For more than four decades, the Cold War divided the world into two hostile camps contesting for power and sovereignty on every continent. The "One World" proposed by Wendell Willkie, Jean Monnet, and other visionaries of the 1940s seemed an impossible dream. But now, with the ending of the Cold War, nations and peoples are wondering whether at long last it is possible to build, in Ted Koppel's words, a “world without walls.” Twice before in this century, after World War I and again after World War II, Western nations tried and failed to construct an international organization that would ensure global peace. The League of Nations was doomed before it held its first meeting because it was primarily and Anglo-French-American invention, retaining the old imperialist attitudes under a new title. The League also took insufficient account of the urgent needs of Asia and did not seek any meaningful solution of the economic problems of the world.
The United Nations was born out of the blood, sweat, and tears of World War II; out of a conviction that the key to international peace was international understanding; out of a belief, flowing from the Enlightenment, that politics and people could be changed through education and reason - but Western education and reason. The United Nations soon became a pawn of the Cold War forces of communism and democracy. Ideology supplanted idealism as the organization's guiding principle. The Security Council was paralyzed by the Soviet Union's constant use of the veto. Members of the General Assembly spent more time denouncing each other and posturing for the international media than attempting to implement the inspiring words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. A decade after founding of the United Nations, colonialism still held away in many nations of Asia and Africa.
But today, in this post-Cold War era, men and women of all political, economic, and cultural systems are coming together as never before, helped by the unique combination of global trends that have occurred in the last decade of the 20th century. These trends include: economic cooperation, the ever-increasing speed of communications, the call to environmentalism, and the political merging of nations and even regions.
These are truly revolutionary times. The Cold War is ending after 40 years of hostility and suspicion. The arms race has slowed to a Sunday afternoon stroll. Once-communist countries are implementing democratic reforms and free market systems. Continents that were locked in protracted conflict are now joined in cooperative ventures. Nations that were hopelessly divided are now uniting.
Looking back on the remarkable and unpredicted changes of the last five years, we can now see that they almost had to be. Mikhail Gorbachev had no other choice but to implement glasnost and perestroika or risk revolution from lower decks of the Soviet Empire. Communist satellites in Eastern Europe had to abandon their command economies or risk becoming Third World beggars.
At the same time, the irrepressible human desire for freedom evidenced itself in inspiring works like Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, acts of conscience like Andrei Sakharov's hunger strike, and acts of courage like the Chinese students demonstrating for democracy in Tiananmen Square. Indeed, all over the world, men and women risked their lives for liberty - in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, South Africa, and
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