(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
[Moscow, Russia] A global crisis mood has recently prevailed over conditions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo. Like the crisis in the loan market, this has shown us how vulnerable the global financial system is.
We are increasingly seeing how reluctant we are to adapt to the interdependence that globalization brings. Among the many actors in the global arena, such as the multinational corporations and the non-governmental organizations (NGOs), it is the governments of the independent states that bear the greatest responsibility – both for the problems and for finding the solution to them. Their attitude has nevertheless been the biggest disappointment.
We need a unified vision of how to solve the political, economic and environmental challenges facing the world today. But it is difficult to achieve such a consensus in a political atmosphere without a moral approach. An example of this lack of morale: In 2000, the UN General Assembly adopted eight Millennium Goals. Within 2015, the international community committed to halving the number of poor people living on less than a dollar a day and reducing mortality among children under four years by two-thirds. Today we are halfway to 2015, and new UN reports warn that we will not succeed unless the developed countries actually provide the help they have promised.
The Millennium Development Goals may suffer the same fate as the environmental commitments from the Rio de Janeiro conference in 1992. Ironically, NGOs have done more to help the environment and the world's poorest than the governments themselves.
There are three reasons for this crisis: The first is that globalization has been a spontaneous and blind process, which has mainly benefited the rich. The second reason is the change in the political elites of the 1990s, and the inability of the new leaders to master this process. The third is the collapse of the Soviet Union, which tore down one of the pillars of the world order.
Today's crisis is above all a crisis of confidence. Confidence was a crucial prerequisite for ending the Cold War and the nuclear race. At the Malta Summit in 1989, First President Bush and I declared that our nations were no longer enemies. This led to the abolition of thousands of rockets and cuts in military budgets.
But in both the United States and Russia, there are now many who claim it was not confidence that ended the Cold War, but a deception. One side outnumbered the other and triumphed.
We must not allow the events of the late 1980s to be forgotten and distorted. Since 2002, US security policy has been a complete turning away from this line, in that the nation now wants military supremacy over any potential opponent. But why should the war on terror demand the entire arsenal of American weapons? Why should the still hypothetical Iranian missile threat be answered with defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic? And that at a time when it is claimed that the United States will use military force to confront Iran before the end of 2008.
It is the expression of the same gross public opinion that led to the disaster in Iraq. But it is not just US relations with Russia or Iran that are at stake here. Other countries, including China, India, Brazil and South Africa, are following and drawing their conclusions.
The foreign policy of these emerging centers of power will be influenced by whether the United States chooses unilateralism or multilateral cooperation when dealing with the problems of today's world.
The logic of today's geopolitical wars is a mockery of the complexity of the real world. A Machiavellian policy combined with power arrogance is the last thing we need in the 21st century.
