Author: United States Congress House Co East

Publisher:

Published: 2015-07-02

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 9781330556962

Excerpt from Collective Security in the Post-Cold War World The cold war is over, and the confrontation between the West and the Soviet Union has come to an end. This was not something that I expected to see in my lifetime, but it happened - and it happened much faster than anyone could have predicted. In December 1989, I was in Berlin with Congressman Richard A. Gephardt, the House Majority Leader. As we met with a wide range of East German and West German political leaders, all of us expected to see the eventual reunification of Germany, but all of us talked in terms of decades. As we all know, it was only a matter of months before Germany was united, and it was only a few months more until the Soviet Union ceased to exist. With this international transformation, we are seeing truly historic changes. We are witnessing the difficult struggle to establish democratic governments, pluralistic societies, and market-oriented economic systems in the republics that were formerly constituent parts of the Soviet Union. The former Soviet satellites in Central and Eastern Europe are eagerly pressing for membership in the European Community and asking to participate in NATO. While the conclusion of the cold war has brought an end to the great-power confrontation, it has not brought stability or tranquility. Rather it has brought unprecedented challenges to international peace and stability, and the principles which guided U.S. foreign policy for nearly half a century since the end of World War II are no longer valid in this new international order. We in the United States now confront serious - but very different - threats to our security and our national interests. Terrorism continues, but with new and more frightening manifestations, and without some of the restraints that the cold war confrontation imposed. We face terrorist regimes, like the Iraq of Saddam Hussein, which brutally conquered a smaller neighboring state and which nearly succeeded in developing weapons of mass destruction that threatened all of its neighbors. Unfortunately, Iraq is not unique. There are a number of other states - Iran, North Korea, Libya, and Syria to name only the most obvious ones - which are taking similar disturbing paths. In addition, we are facing increased violence of sub-state terrorism such as the Sendero Luminoso (the "Shining Path") in Peru and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Britain. The World Trade Center bombing in New York City raises troubling questions about the spread of the terrorist threat to our own nation. The United States and the international community face increased levels of inter-ethnic strife, like the tragic and bloody violence that has gripped the former Yugoslavia for nearly 2 years. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.