ifda dossier 74 - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

post-war maldevelopment is not of major concern. At this stage, the
problem is not to apportion the blame, which at any rate would appear
well shared among imperialism, stalinism, and those who accepted their
logic.
What really matters is that en entirely new perspective is now open, that
of global security in the sense that it encompasses, beyond conventional
'security' through military means, however aberrant, ecological security
and, ambiguous as the term may be, 'economic' security.
In the military sphere, the most significant change is perhaps the explicit
attempt, on the part of the Soviet leadership, to discard the old
stereoiypes of the 'enemy image'. The 'realists' have laughed enough
about the Unesco Constituiion ('Wars begin the minds of men. It is in
the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed') for
the requital to be welcome. Indeed, peace does stem from the minds of
people, and to accept the Other, not to antagonise it, is a much more
far-reaching step than that of Armstrong on the moon. Cynics and
'realists' notwithstanding, Gorbachev and Reagan did sign the INF
treaty, and the first nuclear missiles were publicly destroyed. At the
General Assembly of the United Nations, on 7 december 1988, the
Soviet President did announce a unilateral reduction of armed forces
in Europe. The Iran-Iraq war did come to a halt, the Red Army is
leaving Afghanistan, Namibia is on the verge of independence,
discussions are progressing on Indochina and Western Sahara, the
Armenian earthquake prevented Gorbachev from travelling to Central
America but he will go there some day, and, for the first time since
1948, there is a possibility of peace in Palestine.
In the ecological sphere - 17 years after the Stockholm Conference - the
depletion of the omne layer, the greenhouse effect, the acid rains,
deforestation, desertification, the Faustian nature of the nuclear energy
bargain, especially after Chernobyl, are at long last taken seriously and
even sometimes dealt with; and more is in the offing - outer space,
Antarctica, indeed the whole concept of the global commons.
There is also some acceptance - 40 years after the proclamation ot the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and 12 years after the entry
into force of the International Covenanis on Economic, Social &