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October 1999
The medieval barbarity of the Indonesian special forces—Kopassus—and the pro-autonomy militias, their paid assassins in East Timor, has pushed Indonesia to the brink of political and economic catastrophe. It has exposed the rottenness that lies at the heart of that society and turned the country into an international pariah.
Peter Carey is Laithwaite Fellow and Tutor at Trinity College, Oxford, specialising in the modern history and politics of Indonesia and East Timor.
This has been a tough year for Russia watchers. President Boris Yeltsin has sacked two governments for reasons ill-comprehended by Westerners, who are used to more predictable political behaviour. NATO’s operation in the Balkans whipped up anti-Western, and especially anti-American, feeling to a frenzy comparable to the days of the Cold War. Although the IMF bailout package arrived just in time to avert sovereign default, more than a few questions remain as far as the economic future is concerned. And now a series of bombs in Moscow has left hundreds dead and produced a state of high anxiety.
What are Russia’s prospects? What kind of consequences both domestically and internationally is the current period of instability likely to have? These are the questions, which are frequently asked these days, adding up to the all time favourite: who will be the next master of the Kremlin?
Konstantin Eggert is a senior correspondent and analyst with the BBC Russian Service in Moscow. He was previously Diplomatic Correspondent of Izvestia.
Since the end of the war in Chechnya three years ago, international attention has switched away from the Caucasus. Only the occasional kidnapping or murder of foreigners put the spotlight back on the region. Now attacks into Dagestan have unleashed a bitter conflict, and a series of bombs in Moscow has left Russians worried that they may become victims of this faraway war.
In the last decade, the North Caucasus region has transformed from a provincial, but slightly exotic, backwater to the scene of the worst turmoil and violence in the new Russia. It became known to outsiders, not so much for the austere beauty of its mountains, but as the place where six Red Cross workers were murdered, British and New Zealander engineers beheaded, journalists and aid workers kidnapped and where Islam gradually emerged as a viable political force. Russians know it for summary justice and public executions, for polygamy and bride kidnappings, for acts of terror, which accompany most political undertakings, and for bloody confrontations between its peoples.
Dr Anna Matveeva is a Research Fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House. Her paper, The North Caucasus—Russia’s Fragile Borderland, was published by Chatham House in August.
In terms of their temporal characteristics, earthquakes must be one of the most destructive natural phenomena. A large magnitude earthquake probably lasts twenty to thirty seconds, and leaves communities reeling for perhaps a decade or longer. Society, though, often ignores the danger and lessons are often learnt only partially, and certainly short-term. The quakes in Turkey, Greece and Taiwan are unlikely to change that.
Recent events in turkey have emphasised that developing communities ignore the danger of earthquakes at their peril. Some three weeks after the shock, the confirmed death toll had topped 15,000, with as many as 30,000 still unaccounted for, presumed buried under the rubble. Turkey is left with a reconstruction bill of seven to ten billion US dollars, 600,000 homeless and 15,000 injured to look after.
Amr Elnashai is Head of engineering, seismology and earthquake engineering at Imperial College, London.
The arrival in Britain of hundreds of Kosovar refugees has created fear and hostility. This is not just a British phenomenon: across Europe people are looking at new ways of dealing with mass migration and border controls. Rising numbers of asylum applications and concerns about illegal immigration are forcing political leaders to act, and for once it is an agenda shared by European voters.
Immigration, asylum and border control policies have come to dominate the European political agenda and a majority of the public prefers European Union (EU) level decision-making on these issues.
These topics will feature strongly when EU leaders meet in Tampere in Finland on 15/16 October to discuss the way ahead for Justice and Home Affairs cooperation. Media and academic circles have paid the extraordinary summit only scant attention. Preparations have been low-key and carried out in relative secrecy.
Charlotte Lindberg Clausen of the Centre of International Studies, Cambridge University, edits the Cambridge Review of International Affairs.
Have the Asian economies, so recently in terminal decline, bounced back to miraculous recovery? Or are we seeing a short-term upswing fuelled by consumer demand in the United States? And is it international financial arrangements that need reform, rather than crony capitalism?
Over the past two years students of East Asian political economy will have been struck by the rapid mood swings in their area. A wander through a Singapore bookshop in 1997 would have offered titles like Negotiating the Pacific Century, or The New Rich in Asia: Mobile Phones, McDonald’s and Middle-Class Revolution or The New Asian Renaissance. A year on, these volumes, if not on special offer, gave way to titles like Asia Falling or The Downsizing of Asia, often by the same authors.
From being miracle economies demonstrating a variety of good practices—long-term technocratic planning, high domestic savings rates, good basic education, low or non-existent welfare costs and close government-business links—they had been transformed into basket cases.
Dr David Martin Jones is Senior Lecturer in Government at the University of Tasmania.
Dr Mike Smith is Lecturer in the Department of War Studies, King’s College, London.
In few countries is it so difficult to disentangle triumphs from tragedies as in the People’s Republic of China during the past fifty years. In the case of few countries is it so important to do so and arrive at a sober analysis of what the past half century has meant for the world’s most populous nation and its implications for the next century.
The beginning—but only the beginning—of wisdom in these matters is to acknowledge the Chineseness of the Chinese Revolution and that, while the engaging idea that the Communist regime is just another dynasty does not stand up to close scrutiny, much about the ‘new’ China Mao Zedong founded on 1 October 1949, has not proved very new at all.
Graham Hutchings was China Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph from 1987-1998, based in Beijing and Hong Kong. His book, Modern China: A Companion to a Rising Power will be published by Penguin next year.
Whatever the popular perception abroad, the political agenda in Iran today is dominated by reformists. Right wing factions may still control some key institutions, but they have definitively lost the political initiative and are increasingly aware of their weakening grip on public opinion. Nothing illustrates this better than the reformist domination of the media.
A regular visitor cannot but be astonished by the rapidity of social, and in many cases political changes, which have affected Iranian society over the past few years. These range from the environmental—the beautification of the city of Tehran—to ambitious attempts to change ingrained cultural habits, especially on the road. Yet nothing better exemplifies the transformation of Iranian life than its flourishing newspapers and journals, and the sheer energy of the political debate. Those with long enough memories say they have not seen anything like it since the 1940s.
Dr Ali Ansari is an Associate Fellow of the Middle East Programme at Chatham House and has just returned from a study visit to Iran.
In the quest for political, economic and social change, the Venezuelan electorate has voted four times since November 1998. Most recently, the choice of 131 representatives to a National Constituent Assembly on 25 July qualifies as one of the most important events in the country’s political history since 1958. The Assembly is responsible for drafting a new constitution and, according to President Hugo Chavez, who was elected last December, producing the political, economic and social changes promised during his presidential campaign. Although reform of the Constitution of 1961 had been on the political agenda for years, the lack of political will to undertake it has contributed to the breakdown the country is facing.
After leading a failed coup in February 1992, Hugo Chavez moved into an unprecedented position of leadership, casting himself in the tradition of the country’s founder, Simon Bolivar. His menacing, anti-establishment rhetoric won him the popular acclaim he still retains after six months in office. The former Lieutenant Colonel made creating a National Assembly a central issue. He saw this as the only possible instrument to overhaul the entire Venezuelan political and judicial system, which is beset by inefficiency, corruption and cronyism.
Celina Romero is a free-lance consultant and researcher. She was previously at the Institute of European-Latin American Relations, Madrid.
For Panama, the turn of the year will be a more significant moment than for most nations. Its first woman president will preside over a completely sovereign country for the first time as the canal comes under local control.
When Mireya Moscoso, Panama’s new President, took office on 1 September she was no doubt hoping for a rather more secure tenure than that of her late husband. Moscoso is the widow of Anulfo Arias who held the post on no less than three occasions and was overthrown each time. Indeed, in the last instance in 1968, Arias was ousted by General Omar Torrijos, father of his widow’s closest electoral rival, Martin Torrijos.
Eamonn Mcguinness is associated with the Latin America Bureau, London, and specialises in Latin American Politics.