COLUMN: Century of arms races ends with one more

From Ronald Kim's, "The Wretched of the Earth," Fall '99 From Ronald Kim's, "The Wretched of the Earth," Fall '99Who could have imagined that in 1999, a small nation could defy the United States -- and get paid for its troubles? In the 1990s, North Korea has once again seized the international spotlight, this time for its launch of a nuclear test missile over northern Japan in September 1998. Instead of retaliating, Japan gave over a billion dollars in aid to Pyongyang last year, and the U.S. and South Korea donated large amounts of food to alleviate the lingering drought-induced food shortages there. Military power has served the North Koreans well. Threaten violence, and the big boys won't bother you. Is this the lesson of international politics at the end of the 20th century? That what has been true since the dawn of nations -- that military means are the only way to ensure sovereignty -- remains no less true today? Absolutely, to judge from the response to NATO's air war against Yugoslavia last spring. While NATO generals persisted in justifying their attack as the consensus of the "world community," non-Western countries began arming themselves as never before against the possibility that they, too, could be next on the list of potential targets. India and Pakistan justified their recent nuclear tests on grounds of self-defense against the possibility of future interventions by some Western power. In Ukraine, the first country to surrender its nuclear arsenal, the parliament voted to reopen talks with Russia with a view to reacquiring The Bomb. Russia's military, after years of post-Cold War decay, suddenly began reorganizing itself and pointed several of its thousands of nuclear warheads at Western capitals. Everywhere the foreboding was palpable, and the fear the same. If Yugoslavia, once a strong and respected nonaligned power with Europe's third-largest army, could fall under the crosshairs of the combined air forces of the Western powers, who could guarantee other nations' sovereignty? With international laws and treaties now worth less than the paper they're printed on, the answer was both simple and frightening -- each country was on its own. The leaders of these Third World countries, and many of their citizens, understood that conventional anti-aircraft defenses had been no guarantee for the Yugoslavs, let alone the hapless, silently starved and bombed Iraqis. As our onetime hero Mikhail Gorbachev angrily bemoaned to CNN, "You've started the next arms race!" Many will correctly observe that violence has been the hallmark of international politics throughout this bloodiest of centuries. During the Cold War, for instance, the U.S. and the Soviets sponsored numerous "proxy wars" around the globe, from the Caribbean to Central Africa to Southeast Asia. Yet after the showdown over the Cuban missile crisis, there emerged a new consensus: If the two superpowers didn't at least try to talk, they would end up destroying each other and the rest of the world. Plenty of fighting and acts of aggression would follow, but at least nuclear annihilation had been averted. Today, that relative balance of power has disappeared and much of the world finds itself in a situation potentially more dangerous than that of the trigger-happy European empires in the years before 1914. As the past 10 years have shown, the U.S. now has the power to determine the internal affairs of almost every other nation on earth, and to make life difficult at best for those who don't listen to its decrees. Just ask the citizens of Panama, Iraq, Somalia or the old Yugoslavia what price they had to pay because their leaders fell out of line with Washington's policies. Violence has been the lesson of our "century of progress." Peaceful coexistence with Russia and China? Negotiations with other countries and respect for the way they choose to run their own affairs? Outdated ideals from the bad old days, when we couldn't do exactly as we wanted. Even schoolchildren in the U.S. are finally taking this lesson to heart. Young boys in comfortable white middle-class suburbs are increasingly dealing with their issues, not by taking them out on their classmates, but by literally taking out their classmates. Is "the media" to blame? Of course, but not because of violence in the movies. These kids are just following what they see their leaders doing on TV. To paraphrase our president, we have taught our children "to solve their problems with arms, not with words." Nations behave like people precisely because they are run by people. The 20th century has seen enormous advances in the standards of living for many and unprecedented advances in civil and human rights for women, nonwhites and poor people worldwide. That should be reason enough to celebrate, even despite the hundreds of millions who have fallen victim to wars and famines. But with an international scene marked by lawlessness and growing militarization, the next century could be even deadlier for mankind than this one. For those who believe in a better way for world affairs, it's not too late to avert this fate. Otherwise, there is a very real possibility that there won't be anyone around to celebrate a hundred years from now.