazette National Bureau
The Berlin Wall fell 10 years ago, shattering a bipolar world into fragments that are subdividing still.
At the time, there were 159 countries in the United Nations. Today, there are 188. Many of the new nations are impoverished, quarreling with their neighbors, or both. Events that some proclaimed would mean the "end of history" -- the likely start of a world at peace populated by like-minded free-market democracies -- instead unleashed old nationalisms and considerable turmoil.
The fall of the wall did mark the end of the Cold War, with its nuclear standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the liberation of Eastern Europe, which the Soviets had occupied in the waning days of World War II. Germany was reunified in 1990. The other nations of the former Warsaw Pact peacefully evolved from communism to more or less democratic forms of government, except for Romania, where dictator Nicholae Ceausescu was toppled in a bloody coup.
There have been both winners and losers in the former Soviet bloc. But, by most measures, more losers. For many, along with freedom have come inflation, unemployment, ethnic conflict, organized crime. Only Poland and Slovenia have recovered the levels of economic output they claimed in 1989.
"Most live in societies that embrace the excesses of the West -- commercialism, inequality, insecurity - -- while disdaining its foundation of respect for civil rights and the rule of law," historian Tina Rosenberg recently wrote in Foreign Policy magazine.
Toward a new Cold War?
The biggest loser in the former Soviet Union itself has been Russia. Russia's economy has declined 45 percent since 1989 and now is barely the size of Spain's.
Less than two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Soviet state collapsed, its end speeded by an opera bouffe coup that, for a time, made Russian President Boris Yeltsin a national and international hero.
In August 1991, Kremlin hard-liners kidnapped Soviet President and Communist Party chief Mikhail Gorbachev and ordered army units to advance on Moscow. Yeltsin barricaded himself in the Russian parliament building. He was soon joined by thousands of students and some soldiers.
Red Army units refused to fire on Yeltsin and his protesters. In a dramatic moment televised around the world, Yeltsin climbed atop a tank and called on the Russian people to resist the hard-liners. Soon, thousands of people waving the red, white and blue flag of pre-revolutionary Russia were in the streets of Moscow, shouting Yeltsin's name. The coup plotters meekly gave up.
Those were the good old days. Yeltsin's image at home and abroad has since been besmirched by Russia's massive economic and social problems, and government corruption, incompetence and heavy-handedness. Times are so hard that Russians stand armed watch over vegetable gardens and often barter for daily essentials.
"The Russian manufacturing industry now constitutes a gigantic rust belt," said Keith Bush, an analyst for the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The only Russian-manufactured products that are competitive on the world market are . . . military hardware, nuclear power plants and space engineering."
To update or replace aged plant and equipment would require hundreds of billions of dollars. But there is likely to be little additional foreign investment in Russia until there is better accounting of what has been done with billions of dollars in loans from the International Monetary Fund, much of which seems to have found its way into Swiss bank accounts.
Accelerating economic and social problems have caused ordinary Russians to lose faith in democracy and capitalism. Russia's turn away from the West has been speeded by the expansion of NATO - -- which Russians believe is aimed at hemming them in -- - and by NATO's war against their longtime ally, Serbia.
Russia has a presidential election next year. The ailing Yeltsin is retiring. The early favorite is Yeltsin's current prime minister, Vladimir Putin. But, increasingly, the real power behind the throne appears to be the military and secret police.
"Since the end of the Kosovo war, we have seen signs that Russia's military leaders were in control and acting independently of the administration," said STRATFOR, a private intelligence service. STRATFOR reported last week that the military forced the replacement of then Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin, who was something of a moderate, with Putin in August. Putin, an ex-KGB operative, supports the military's increasingly bloody efforts to suppress rebellions in Chechnya and Dagestan.
Russia is resisting American efforts to obtain new arms control agreements and has been talking with China and India about forming an anti-American alliance. Worst case scenario: A new Cold War.
Struggling republics
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics formally dissolved in December 1991 and divided into Russia and 15 other countries.
The Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were occupied by the Soviets at the beginning of World War II. They have stronger economies, more genuine democracies, and closer ties to the West than any of the other former Soviet republics.
The Caucasian republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia are racked by ethnic violence and international intrigue over oil and gas pipelines. Armenia and Azerbaijan are feuding over the region of Ngorno-Karabakh, technically part of Azerbaijan, but populated by Armenians. Between 1989 and 1994, Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a war that may have been as bloody as the conflict in Bosnia. Georgia has been beset with Russian-sponsored secessionist movements.
Muslim rebels inside Russia, in the Caucasian republics of Chechnya and Dagestan, are waging a guerrilla war for independence and are believed responsible for blowing up apartment buildings in Moscow and other Russian cities. Since Russia's most recent air war and invasion of Chechnya began in September, an estimated 3,000 civilians have been killed; 190,000 Chechens are thought to have fled the country.
Georgians and Azeris fear Russia may use the conflict to reassert control over the entire Caucasus. Armenia has been cooperating with the Russians. But Armenian politics was thrown into turmoil last month when ultranationalist gunmen assassinated the prime minister and other government officials.
The Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are populated, sparsely, chiefly by Turkic Muslims. Kazakhstan, Turmenistan and Uzbekistan have major reserves of petroleum and natural gas. The Central Asian republics, along with the Caucasian republics, have replaced Vienna and Berlin as centers of international intrigue. Russians, Chinese, Turks, Iranians, Saudis, Germans and Americans vie for influence.
Belarus has maintained closer ties to Russia than any of the other former republics. Last December, Yeltsin and Belarussian President Aleksandr Lukashenko signed agreements for even greater political and economic integration.
Ukraine was the breadbasket of the former Soviet Union, producing more than a quarter of Soviet agricultural output. Retention of Soviet-style political and economic structures has slowed growth, and the economy actually shrank last year.
As for tiny Molodova, it is populated chiefly by ethnic Romanians and may one day reach over to unite with that country.
Mixed bag of ex-satellites
It wasn't only the Soviet Union itself that broke up after the Cold War.
Czechoslovakia, which was officially created in what is now the student union at the University of Pittsburgh on Nov. 14, 1918, peacefully divided into the Czech Republic and Slovakia on New Year's Day, 1993.
If the United Nations handed out awards for bad moves, Slovakia's political leaders would be near the head of the line. Slovakia insisted on separating from what is now the Czech Republic, partly because of ethnic differences, partly because the Slovaks were less willing than the Czechs to move toward a market economy. While the Czech Republic was, until last year, one of the brightest stars in the former Warsaw Pact, the Slovakian economy has lagged. Slovakia hopes to join NATO and the European Union. It would have little chance except for geography. Without either Slovakia or Austria as a member, no other NATO nation borders on Hungary.
Of course, the most violent breakup in Eastern Europe has been that of the former Yugoslavia. Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia have been the biggest losers.
Slovenia, in June 1991, was the first Yugoslav republic to secede and the only one to get away without bloodshed. It has since been invited to apply for membership in the European Union.
Croatia also declared independence in June 1991, but had to fight a destructive six-month war with Serbia to make it stick. It is now better off outside the Yugoslav federation than it was within it.
When Bosnia held a referendum on independence in October 1991, Bosnian Serbs took up arms to partition the country along ethnic lines. The resulting civil war claimed an estimated 250,000 lives before it was concluded by the peace accords signed in Dayton, Ohio, in November 1995.
Macedonia declared independence in October 1991 and promptly got into a dispute with Greece, which claims the name. That argument was resolved four years later, and Greece lifted the economic embargo it had imposed on the new republic.
Macedonia largely escaped the troubles caused by the Bosnian war but could become destabilized as a result of the Kosovo war. Tens of thousands of ethnic Albanian refugees fled to Macdeonia, stimulating resentment and fear. More than a fifth of Macedonia's population was already ethnic Albanian, concentrated in the western third of the country. Some leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army would like to incorporate that portion of Macedonia, along with Kosovo, in a "Greater Albania."
Shattered Kosovo is likely to be one of the next new countries in the world. Officially, NATO considers Kosovo still to be a province of Serbia. But at the rate Serbs are leaving, there will be only ethnic Albanians remaining in a year's time.
Independence for Kosovo could lead to the breakup of Albania, or to civil war within it. Albanians are divided into two tribes: Tosks and Ghegs. The Tosks, from southern Albania, have been dominant. But Kosovar Albanians and Macedonian Albanians are Ghegs. A "Greater Albania" would be Gheg-dominated. The Tosks may prefer separation to subordination.
Montenegro -- all that remains, with Serbia, in rump Yugoslavia -- also might soon become a country. Montenegro elected a pro-Western president, Milo Djukanovic, in 1997. Djukanovic kept Montenegro neutral during the Kosovo war, despite intense pressure from Belgrade and outrage from Montenegrin Serbs. Last week, Montenegro announced it would make the German mark legal tender alongside the Yugoslav dinar.
Describing this as "the boldest move towards independence yet," the London Daily Telegraph said Montenegro's decision "will create a financial barrier between Montenegro and Serbia," and "aggravate the growing acrimony between the leadership of the two countries."
The biggest winner in East Europe is probably East Germany, which was incorporated into the most powerful economy in Europe. But even after nine years and the expenditure of more than $100 billion to bring eastern productivity and wages up to western standards, tensions between "Ossies" and "Westies" remain.
Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary also have done relatively well. All were admitted to NATO this year and have been invited to begin the process to join the European Union.
|
||||||||||||||||||||
