The times they are a-changin

• Published in: The Jerusalem report 1992-01, p.38
• Main Author: Bar-On, Hanan
• Format: Magazinearticle
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0792-6049

Less dramatic but not less important events also bear witness to the crumbling of the old. For the Middle East, the Madrid and Washington talks have put an end to the Arabs' Khartoum doctrine of "no peace, no recognition and no negotiations" with Israel. In South Africa, the talks between government and black majority started, signaling the emergence of a different, and as yet unknown, society. In the Far East, Japan decided not to offer an apology to the United States on the 50th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, thereby reasserting its political power. In Yugoslavia, a "dirty" war continues on the very doorstep of Western Europe. In perhaps the least noticed development, the United Nations has passed a resolution establishing the office of a relief coordinator. The move breaches the doctrine of non-interference in the internal affairs of states by empowering the coordinator to provide relief if in his opinion a disaster has occurred - if need be, regardless of the view of the government involved. In short, we are witnessing a crisis of governance as we have known it for the past two centuries. The future behavior of existing states is unpredictable. Nor is it clear whether such profound change will result in a cataclysmic event, as it did nearly a century ago, when the crumbling of the old order led to a catastrophic world war. It took an even worse war until a new order emerged and that order was made hollow, practically at its inception, by the inventiveness of the human mind. Nuclear weapons and satellites made the new order brittle even as it emerged between 1945 and the early 60s, when so many new states gained their independence.