For more than 40 years, the United States and Soviet Union glared at each other over the chasm of the Cold War - two superpowers with the nuclear weaponry to annihilate each other and the rest of the world along with them. As fearful as it was, there was a certain chilly stability to it.
But with the collapse of the Soviets and the end of the Cold War, chaos seems to have broken out instead of peace. In nearly 50 places around the globe, ethnic and religious wars are being fought, sometimes with greater, sometimes lesser intensity.For example, just this week:
- Security troops in India have surrounded Kashmir's holiest shrine, the Hazratbal mosque where armed Muslim separatists are threatening to blow up the building. The occupiers are demanding that the Muslim state of Kashmir be allowed to secede from mostly Hindu India.
Rumors that the shrine had been burned caused Muslim rioters in nearby Pakistan to set fire to three Hindu temples. This is not a small thing. Similar troubles with Sikh insurgents in 1984 led to the assassination of India Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by some of her own Sikh bodyguards. Since 1990, thousands have been killed in several other Indian regions where secessionist movements have sprung up. There is potential for enormous bloodshed.
- Local troops in the former Soviet republic of Georgia have been routed in a series of battles with rebels from the region of Abkhazia and are desperately trying to regroup. The Muslim rebels seek independence from Georgia or union with Russia. The entire Georgian republic is threatened with disintegration.
- In remote southeastern Turkey, a rebellion of Kurdish insurgents has flared again and is having more success. The rebels are seeking an ethnic state or region that recognizes their separate identity and are engaged in terrorist attacks as well as open warfare. About 10 million to 12 million people, one-fifth of Turkey's population, are Kurds. Kurdish minorities also live in Iraq, Iran and Syria where they are viewed as potential troublemakers and are often politically and economically repressed.
- Fighting and "ethnic cleansing" continues in Bosnia, despite the presence of United Nations' peacekeepers and repeated cease-fires agreed to by Serbian attackers.
That's just the headlines from one day. Killing continues at dozens of other trouble spots, although on a smaller scale at the moment. But that situation can and does change almost weekly.
What this means for the United States is that being the world's only military superpower is not enough to impose order and stability around the globe. As has been learned recently in places like Somalia and Haiti, there are limits on how and where U.S. power can be used.
That does not mean America should turn its back on the world and focus only on domestic matters. That would be a tragedy. But the country must develop some kind of consistent policy about dealing with local and regional uprisings. Otherwise, Washington will find itself rushing from one fire to another and signaling a confusing mixture of "charge" and "retreat." There has already been too much of that.