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Prospects for Peace
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20138 |
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MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
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2 / 1992 |
4,310 Words |
| Author
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Gen. Alexander M. Haig, Jr.
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On August 28, 1991, it was an honor to appear before the distinguished group of people who had gathered in Korea to launch the international Federation for World Peace. The men and women gathered there had made, and continue to make, the history of our times. Coming from more than forty countries, they constituted what the scientists call a critical mass of talent and experience.
As a young man four decades ago, I was sent to Korea to fight for its freedom. Today, through hard work and wise leadership, the people of the Republic of Korea have become a leading economic power and a staunch ally of freedom. Tragically, Korea is still a divided nation. But there is hope in that, even now, a hesitant dialogue has begun. Korean reunification cannot be the result of external prodding or naïve expectations, but it must come about as the result of necessary, fundamental change in the North.
We are fully aware of the events of the middle of August 1991 in the Soviet Union, where a fundamental, necessary change truly did take place. A coup that began as tragedy ended in farce. The coup makers started up the old an rusted machinery of repression. It roared for a little while and then broke down--permanently, we hope.
To make light of the sometimes bizarre events in Moscow, however, is not to belittle the stakes. If the coup had succeeded, I believe there would have been a civil war. And if the forces of repression had prevailed, the civil war would have been the prelude to a renewed could war, or worse. For there is enough of the debris of empire left in Europe an elsewhere for real trouble.
We must think also of the tragedy for the peoples of the Soviet Union just barely averted. Glasnost would have become propaganda, the Soviet Union itself would have remained a prison house of nations, and a failed ideology would have become once more the textbook for millions.
Worst of all, the truth of history would have been hidden. Yet another generation would have been condemned to wander in a moral abyss, for no national can live without the truth, especially about itself.
These events have many lessons to teach. One obviously is the desperate need for rule of law, constitutionality, political pluralism, and democratic procedures in the Soviet Union. But perhaps the most important of us is that ascertain humility is in order about forecasting
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