But nothing was done–except, belatedly, in Haiti–and the brutal fact was that no country really wanted to make the huge commitments that would be required to do anything effective. For 1994 has been, among the major nations, a year of retreat from the world. This is not, as some would have it, a new isolationism. In fact, the global sense of economic interdependence has never been stronger: businessmen scurried around the world forging new alliances and making new deals. But governments were another matter entirely, A curtain of national preoccupation fell around most of the world’s political capitals, and domestic concerns were the order of the day. Washington was transfixed by the sudden onset of Republicans in the Congress. Moscow was sorting through the wreckage of the old Soviet state and trying to repair Russia’s battered national pride. Germany was recuperating from a major operation the graft of two nations that turned out to be more mismatched than expected. Japan was stumbling through a slow economic recovery and the transition to an unpredictable new electoral system. And China–never known to waste much of its energy on foreigners – was hurtling through a runaway boom.
GIVEN ALL THESE DISTRACTIONS, IT’S PROBABLY not surprising that the effort to do something about Bosnia was so badly botched. And in retrospect, it’s not at all clear that anything the Western nations might have done – short of an all-out armed intervention that none of them was willing to undertake–would have stopped this war; it springs from ancient hatreds that outsiders can’t suppress or assuage. What is clear is that half measures like arras embargoes and so-called “safe areas” have very likely prolonged it. The blue helmets have helped relieve some of the horrors in Sarajevo, but their very presence reinforces the stalemate that makes the siege go on–and this is hardly a favor to the beleaguered citizens. What lies at the heart of the miscalculations about Bosnia is a kind of sentimentality to which the West is particularly prone. We rush to make humanitarian gestures without thinking very much about the consequences. When confronted by the spectacle of human suffering, we feel an immediate impulse to try to help. When the suffering occurs in a war zone, the only way to send help is under cover of an armed force. And when an armed force is sent, it inevitably gets drawn into the battle but lacks the strength to stop it. This is what happened to the United States in Somalia, and it’s what’s happening to the United Nations in Bosnia. In Haiti, the United States has plunged deeply into Haitian politics, with uncertain prospects of extracting itself.
One reason the Clinton administration finally decided to go into Haiti was to stop the tide of refugees trying to float to safety in Florida. Immigration has grown into one of the hottest political issues in the West, and 1994 may be recorded as the Year of the Slamming Door. France, alarmed by a surge of North Africans, tried to shut its gates with tight new laws. “When we have sent home several planeloads, even boatloads and trainloads, the world will get the message. We will close our frontiers,” said Interior Minister Charles Pasqua. California voters approved a proposal to cut off free education, nonemergency health care and other social services to illegal aliens–despite warnings that this was probably unconstitutional. And the newly empowered Republicans began talking about chopping off welfare for legal aliens as well and slashing foreign aid. It was not a good year to be an Outsider.
Nor was it a happy time for government Insiders. Washington was not the only capital where elected officials felt the hot breath of angry voters. In London, political columnists despaired about having to write another piece on how weak and hopeless John Major is – and then went ahead and wrote it. Boris Yeltsin has descended from hero to goat in the space of about two years. Japan’s Tomiichi Murayama, a socialist running a right-wing government, warmed a chair while a major party realignment worked itself out in inchmeal Japanese fashion. China’s Deng Xiaoping was, for all practical purposes, dead.
The vogue for corporate “downsizing” seemed finally to be spreading to the public sector. In Washington, entire departments trembled as Democrats vied with Republicans to see who would play bureaucratic executioner. Skepticism about government touched even agencies long thought to be effective–for example, the Federal Reserve. Its efforts to halt the dollar’s slide were quickly overwhelmed in the! currency markets. Its attempts to rein in the galloping U.S. economy–six interest-rate increases in 1994–appeared to have little effect. Alan Greenspan began to look a bit like the Great and Terrible Oz. Beijing declared that the Chinese economy was overheating badly, but could do virtually nothing to cool it down. Governments’ levers of economic control were beginning to look rather puny in the enormous, and highly internationalized, modern marketplace.
But no one seemed to mind. The world in – particularly the parts of it that used to be called communist–was hellbent on making money. Russians bearing suitcases full of cash bought flashy limousines in Moscow and sunny villas in Italy. Young Chinese embraced the new religion of getting rich. Fidel Castro welcomed foreign investors and opened up a free market for some farm products. Free-trade zones were all the rage: hardly had NAFTA taken effect than the Pacific Rim countries announced they would build one of their own, and then all the Western Hemisphere nations said they wanted one, too.
And what if occasionally the markets spun out of control? Economists warned darkly about the dangers of the exotic new financial instruments called “derivatives.” So great was the leverage, and so slight the understanding of what derivatives really represented, that vast amounts could be lost by the unwary. And that is exactly what happened in Orange County, Calif., the hugely rich district south of Los Angeles. The county treasurer, who manages its funds, bet heavily on derivatives. He lost $1.5 billion, and the county was forced into bankruptcy. Another government fiasco.
Antigovernment crusaders, though, began to show a tendency to carry things too far. In Italy, the Clean Hands expose of corruption in government and business was pressed so relentlessly that it may kill the patient in order to cure the disease. The investigating magistrates have become heroes of the people, but their intimidating tactics have also caused a couple of suicides. History lesson for the men in black robes: Savonarola was eventually hanged and his body burned.
Wretched Excess abounded throughout the year. In almost any news story carrying the letters O and J in dose proximity. In a British television program that–it had to happen sometime–denounced Mother Teresa; her sin was that she is a Roman Catholic and opposes birth control. In the World Cup soccer final, where Brazil and Italy played to a 0-0 tie, then struggled through 80 exhausting minutes of scoreless overtime before finally settling matters with a penalty-kick shoot-out won by Brazil.
AND, YES, A LOT OF GOOD THINGS HAPPENED, TOO. Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as president of South Africa, completing one of the most remarkable (and remarkably well-managed) political transformations that any country has undergone. In the Middle East and in Northern Ireland, there were hopeful signs that intractable struggles might be moving gradually toward an end. In the Philippines, after decades of either corrupt or incompetent rule, the economy perked up nicely under President Fidel Ramos. North Korea did not deploy nuclear weapons. Mexico held a clean election.
Some of the most welcome news of 1994 came from Australia. Gilbert’s potoroo, a small, furry marsupial thought to have been extinct for 125 years, turned up alive and well in a southwestern nature reserve. And in a national park west of Sydney, an even more exciting find was made: 39 pine trees closely related to a type that grew 150 million years ago. Jurassic Tree! A good omen for our next 150 million years.
