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The World Today
July 1998
The World Wide Fund for Nature called 1997 ‘the year the world caught fire.’ Time has moved on but the burning continues. In the last twelve months large-scale fires have been reported in more than ten countries and at least 50 thousand square kilometres of forest has gone up in smoke: the environmental, social and economic consequences are profound. At worst there could be a catastrophic cycle of environmental decline, at best we should husband these scarce resources.
Stephen Howard is Senior Forest Officer at The World Wide Fund for Nature.
‘It is not Suharto that is wrong with this country. What is wrong with this country is everything!’ The words of Bishop Belo of East Timor, the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize winner, confirm the feelings of many that Indonesia is now at a turning point in its post-war history.
Dr. Peter Carey is Vice-President of Trinity College, Oxford and specialises on Southeast Asia. Amongst his recent works are East Timor at the Crossroads: The Forging of a Nation (London: Cassell, 1995).
The announcements of nuclear tests by India and Pakistan immediately generated scenes of intense enthusiasm in both countries: they are clearly seen as a defining moment in Indo-Pakistan relations. The stimulus appears to have been a Pakistani missile test and domestic political developments in India. Both countries indicated that they are going to use such devices for weapons and deploy them on delivery systems. However, for analysts attempting to evaluate the consequences, the situation is less clearly defined: we appear to be in the territory of smoke and mirrors. It has left the international community in significant difficulties over its response.
John Simpson is Director of the Mountbatten Centre for International Studies at the University of Southampton.
The nuclear reprocessing plant at Dounreay in Scotland is to be progressively closed on safety and economic grounds. German nuclear shipments to Britain and France have also been halted after the discovery of high radiation levels. These moves focus new attention on a process which might reduce the world’s growing mountain of dangerous nuclear waste while generating energy from a safer reactor. Such a remarkable development could help limit the proliferation of nuclear weapons, but its new fuel may ignite fresh debates about mining.
Bob van der Zwaan is a physicist (CERN) and an economist (Cambridge) and is currently researching at the Institut Francais des Relations Internationales, Paris (IFRI).
Russia has not been doing well; its stock-market performance is the world’s worst, tax reforms are overdue, a major privatisation has failed and unscrupulous businessmen go unpunished. Can the new government make the country an attractive place for foreigners to invest?
Dr Anders Åslund is Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.
Australia and its place in the world are changing. There’s a chance the country will enter the new millennium as a Republic, ending the link to the British crown. One of its independent MPs, Pauline Hanson is five times better known in Asia than the Prime Minister John Howard. Her notoriety is because of her racist comments and the damage she is allegedly doing to Australia’s links with Asia. In the June Queensland State election, her newly-formed One Nation Party attracted 23 per cent of the primary vote and it is now the third largest in the State parliament. It is the first time for 21 years that a new party has broken the major party stronghold in the lower houses of parliament on the Australian mainland — and 44 years since such a newcomer has had more than one MP in the house. This is a startling achievement for a person who, until recently, ran a fish and chip shop in Queensland and had little political experience.
Keith Suter is Co-Director of Studies at the International Law Association (Australian Branch).
It’s been portrayed as a battle between two African nations for territory of no strategic importance. But the conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia has deep roots in the movements that now rule those countries. What’s more Washington’s new policies for the continent threaten to explode in the fighting.
Martin Plaut is with BBC World Service and an Associate Fellow of Chatham House.
Following the resounding ‘Yes’ votes in the May referendums on a political future for Northern Ireland, an enduring peace looks more possible than at any time in the recent past. Some are even daring to calculate whether there could be a peace dividend if the guns were laid down.
William Hopkinson is Head of the International Security Programme at Chatham House. He was previously Assistant Under Secretary (Policy) at the Ministry of Defence in London.
The Commanding Heights: The Battle Between Government and the Marketplace That Is Remaking The Modern World. By Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw. Published by Simon and Schuster, London.
Lord Skidelsky is professor of political economy at Warwick University. His book, The World After Communism was published by Macmillan in 1995 (American edition, The Road from Serfdom, 1996).