Dangers of a Post-Period

PARIS - This is a post-period, not only post-Cold War, but post-dictatorship, post-tyrant, post-brutal maintenance of order in many countries. That is not the same as democracy and peace.


For all the heart-warming cheer that the end of repression brings, it has to be better understood that the evil legacy remains long after the perpetrators disappear. It isn't enough to sweep the old power away. New governance has to be built and established, or the risk grows that people will yearn with nostalgia for the bad old order and support another one, or plunge passionately, if mindlessly, into bloody chaos.


The worst current examples are Somalia and Afghanistan. Somalia's dictator Siad Barre was chased away, but with no organized succession. The result has had the effect of a cluster bomb. It isn't even ethnic or trial warfare that has exploded, blocking what international efforts there are just to prevent millions from dying of starvation. The fighters are subclans with no larger sense of allegiance with the suffering.


The Russians have long since left Afghanistan, but the war goes on. The various groups armed and encouraged to resist the Soviet-backed government but never adequately organized to produce an alternative structure are fighting each other for power. As usual in the aftermath of a war or a dictatorship, plenty of arms are still available and plenty of people know how to deal in them and use them.


Many other countries are falling into the same traps. The war in Yugoslavia isn't about to wind down, although the Bosnians are on the verge of defeat.


The queue of candidates tor new horror and massacres in the Balkans is actually growing and there is no sign that fighting will be contained. Rather, it is almost sure to spread.


Kosovo, Macedonia and perhaps Vojvodiria are smoldering in the ruins of what was Yugoslavia. The flames can burst out at any time. Greece has already imposed what amounts to full-scale economic war on Macedonia in support of Serbian ambitions as well as its own.


Though they have long been enemies, Turkey is urging a queasy Bulgaria to intervene or allow passage for aid.


When the balloon goes up, Albania is almost sure to get involved.


In Central Europe, the strains between Slovakia and Hungary and between Hungary and Romania require the gloomy predictions of impending war to be taken seriously and not just as a feverish Kafkaesque nightmare which will vanish with daylight.


Organized violence is also brewing in many parts of the former Soviet Union.


Of course this is not to say that tyrants must be tolerated because what comes next can be worse. It is a reminder that a great deal more needs to be done than just ousting evil power. Foresight is not impossible.


Zaire and Burma are likely to repeat something similar to Somalia and Yugoslavia when their regimes fall, as they will, if there is not sufficient preparation of alternative governments, in exile if necessary, and if the rest of the world


refuses to heed the smoke but waits for ravaging fires it is afraid or too indifferent to put out.


The world needs policing and societies need governance. There are no longer many empty spaces where people can roam as they will, unconcerned and unaffected by what goes on around them.


True, Knoxville and York and Orleans and Duisburg are not at the scene of proliferating trouble and don't feel directly endangered by the terrifying pictures from some distant, unpronounceable place flashed on their TV screens. Britain's Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain thought Czechoslovakia too far away and too obscure to worry about in 1938. It is an illusion for the safe to feel they have nothing at stake when others fight and starve.


It is also an illusion to feel that the disappearance of the tyrant, of the evil empire, solves the problem and ends the reason for concern. Certainly, it is easier to focus on a named, identified enemy than on bewilderment, fear and disorder, harder to find a simple slogan that offers hope.


That is all the more reason to digest the lessons of a post-period, to see its problems coming, to plan ahead and be ready to act. That was done once the tide of Nazi victories was turned in World War II.


It also needs to be done now, not only where regimes have already collapsed but where the tyrant's fall can be anticipated. It is not enough to resist the power that is; it is critical to realize it will have to be replaced. Democracy and peace can't just count on luck.