Einzelstück 4 - Perestroika: Global Challenge. Our Common Future

The 1970s and 1980s have been dominated by two overpowering questions. First, there has been a crisis in militarism, expressed in a runaway arms race which, until very recently, appeared impossible to restrain. During the same years, monetarism and economic recession ended the postwar Keynesian world settlement. In the developed world, unemployment rose with severe structural decline in many countries, promoting grave tensions. Today, in a combination of slump and debt, the world economy is disintegrating. Meanwhile, Africa is wracked by drought, disease, debt and deprivation. Latin America is deep in crisis with unpayable debts and cuts in trade and living standards which threaten the stability of its new democracies. On a global scale these disasters correspond with a growing menace to the environment. The drive to pay off debts imperils more and more of the rain forests which have been the world's lungs. The destruction of primal forest eliminates entire species of plant and animal life, but it is our own species which will be at risk if we do not find out how to co-operate to stop all this destruction and spoliation. These crises, and the crisis of militarism, are all linked together. Together they also show up another crisis, in democratic institutions, all of which have grown up within national boundaries, and now find themselves faced by global problems. More and more frequently politicians and specialists alike have been brought up against these problems. That is why the important statements about them are nowadays invariably international in character. The Brandt Reports on the world economy, and the Socialist International's Global Challenge, have set the trend, now followed in the awe-inspiring Brundtland Report on environmental dangers, Our Common Future. Or we should recall the Palme report on Common Security. Today the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, has picked up these challenges, in a far sighted and thought provoking paper on the future of the United Nations. This book seeks to explore the common ground between all these important initiatives, to see whether people can begin to join their forces, not only to maintain disarmament and peace, but also to create a world fit to live in. (Klappentext)