Fall of Authoritarian Regimes

The year 1989 was one of those extraordinary years of modern history that deserves to be long remembered as an important watershed, alongside 1789, 1848, 1870, 1914, and 1945. The fabric of the Soviet Communist empire, longrotted but previously outwardly intact and even seemingly strong, suddenly tore to shreds. One by one, the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe fell; in every case save that of backwards and benighted Romania, the revolution was bloodless or nearly so. With them fell an era, the Cold War, and a wellunderstood system of world power relationships that had endured for nearly half a century.

Because the bloodless fall of authoritarian regimes to democratic movements was the dominant news scenario of the year, 1989 seemed to be not only a decisive year, but the happiest of all those great years listed above. Democracy was triumphant. One enthusiastic writer proclaimed the "end of history," meaning that while older troubles might endure for a little while in Third World backwaters, there was now no global intellectual challenge to liberal democracy. Symbol of the year was the breaching of the Berlin Wall, concrete emblem of authoritarian repression of the human spirit. Yes, the year did have its down moment  the massacres in and around Tienanman Square in Beijing  but this could be as merely a sad but temporary interruption in the world's progress.

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Kurds rudely preempted the victory specials. They nastily shoved their starving babies, dying of diaharrea, right in front of the TV cameras. Suddenly the Bush Administration found itself stuck. Even as troops were pulled out of southern Iraq, other U.S. soldiers had to be sent to northern Iraq, with no indication of when they might be able to leave again. Victory was tarnished in other ways as well. Even before the war, the U.S. was reduced to passing the tin cup to pay for it. This is not the sign of a superpower, which either pays its own way or commands  not begs  its subjectallies to carry its load. Meanwhile, at home, while the "education President" spins airy rhetoric about new experimental schools and nationwide testing, local school systems across the United States are caught in the full gale of an unprecedented budget crisis, firing teachers, cancelling programs. In short, what Krauthammer called "the unipolar moment" has turned out to be just that. President Bush and his political advisors understand perfectly well that the American people, having just "vanquished" Communism, are in no mood to undertake yet another long twilight struggle. Nor does the state of the American budget and econ
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Approximate Word count = 2518
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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