History’s
Wall
BY
JOHN CHERIAN
Western leaders extol the fall of the Berlin Wall on the 25th
anniversary of the event as a triumph of good over evil, but they are
noticeably silent about other walls that have come up either to keep people subjugated
or to prevent them from crossing borders. By JOHN CHERIAN
Germany
marked the 25th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall on November 9
with great pomp and pageantry. The streets of Berlin
were jam-packed with people gathered to mark the day that led to the
reunification of East and West Germany. As many as 8,000 lighted
balloons were released into the night sky as the music of Beethoven played in
the background. In attendance were stalwarts of
movements that led to the collapse of the socialist bloc, such as the
Solidarity leader Lech Walesa. The fall of the Wall has been
characterised as a triumph of good over evil, of democracy over dictatorship.
This myth-making has continued uninterrupted, with the
Western media and governments conveniently glossing over the facts that led to
the dismantling of the Wall and the ending of the Cold War.
The German Democratic Republic (GDR), as East Germany was known, was among the
most prosperous members of the socialist
bloc. The state had a well-developed economy which guaranteed full employment
and social security.
After
reunification, all economic, social and cultural vestiges of the socialist
state have been destroyed. Industries were either privatised or
closed down. Today, the eastern part of the country has the highest
unemployment rate, with more than 75 per cent of the
industries concentrated in the west. As a result, the eastern part has
witnessed steep depopulation. Young people have all headed to the
western part of the country to find employment. The population in the east has
decreased by more than 13 per cent since the time of
German reunification. The average gross income of a worker in the east is 25
per cent lower than his counterpart in the west of the country.
The “Der
Linke” Party, which is considered a successor to the East German Communist
Party, has been doing well in elections despite being
demonised in the German media. In fact, the Linke has been attracting voters
all over Germany. They have been winning seats in the German
Parliament in the past two decades. For the first time, the Linke is all set to
govern in the State of Thuringia. The Social Democrats
(SPD), which is part of the grand coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s
Christian Democrats (CDU), will be its coalition partner.
Until now, the two major left-of-centre parties and also the right of centre
have refused to join hands with the Linke. During the 25th
anniversary celebrations, the Linke and its leadership was subjected to abuse
and ridicule for their alleged nostalgia for the former GDR.
Western
triumphalism: Gorbachev
Mikhail
Gorbachev, the former President of the Soviet Union whose policy of perestroika
and glasnost was the single most important factor
responsible for the dramatic events 25 years ago, warned the world that it was
once again on the brink of another “Cold War”. Gorbachev was
speaking in Berlin at a symposium during the anniversary celebrations to
commemorate the disbanding of the Berlin Wall. “Instead of
building new mechanisms and institutions of European security and pursuing a
major demilitarisation of European politics, the West, and
particularly the United States, declared victory in the Cold War,” Gorbachev
said in his speech. “Euphoria and triumphalism
went to the heads of the Western leaders. Taking advantage of Russia’s
weakening and the lack of a counterweight, they claimed
monopoly leadership and domination of the world.” Gorbachev specifically
mentioned that the continued expansion of the
North
Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the installation of missile defence
systems on Russia’s borders and the U.S.-led wars in West Asia were the main
reasons for the “collapse of trust” between Moscow and the West.
Top U.S.
officials, including former President George H.W. Bush and his Secretary of
State, James Baker, had assured Gorbachev in the negotiations
that led to the removal of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Warsaw
Pact by Moscow that NATO too would be disbanded.
The Warsaw Pact alliance was the military counterweight to NATO during the Cold
War era. Instead, after the collapse of the Berlin
Wall, it was Western triumphalism that was most evident. Western intellectuals
prematurely started writing obituaries for socialism and
hailed the pre-eminence of Western-style democracy and civilisation. Francis
Fukuyama, in his book The End of History and
the Last Man, confidently predicted such a scenario after the
collapse of the Berlin Wall. “What we may be witnessing is not just the end of
the Cold War, or the passing away of a particular period of post-War history,
but the end of history as such: that is the end of mankind’s
ideological evolution and the universalisation of Western liberal democracy as
the final form of human government,”
Fukuyama
wrote. The fall of
the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War have only led to global
instability. The regional wars instigated by Western military
intervention have led to widespread suffering and the death of more than a
million people in various countries. Most of the wars were
instigated and led by the U.S., starting with the first Gulf War of 1991. The
U.S. then intervened in the Balkans, splitting up Yugoslavia on
the basis of its ethnic and religious make-up. After that came the disastrous
invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Washington
has still to learn its lessons. The regime change it helped engineer in Libya
three years ago has left the country teetering on the edge of a
civil war. Now the Barack Obama administration is getting ready to send in
troops to Iraq yet again, in a belated effort to
rectify the
mess it has made in the region.
Angela Merkel
and other Western leaders have made the Berlin Wall synonymous with
dictatorship and evil. “It was a victory of freedom over
bondage and it is a message of faith for today’s and future generations that
they can tear down the walls—the walls of dictatorship,
violence, ideology and hostility,” she said in her speech on the occasion of
the 25th anniversary of breaking down of the Berlin Wall. After the
reunification of Germany, the country started playing a proactive military role
in international affairs, starting with its intervention
in the Balkans. Germany played a key role in facilitating the secession of
Slovenia from the Yugoslav Federation. That event
precipitated the events that led to NATO military intervention and the
disintegration of the Yugoslav Federation. Germany, despite
having strong commercial links with Russia, has joined the anti-Moscow
bandwagon on the Ukraine issue. Berlin acquiesced to the illegal
regime change in Kiev in order to facilitate the speedy entry of Ukraine into
the NATO alliance and the European Union.
A four-star
German general, Hans Lothar Domrose, who commands the NATO Allied Joint Forces
Command, recently stated that the military
alliance was preparing to conduct major manoeuvres near the Russian border. In
recent months, scenes eerily reminiscent of the Cold War
days are being repeated. According to the London-based think tank European
Leadership Network, there have been at least 40 “near
misses” involving Russian and NATO military forces that came close to a
military conflict. Twenty-five years after the fall of the
Berlin Wall, a second Cold War seems to be beckoning.
Walls of
separation While
extolling the fall of the Berlin Wall, Angela Merkel and other Western leaders
have been noticeably silent about other walls that have come up
to either keep people subjugated or prevent them from crossing borders. The
most notorious separation barrier is the one that the
Israelis have built. The Palestinians call it the “apartheid wall”. It snakes
mostly through Palestinian territory for 760 kilometres,
gobbling up Palestinian homesteads and farmlands. Israel has ignored the 1967
ceasefire line while constructing it. The International
Court of Justice has ruled that the construction of the wall is illegal. The
Israelis call it a security fence built to keep out terrorists
and suicide bombers. When the
Berlin Wall’s 25th anniversary celebrations were going on, young Palestinians
on the West Bank breached a section of the apartheid
wall, armed only with hammers, in a symbolic effort to show to the
international community that more devious walls than the one that
once existed in Berlin have since come up. The German government is a staunch
supporter of the right-wing government led by
Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel. “Germany will never abandon Israel but will
remain a true friend and partner,” Angela Merkel had once
said.
Another
separation barrier that has shown its longevity is the one built on the
ceasefire line between North Korea and South Korea at the 38th
Parallel. It is 248 km long and came into existence after the Korean War ended
in a stalemate in 1953. But the
longest separation wall is the one built along the Mexican border by the
Americans to keep out illegal immigrants. More than 1,100 km of
the border has been fenced since 2006. This is approximately around one-third
of the entire length of the border between the two
countries. Smaller
separation barriers have been cropping up in other parts of the world. The
Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla are in Morocco but
just 20 km off the Spanish coast. To prevent Africans seeking entry into the E.U.,
the Spanish authorities have built fences that are more than six metres high
around these two enclaves. Many Spaniards have described them as “fences of
shame” for which their government spent over €30 million.
(Published in Frontline.in)
No comments:
Post a Comment