The World Today: July 2000: July 2000

How did Ethiopia so rapidly change the balance of power in its two-year dispute with neighbouring Eritrea? New tactics and strategy certainly caught Eritrea unawares. Continued success would also have an impact on Ethiopia’s internal affairs, as well as its regional role.

The new president is moving swiftly to put his own stamp on the power structures of Russia. But he is dealing with an age old problem and there is no guarantee that those at a local level will cooperate. In any event, it is much easier to destroy authority than to create it. President Vladimir Putin’s second week in office confirmed once and for all that Russia’s media and political class regard him as little less than a political wonder-worker. Their reaction to his assault on regional power was astonishing in its credulity.

The Common Foreign and Security Policy has developed slowly in the European Union. It is still weak, because it is an area in which the member states are rightly jealous of their national prerogatives. There are distinct limits on how far they want to go in pooling their capacity, and on how much they want to spend. But in recent years they have begun to fashion a policy which can be more than just declaratory. It is a policy which will allow us to promote global stability.

In the opening months of the new century, the political news from Latin America has been disheartening. This has spurred another outbreak of that ‘whither democracy?’ media commentary that seems to favour stark pessimism over bland optimism, on the assumption that the former might sound like realism while the latter can appear to be naïveté.

The longstanding conflict in the north east of Sri Lanka appears to be reaching a critical juncture. Whilst renewed fighting is hardly unusual in this seventeen year war between the Tamil Tigers and Sri Lankan security forces, the scale and direction of current battles suggest that the Tigers may be close to victory, if their leadership cares to see it that way. The rapid reverse in government fortunes presents dilemmas all round.

Russia and Germany Reborn: Unification, the Soviet, Collapse, and the New Europe by Angela E Stent
Published by Princeton University Press, 1999