A  NEW   GOLDEN   AGE,

                 OR  A  PARADISE  LOST?

 

Seldom in modern history has there been an avalanche of good news as we witness in the media these days.  Newspaper headlines proclaim it, television commentators confirm it, and the people believe it.  And why shouldn’t they?  For the average Australian, American, and a few other nationals, things have seldom been better.  The era of “peace, progress and prosperity” it seems has finally arrived.

    

“Dawn of a Golden Age.”  “Shortly after the last Budget, Peter Costelo saw a vision of the future, or rather a glimmer of a halcyon past.  The Treasurer became convinced of the proposition put by some of his top economic advisers that Australia was on the cusp of a new golden age.“ (Sydney Morning Herald, July 26, 1997).

 

A Brave New World?  “Many investors in the USA shares and bonds have accepted the view that it is a “brave new world” – and one in which the cycle has been abolished.  People have become confident that the combination of technology, productivity growth and globalisation will enable the US economy to continues to grow at a comfortably modest rate, in coming years, without inflation.”   (The Australian, August 21, 1997).

 

Onset of  New Era?  “A STRANGE contagion is spreading across the land: the belief that technology and globalisation promise unbounded prosperity and render old rules redundant has infected US managers, investors and politicians with remarkable speed. Magazines articles endlessly document the onset of a new era.” (The Economist, The Australian, September 18, 1997).

   

 ’US companies do much better then predicted.”  “The economy continues to grow more rapidly than people thought,’ said Mr Mark Vitner, an economist with First Union Corp. ‘It’s all about the strength of the US economy and the strength of exports.”  (SMH, 17 July 1997).

 

And when the American economy is doing well, the whole world breathes a sigh of relief.  Given its dominant position in the global economy, good news from America means good news for the world.  With growth at over 5 per cent, unemployment under 5 per cent, inflation under 3 per cent, the stock market setting new records and company profits going through the roof, the Americans could hardly complain that life has not been good for them.  There has hardly been a field of endeavour in which the Americans have not done well in recent years.

 

“Forget the chess match of Garry Kasparov v IBM’s Deep Blue. A much more interesting battle between man and machine is playing out in today’s media. In one corner is the Mars Pathfinder and its roving companion, Sojourner, which slowly is prodding about on the “Red” planet. And in the other, the Mir, Russia’s accident-prone space station, retreading the same orbit just above Earth every 92 minutes.

“No contest. For better and (largely, I’m afraid) for worse, victory goes solidly to the humans, who handily have trounced Pathfinder on the evening news and on front pages.

“Remember Pathfinder? When it reached the Martian surface on July 4, the intrepid spacecraft rightly was lauded as a triumph of a revitalised space-exploration program. The official Pathfinder Web site logged 80 million hits in one day. And Time and Newsweek made temporary stars out of NASA’s tech nerds. . .” 

Which brings us to Mir’s latest and most ignoble function, a stage for space tragi-comedy. By now, it is hard not to be aware of the staccato sequence of odd and sometimes pathetic mishaps that have struck the Russian space station this year.  Unfortunately, the smirks and sad shaking of the head tend to distract from the larger lessons of Pathfinder v Mir. From its inception, NASA has been keenly aware of the enormous public relations advantage that manned missions have over unmanned ones. But Mir’s woes illustrate how easily that edge can turn against you.” (SMH, August 27, 1997).          

 

To illustrate the success of the American science, we gleaned a few comments from a discussion panel analysing the Mars rover expedition:

 

 

“We are at the beginning of another golden age.”

“The solar planetary system could become our second homes.” 

“Mars serves the way to study the earth.”

“If we are not looking for life, it is not worth doing it.”  

                   (Newshour with  Jim  Lehrer”,  SBS  TV,  July  15,  1997).

 

The notion of a new golden age extends beyond the economic and scientific fields.  At a recent NATO Heads of State Summit, President Yeltsin of Russia stunned his hosts by declaring that Russia’s nuclear missiles aimed at their countries would now be dismantled.  The media greeted the news with the appropriate headlines: 

 

“Yeltsin’s pledge on missiles stuns NATO”

Moscow’s decision a bold symbol for peace  (SMH, May 6, 1997).

 

 “The End of The Cold War”  “Boris Yeltsin’s announcement in Paris that Russia’s nuclear arsenal will no longer target NATO countries is a reminder of just how far the world has moved from the frightening days of the Cold War. ‘Today we can say the Cold War has definitely come to an end’, a NATO spokesman said.”  (The Weekend Australian, May  31-June 1,  1997).

 

There was good news on the environment too. This year, New York was the venue for the Second Earth Summit in which leaders from around the world committed themselves to important measures to restore the ecological balance of the earth.    

Then we had tremendously good news in the religious field too. The Pope went to Poland where he blessed that country with yet more ‘saints’; the head of the Anglican Church declared that he had no objection to women being ordained to the priesthood; the Presbyterian Church elected a new Moderator who vowed to make that church “relevant to the kind of society we live in”, and the ministers in the Churches of God rejoiced that our prediction about their impending doom did not materialise.

Which raises the question, where do all these things leave us? Up in the air, someone might say. 

Year after year, for seven years now, we have preached that the world is heading towards catastrophe, yet what do we have now?  Good news all around.  Which explains why we have not been very popular.  

The prophets of doom have never been welcomed by this world.  Virtually all of God’s people have had to contend with mockers – people who did not believe in their prophecies.  There is no better example of that than Jeremiah the prophet.  When his prophecies about the impending doom of Judah did not materialise as expected, he vowed never to speak in the name of God again. 

 

“O LORD, You induced me, and I was persuaded; you are stronger than I, and have prevailed. I am in derision daily; everyone mocks me.  For when I spoke, I cried out; I shouted, "Violence and plunder!''

Because the word of the LORD was made to me a reproach and a derision daily.  

Then I said, “I will not make mention of Him, nor speak anymore in His name.''  But His word was in my heart like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I was weary of holding it back, and I could not.  For I heard many mocking: “Fear on every side!'' "Report,'' they say, “and we will report it!''

All my acquaintances watched for my stumbling, saying, “Perhaps he can be induced; then we will prevail against him, and we will take our revenge on him.'' (Jer. 20:7-10).

 

Jeremiah’s contemporaries did prevail against him, and threw him into a muddy dungeon where he would have died if one of the royal servants, who believed in him, had not managed to save him at the last moment.      

He was lucky that at least one person believed in him, but who would save us if we were to face a similar situation?  Of all the people we have contacted since the beginning of this work, not one has repented and turned to God. 

We know of people who started a religion at about the same time, who have attracted thousands of followers by now.  They preach doctrines which are demonstrably un-Scriptural, yet we, who preach nothing but what is in the Bible, have attracted no one.  This work started with two people in 1990; seven years later two people are still doing it.  But then, this was not entirely unexpected, for we knew what the Bible says about those who would do the work of God at this particular junction of world history: 1) They would be poor people (“clothed in sackcloth” as the Bible puts it), and 2) No one would help them. 

How marvellously accurate prophesies which have been written thousands of years ago are proving out to be in our own time.  And they say that there is no God, or that He does not care about what happens in the world at present.     

Jeremiah’s prophecies proved true shortly afterwards, and those who disdained him paid with their lives in the end.  The question is, could this also be the case with us? Could it be that those who rejoiced at our demise, did so a bit too soon?

 

 

 

 

 

 

                              

              WHAT  YOU  SEE  IS NOT WHAT YOU  GET

 

                                           “An   astonishing   and   horrible   thing   has  been  committed  in  the  land:

                                           The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule by their own power; 

                                           And  My people love to have it so.  But what will you do in the end?” (Jer. 5:30-31).

 

Few people have not heard the song that says: “what you see is what you get, there is nothing more to it”, or words with that effect.  Well, there is a lot more to it than meets the eye this time, because what you see in the headlines and hear in the news is not what you get, nor the whole truth.  Let us look at those “good news” again.

 

 

 

                                                                    SCIENTIFIC  NEWS

 

The American scientists who assured us that, “the solar planetary system could become our second homes”, seem to have forgotten that human beings have not even flown to the nearest planet let alone colonise the rest of the solar planetary system. And on which planet would they like settle if they could reach it?  Would it be much of a life if they had to live in a space suit or in a closed environment all their lives?  There would be no rivers, no trees, no mountains, no pastures, no roaming animals, nothing but barren wasteland.  Would anyone call that a “golden age”?  

Has it never dawned on these people that this planet was uniquely prepared and positioned to foster and preserve life on it, that no other planet in the whole universe is like it?  It has the right distance from the sun, so that we neither freeze nor scorch ourselves; the right size, so that winters and summers are not decades or centuries long; the right gravitational field, so that we do not fall off the planet nor get squashed by its strength; the right length of days and nights, so that we can work during the day and regenerate at night; the right distance from the moon, so that the tides create just enough movement in the oceans to flush the shores without flooding the planet; it spins on its axe at the right speed, so that inertia does not send us into space nor flatten and disorient us; the list could go on and on.  Everything is just right on this planet, and there is no scientific or religious reason to indicate that any other is like it in the whole universe. 

Our scientists can search for life in the outer space all their lives, they will never find anything anywhere.  That is because this planet, and this only, has been created for the purpose of sustaining life, and all the other astral bodies have been placed in the sky for no other reason than to be signs and wonders for this world.  That is what our Creator God says, and that is the truth, believe it or not.     

The assertion that humanity is on the brink of colonising other planets reminds me of an environmental poster I had in my school library.  It showed the globe with the caption: “When we are finished with this planet, we have a whole galaxy to choose from”.  Indeed, why should we stop at the solar system when we can colonise the entire universe?  Given our prolific rate of reproduction, before long we would run out of space in this planetary system too, so we should not limit ourselves to just one planetary system, or just one galaxy.   

The scientists - the people who are telling us that humanity is on the brink of making the solar system our second homes - are the same ones who are telling us that humanity created itself, that God had no role to play in creating the world or life on this planet. 

Does that thrill you?  Does the thought that 50, 70, 100 or 150 years, is all there is to human life?   Would you rather believe that your life is nothing but an accident of nature, than that there is a higher purpose to life, and something exhilaratingly beautiful and promising beyond this temporary existence?

Science does not operate at the spiritual level, the one that reveals the existence of God and a wonderful purpose to human life.  Of course, the handiwork of God can be seen at the physical level too, but only if you open your heart to the sixth sense, the inner voice that reveals realities that cannot be accessed through the five senses.  

You are doing yourself a great disservice by looking at one side of the coin only.  If you come out of your shell and look through history, and acquaint yourself with what the great thinkers of mankind have said, you will discover truths that make you heart jump with joy.  Things that can hardly be uttered or explained by human beings. 

Those people have given their lives rather than miss out on the things they have discovered through the exercise of all their faculties, not just the five senses.  Yet, for some extraordinary quirk of nature, and reasons which only they can explain, scientists are now telling us not to believe anything that is not “logical”; nothing that cannot be detected through the five senses, or cannot be confirmed through empirical research and experiments.  The world has taken that as the new gospel.  The world is much the poorer for it.            

 

 

                                                                   ENVIRONMENTAL  NEWS

 

A United Nations report presented at the Second Earth Summit said that conditions in the world are now far worse than they were five years ago at the first Earth Summit in Rio.  How could it be otherwise when the forests are being destroyed faster, carbon dioxide emissions are greater, fresh water is getting scarcer and more polluted, mountains of solid waste are getting bigger, agricultural land keeps shrinking, population continues to increase, marine food stocks continue to diminish, the weather is turned up-side down, and natural disasters continue to play havoc around the world. 

The warming of the planet as a result of the greenhouse effect is no longer a hypothesis, but a fact.  This realisation came frighteningly fast upon the world.  We have played our role in this too.  When we started this work seven years ago, no one, outside a small circle of scientists, paid much attention to the greenhouse effect. Yet, there has not been a single edition in which we have not dedicated page after page of proofs of environmental degradation, of the greenhouse effect, of warming of the planet, etc.  We said all along that things will get worse, much worse, and they did.  Now how did we know these things?  From watching world developments and correlating these with the biblical prophesies.  In other words, we have done what our Lord told us to do:     

 

“Watch therefore, for you do not know when the master of the house is coming-- in the evening, at midnight, at the crowing of the rooster, or in the morning--lest, coming suddenly, he find you sleeping.

        “And what I say to you, I say to all: Watch!'' (Mark 13:35-37).

 

""But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.  For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.” (Matt. 24:37-39)

 

And what did the world leaders do with all those facts, what decision did they take at the Second Earth Summit?   To recommend a reduction of the greenhouse gas emissions by 15 per cent of their 1990 levels by the year 2010.  Now what exactly do they think they will achieve with that? The natural absorption cycle of carbon dioxide, the main culprit in the greenhouse effect, is between one hundred and two hundred years.  Which means that what we see in the world right now, is not the result of gas emissions accumulated in the last few years, nor indeed in the last few decades, but the effect of carbon dioxide emissions since the beginning of the industrial revolution, which occurred in the middle of the last century. 

And you know what?  They could not even agree on that.  In the end, they settled for a reduction in these gases of under ten per cent. And not all the countries agreed to that either.  You can be absolutely sure that they will keep these promises just they kept the ones they made at the First Earth Summit in Rio.

 

“Greenhouse gap too wide for bargains” “The 1992 Rio Environmental Summit, which committed nations to try to stabilise emissions at 1990 levels by 2000, has been an abject failure – with virtually every nation substantially increasing greenhouse gas output since then.” (The Australian, October 24, 1997).

 

 

 

                                                                    ECONOMIC  NEWS

 

We can do no better on this topic than to quote world leaders on their view of the future.

 

YOU’RE  SACKED  WORLD-CLASS dreams are at home in San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel.  Like a cathedral of affluence, it stands on Nob Hill in solitary splendour overlooking the famous city, a Californian showpiece of all the superlatives, an unself­conscious mixture of fin de siecle and postwar boom. Visitors are suddenly hit by the view as they float outside in the glass lift to the restaurant in the hotel tower. . .

At this site steeped in history, the man welcoming the world's elite in late September 1995 is one of the few who has himself made history: Mikhail Gorbachev.  When the Cold War came to an end, American patrons gratefully fitted out a foundation (with Gorbachev of all people as president) on an abandoned military area south of the Golden Gate.

Now he has flown in 500 leading politicians, businessmen and scientists from every continent - a new "global brains trust", as the last president of the Soviet Union and Nobel prize-winner calls it, which is supposed to point the way to the "new' civilisation" of the 21st century.

Such experienced world rulers as George Bush, George Shultz and Margaret Thatcher are here meeting the new lords of the Earth - men of the likes of CNN boss Ted Turner, who has merged with Time Warner to form the largest media business in the world, or the South-East Asian magnate Washington Sycip.  The idea is for them to spend three days in intensive discussions with the global players in computers and finance, as well as with the high priests of theoretical economics from Stanford, Harvard and Oxford. Emissaries of free trade from Singapore and (naturally) Beijing also want their voices to be heard when the future of humanity is at issue. . .

No one has come to brag and bluster. No one is allowed to stop the participants from speaking freely and the hordes of journal­ists have been screened off at considerable, expense. There are strict rules designed to minimise rhetorical ballast: those introducing a subject for debate, are given just five minutes and no contribution is supposed to last for longer than two.

Not a murmur passes through the room. The prospect of previously undreamt-of armies of the unemployed seems to go without saying.  None of the highly paid career managers from the company divisions of the future believes there will be enough new, regularly paid jobs in any sector of the economy in the technologically demanding growth mar­kets of hitherto affluent countries. . .

The Fairmont pragmatists sum up the future in a pair of numbers and a concept: "20 to 80" and "tittytainment".  In the next century, 20 per cent of the population will suffice to keep the world economy going. "More manpower won't be needed,” thinks Sycip.  One-fifth of all job-seekers will be enough to produce all the commodities and to furnish high-value services that world society will be able to afford. This 20 per cent, in whichever country, will actively partici­pate in life, earnings and consumption--to which may be added another I per cent or so of people who, for example, have inherited a lot of money

And the rest?  Will 80 per cent of those willing to work be left without a job? "Sure," says the American writer Jeremy Rifkin, author of The End of Work.  “The bottom 80 per cent will have almighty problems."  Gage stirs things up again and refers to his business head, Scott McNealy. The question in the future will be "to have lunch or be lunch".

From this point on, the top-class group discussing "the future of work" concerns itself with those who will have none. The firm conviction is that these will include tens of millions who have so far probably felt closer to the everyday bliss of the San Francisco

 

Bay area than to the struggle to survive without a secure job.  A new social order is being sketched out at the Fairmont - one of rich countries with no middle class worth mentioning – and no one disagrees. . .” 

“In any event, the business leaders expect that, soon, in the industrialised countries, people will again be sweeping the streets for nest to nothing or finding a meagre shelter as household helps. For futurologist John ­Naisbitt, the industrial age and its mass prosperity will eventually become no more than a "blip in economic history".  The participants in these three memor­able days at the Fairmont imagined themselves to be on the road to a new civilisation. But the route envisaged by the assembled experts from top management and science leads straight back to pre-modern times.  In the 1980s, Europeans and others feared the coming of a "two-thirds society", but the new model is of a 20 to 80 world, a one-fifth society in which those left out will have to be pacified with tittytainment  [titillate and entertainment equals tittytainmanet].”  This is an edited extract from The Global Trap, which has just been published in Australia by Pluto Press.  (The Weekend Australian, Nov. 1-2, 1997).

 

So, “on the road to a new civilisation . . . the question will be ‘to have lunch or be lunch"”.  A golden age and a brave new world indeed.   And now some “good news” on the American economy. 

 

“Icemen come in with the cold.  Stephen Roach of Morgan has argued that the idea that the US economy, in particular, had entered a new era or paradigm of low inflation, low unemployment, steady growth and high profits was no more than wishful thinking unsupported by hard evidence.

Ultimately (early in 1998 according to Roach) inflation would come surging through, forcing the US Federal Reserve to tighten monetary policy, with adverse implications for equity prices, and the non-financial economy.

On the other hand there are “icemen" such as Martin Barnes, the managing editor of Montreal-based Bank Credit Analyst, who believes the new paradigm style of market commentary has "been on a par with the 'What, Me Worry?' of Mad Magazine's Alfred E. Neuman". Barnes has in the past focused on the overvaluation of US equities as a result of treating on off factors such as reduced taxes, low interest rates and reduced depreciation as being recurrent in estimates of forward earnings. He now sees the recent global sharemarket upheaval as a symptom of gathering deflationary forces that will worsen the inevitable correction to Wall Street.  Those forces are already at work in Asia but the full extent of what is happening in those markets, according to Barnes, will "only become apparent over the coming year as real estate markets crumble, undermining banking systems and consumer and business confidence and as their domestic demand contracts, leading to a major downturn in 1998-99". Because of the excess capacity in these economies they will try to export their way out of recession, thereby transmitting the deflationary forces to other competing emerging economies and then into the large but weakened Japanese economy.  Deutsche Morgan Grenfell's chief economist, Dr Ed Yardeni, and hitherto one of the leading lights of the new paradigm movement is now warning that “the Asian meltdown could trigger a global recession in 1998".  He is now forecasting that real GDP will grow by only 2 per cent in 1998; down by a full percentage point from his previous forecast of 3 per cent.   Yardeni sees the probability of a US recession as 25 per cent in 1998 or 40 per cent by 2000.

While Yardeni is concerned about Asia’s impact, that is not his only worry.  He points to recent interest rate increases by central banks in Europe and Canada, stating that they “are provoking the forces of Deflation and Darkness".  While arguing that these banks should be easing and not tightening, Yardeni says: "Recent events in Asia suggest that global deflation may be inevitable even with easy money.” (SMH, Nov. 13, 1997). 

 

So, is it going to be a golden age and an era of  peace, progress and prosperity”, or “the forces of Deflation and Darkness?”  We shall see, but I wouldn’t count on the first.  Not in the short term anyway.  That is, not before the Millennium.

 

 

 

                                                INTERNATIONAL  NEWS

 

But, not to worry, we can always count on “good news” at the international level.  After all, who can deny the “good news” that came from President Yeltsin?  No one, that is, except President Yeltsin himself. 

 

“The Russian President, Mr Boris Yeltsin made clear yesterday that Russia would no longer target nuclear missiles at NATO countries, recovering from an apparent slip of the tongue at the signing of the Russia-NATO pact in Paris when he told Western leaders that Moscow’s missiles warheads would be removed, effectively disarming his nation. “In order to strengthen the atmosphere of trust, I took the decision: Russian rockets will no longer be aimed at NATO countries,” Mr Yetsin said in a radio address to the nation.” (Reuter, SMH, May 31, 1997).    

 

Now why did he change his mind when his promise drew so much universal approval? This is why.

 

“The Yeltsin announcement came as a surprise in Moscow and created a flurry of confusion, with contradictory statements from different officials.  A spokesman for the Ministry of defence said that if Russia wanted to re-target Europe, it would take “only hours”.  The process involved erasing the targeting programs in the missile warheads and programming them with “zero flight missions”.  Russia currently has around 4300 nuclear weapons targeted at NATO countries. . .  However, Russia remains strongly opposed to the NATO expansion, a point Mr Yeltsin made several times in recent days.  Even as he flew out of Moscow, he was urging NATO to rethink its expansion, warning it was “fraught with the risk of destabilising Europe.”

The Russian decision comes just days after Moscow made it clear to the world it was prepared to unleash a first nuclear strike, a significant shift on its previous no-first strike commitment.”  (SMH,  May 6,1997). 

 

Russia says that it is now “prepared to unleash a first nuclear strike” on the West, and our media people take this to mean a “bold symbol for peace” and “an end of the Cold War”. 

Do you see now what we mean by “what you see is not what you get”?  People go to bed content in the belief that the Cold War is over and there will always be a world tomorrow, when in fact we are now closer to a nuclear catastrophe than we have ever been.    

 

Yeltsin’s offer does not mark end of the Cold War  “To bill the agreement signed between the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and Russia as “the end of the Cold War” (Yeltsin Ends Nuclear Threat, 28/5), is a nice bit of spin, but, as usual, the spin is pretty close to 180 degrees from reality.

In fact it’s probably misleading even to refer to the initiative as a “security agreement”. Russia will now be consulted about NATO’s moves, but will not have any veto. While President Yeltsin put on a very brave face at the signing ceremony, he won’t fool any of his citizens (any of the time) into seeing this as a positive for Russia.

 

Based on the work carried out by my organisation’s affiliates in Moscow, I can assure you that Russians view it as a colossal humiliation.  It is reviving their ancient, deeply held paranoia about the predations of a more advanced militarily stronger, richer, exploitative West . . .

Despite making a spur of the moment gesture on disarming weapons aimed at NATO States (in reality he meant de-targeting, an action that takes minutes and a few strokes on a commander’s keyboard) Mr Yeltsin had only weeks earlier been talking about the conditions in which Russia would consider a first use of nuclear weapons.

What exactly is NATO thinking? If the Cold War really is over, why continue to expand a military alliance designed to counterbalance Russia’s (now greatly diminished) conventional military power, right up to Russia’s border. Russia couldn’t even stop a rebellion in Chechnya – what makes anyone think it’s about to invade Poland? Far from the end of the Cold War, the expansion of NATO shows that in some military planners’ minds the “war” continues unabated.” (Greg Berber, Abolition 2000 Project Officer. Medical Association for the Prevention of War. Preston, Vic. (The Australian,  June 2, 1997)). 

 

What happened to the bonhomie that was evident at the recent meeting between the leaders of the seven leading industrialised nations also attended by President Yeltsin?

 

“The Cold War may be over, but there is no shortage of conflict about the expansion of NATO and the degree of influence Europe should wield in it, writes Christopher Henning.  Boris Yeltsin is partial to a good summit. The leaders of the world’s seven leading industrialised nations – the G7 – obligingly made room for him so he could indulge his taste. For a few days, every so often, he can forget the troubles he has at home, fly to somewhere pleasant and talk to leaders like himself as an equal. He can call them Bill and Helmut and Jacques and Tony, and they can call him Boris, and the Russian media can portray him as a statesman and Russia as a superpower.

But this week, even though Bill and Helmut and Jacques and Tony were at a summit in Madrid, their friend Boris ignored an invitation to join them and pointedly went to Karelia, near Russia’s border with Finland, for a holiday. Or was it a sulk?

For this was a NATO summit, and as far as Russians are concerned, despite the end of the Cold War, NATO is still Lucifer incarnate. It used to be capitalism ganging up against the Soviet Union; now, though ideologies have changed, the basic centuries-old conflict – West versus East, wealth versus poverty, Catholic versus Orthodox, sophisticated and Macchiavellian Europe versus simple, honest Russia – has not.  The word, and the symbol – that cold white star encircled on a blue background, rather like a prettied-up version of the crosshairs in a gunsight – are still enough to arouse every ancient Russian paranoia of rejection, victimisation and encirclement.

Apart from the populist opposition to NATO expansion on the grounds of cost, there is the intellectual opposition on the grounds of diplomatic good sense. George Kennan, a former ambassador to Moscow and the man who virtually invented the strategy of the Cold War, is a chief proponent of this view. In a recent article in The New York Times he warned against enlargement as “the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post Cold War era”. Enlargement would, he said, inflame Russian nationalism, restore the atmosphere of the Cold War and militate against future reductions in nuclear weapons. 

Dr Paul Cornish, a lecturer in defence studies at King’s College, London, and the author of a forthcoming book on the future of NATO, agrees that enlargement is a dangerous procedure.

“I think that enlargement has been, is, and will be a very risky undertaking, simply because Russia is too uncertain and volatile.  With anything as big and nasty and smelly as Russia with all those nukes, you have to be very careful.” (SMH, July 12, 1997).

     

Alexander Lebed, former general and presidential candidate, said this about the Russia-NATO accord:

 

Russia’s agreement to sign the deal was a “total capitulation”. The only honourable way out for Russia was to refuse to sign the document. The agreement may somehow save Yeltsin’s reputation, but not that of Russia.” (SMH, May 28, 1997).

     

  And Gennady Zyuganov, the leader of the Russian Communist Party, the largest in the Russian Duma, and another presidential candidate, called it an “act of treason”. 

But it is not only the Russians that have changed their mind abut  the West.  Hollywood has changed its mind about the East too.

 

“Reds are back under the bed.”  “When Hollywood scriptwriters think villain, they’re likely to think Russian – it’s just like the bad old days, writes Bernard Weinraub.