End of Cold War doesn't mean the end of all wars

By Jim Anderson

WASHINGTON (DPA): It's now ten years since the Cold War officially ended. But the end of the great struggle between super powers didn't mean the end of wars -- not by a long shot.

According to figures compiled by the Swedish Upsala Conflict Project, there are now 39 continuing wars being fought around the world -- an increase of ten since the Cold War was declared over.

You don't hear about these conflicts, or think about them very often for a variety of reasons, including the fact that most news organizations, especially in the United States, have decided that it isn't economically efficient to send reporters and cameramen to places in the world whose names many can't pronounce.

Also, in fairness to news organizations, it is also very dangerous to expose journalists to combatants who don't recognize the niceties of protecting civilians, including foreign correspondents.

Some wars -- like the continuing struggle in Afghanistan between the Taleban and other factions -- have been going on for so long that they have become part of the international wallpaper. Since there is no identifiable interest for most of the outside world in the outcome, there is no interest in following them closely.

But some of them -- including the continuing tensions in Kashmir between India and Pakistan, with several guerrilla groups also stirring the brew -- have the potential of turning nuclear since both major combatants have atomic weapons and the missiles to deliver them.

In Africa, the bewildering line-up of enemies, allies and opportunistic parties from outside Africa counts some of the bloodiest wars. The sputtering conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea has been compared to the wholesale slaughter of trench warfare in Europe during World War I.

Uganda has been at war for years with the Lord's Resistance Army, a conflict connected to unrest in Sudan.

Then, too, there are the continuing tensions between the Tutsis and the Hutus in Rwanda, where a Hutu-organized genocide in 1994 claimed 800,000 lives.

The gruesome tally goes on and on around the world -- Iraq against the Kurds, Indonesia versus separatists, Angola against UNITA and, of course, the continuing patchwork of conflicts in the Balkans.

The lesson for the new administration in Washington should be that the old rules of warfare don't apply.

President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell have said that the United States would use military force only if the U.S. "national interest" is involved.

But how do you define the national interest when two Asian powers, both with nuclear weapons, are at each other's throats? And if there should be another blood bath in Rwanda, would it be in the U.S. national interest to halt it -- or better yet, prevent it by some timely diplomacy or threatened use of American force?

Questions like these, which are now being considered in Washington, do not respond to easy solutions -- unlike the statements made during the long American presidential campaign when easy, pat answers appealed to partisan audiences.

So far, there is not a single, unified foreign policy for the Bush administration. Or, more precisely, there are several -- one expressed by Powell, another by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and yet another by National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice?

All of them have expressed -- to different degrees -- a distaste for United States' involvement in foreign conflicts. So far, the new president has not put his mark on any strategic issues in a meaningful way, which is not an auspicious start for George W. Bush and his potential for dealing with a complicated, troubled world.