The Changing World Order (Written on Live Journal on June 13, 2008)

I still recall that much publicized picture of Boris Yeltsin (the erstwhile President of Russia) in the year 1990-91 when he stood over a tank top and made some so-called historic announcements which paved the way for the disintegration of USSR. Michael Gorbachev, the leader who hasted the reforms, was soon turned into a matter of history and Yeltsin desired to go westward and embraced principles of open economy. As Pundit Nehru said, "The forces in a capitalist society, if left unchecked, tend to make the rich richer and the poor poorer." And Russia (leaving the other 14 sister countries which were under heavy influence of Russia) was moving towards the similar situation. All of a sudden the whole of media backed by the free-economy nations like the USA and Britain declared the death of communism and socialism. Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Bulgaria - the whole block perished and at the same time Michael Gorbachev, sensing some crisis in the economy of USSR planned Glasnost (openness) to overcome the crisis. The countries, which looked at the communist block of Eastern Europe as their savior and the only resistance to the American economic dictatorship, were in total dark. There were many things at stake. World order was tilting towards unipolar world and America was piped as its boss - an undisputed don to implement its ideas.

The emergence of China as a force to reckon with is as recent a phenomenon as 1998-99. Before that China was also looking up to USSR as a natural ally and supporter. What I mean while saying all this is the whole of communist block was under a severe threat of being extinguished. And the forces working towards it were pouring in money, men and all sorts of other help to make it happen. And it happened the way America liked it. The moment Gorbachev decided to withdraw Russian forces from Afghanistan, it was quite evident that American pressure was mounting up and the fall of Eastern European communist block fueled the fire. First, the fall of Berlin wall, then the freedom struggles and internal conflicts in the small communist block nations and finally the disintegration of Russia in favor of openness put a full stop on any practical example on communism in the world with China, Vietnam, Cuba and a few more smaller exception.

The poor of Russia and other countries perished. America was laughing. It was a reason for the USA to be in a celebrative mode. The resistance to its economic dominance was withering away. The weapon-factory of the world was about to become the sole distributors of instruments of destruction. The economic dependence of weaker nations on America was on a steep rise. And all this was good for a nation which always wanted an overall dominating role for itself. The erstwhile comrades, who somehow got convinced about the so-called benefits of open markets, were all looking up to America now. And at the same time, the still existing communist countries were worried about their subjugation.

Now there was no one to ask America about justifying its rationale for controlling the world oil resources - the one and only thing which kept and still keeps American leadership awake at night. The fast diminishing natural resource which is fortunately not found much in America remains its top priority followed by weapon sales and loan disbursements. By way of having control over the gulf and west Asian countries, America as it is rules the roost and then post the disintegration of the USSR it started dominating the rest of the resources cruelly. Another good reason for America to rejoice was the visible end of the cold war between itself and the whole of communist regime. America was waging a (both directly and indirectly) gruesome war on the whole of communist block to arrest the growth of Marxist philosophy and stay ahead in damaging the bipolarity of the world order. People's Republic of China was the only sizable nation who could have put a brave front to American plots and CIA's plans to enslave the vulnerable, fragile and weaker communist nations who were looking out for economic and other kinds of aids to sustain themselves. But it remained true for a large part of the period (1990-2000) that America and its smaller allies didn't find any strong resistance from any other nation. While the smaller states of disintegrated Soviet Union were busy fighting for their survival, the bigger states were making historic blunders by opening up their markets for the capitalist forces and thus becoming natural victims of oppressive American economic game plan.

Similar to an epidemic, this untimely disintegration was proving very nasty to the whole of communist block. Only after the incident occurred that the countries realized they were heading for a big trouble. Be it food requirements, infrastructural needs, capital investments to sustain the public works all started crumbling and as a result conflicting groups got indulged into in-fighting. America, as ever, was enjoying all of these sad incidents.

But as evolution is the name of life, America and its entire allied forces forgot that new forces were taking shape in the world order. These forces were, to some extent, the result of American oppression at some point. If not oppression then at least economic atrocities were the reasons for this new build up. If nothing of the above then dominance of oil resources were becoming the order of the day. And there was certainly a simmer in the whole ecosystem wherein America was creating a laundry list of enemies and forces which could ultimately become fierce and troublesome for it.

Part two of this write up will talk about that new communist block and the changing dynamics of world order and the oil politics.