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Commentary on the World Scene
The end of a decade is conventionally an occasion for a retrospective assessment of the past and efforts to discern what is in store for the future. The 1970s, by all accounts, have been the most troubled decade for the world since the end of World War II. The global crisis of the seventies has dismissed the easy optimism of modern times in regard to world peace, progress, and advancement in the future. Indeed, the evidence of the seventies is so compelling that most of us are convinced that the era of world peace and uninterrupted progress is over, and that we are launching into a new cycle of global chaos and disintegration. Thus, the eighties could be the continuation or a worsening of world events in the seventies.
In the last decade, we saw the oscillation between governments that were militarily oppressive, militarily populist, and civilian populist sweeping across Latin America and the African Continents. Threats to the security of non-Communist Southeast Asia came from internal Communist subversion, as in the Vietnamese attack on Kampuchea (Cambodia), and from direct foreign aggression, as in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Moreover, the seventies have clearly pointed out that Communism is not a monolithic movement uniting all the countries which profess this ideology, and that it is the element of nationalism and not Communist ideology which is the strongest motivating force behind today's turmoil.
Undeniably, many advanced countries are also going through the pains of political instability, chronic inflation, and rising unemployment. On the economic front, it is difficult for us to hold a sanguine view about the eighties. The world economic prospects for this decade are gloomy, and the oil world now appears more threatening than ever. Yet the rich advanced countries will be able to ride the tides of such a crisis better than the poorer nations and will be able to recuperate and emerge once again when the crisis ends. The Third World countries, unfortunately, are often so weak and dependent upon the advanced societies that...