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Categories: Capital Read, Inkless Wells

History's hinges

by Paul Wells on Monday, November 2, 2009 2:30pm - 12 Comments

Roger Cohen, in the New York Times, wonders whether Tehran this year, or Tiananmen 20 years ago, could have worked out the way a dozen popular uprisings ended across Central Europe in that miraculous autumn of 1989 did: with the good guys winning. He draws no hard conclusions — he’s musing aloud, not browbeating his readers — but it’s a thoughtful and typically eloquent piece by the columnist who is, this year, consistently running rings around other U.S. foreign-policy writers.

Also more than worth your time: the best account I’ve read this week of how it all happened, 20 years ago, in capitals across Europe. From Der Spiegel, which is damned good at this sort of thing.

Tags: Central Europe, Roger Cohen

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http://intensedebate.com/people/SeanStok SeanStok

The Der Spiegel piece is excellent (at least the half I've read so far!) – thank you!

I was travelling through China the year after Tienanmen. It's one thing to know its size and population in the abstract, but the days and nights I spent on trains, in particular, has forever left me with tangible awe for just how vast that land is. In a country with such tightly controlled movement and communication (back then, anyway) there was no chance a 'small' protest in Beijing was going to spread anywhere.

I was travelling alone, and was pretty fearless (or. young and stupid) about striking up conversations with anybody and everybody who seemed willing. People were mindful of what they would talk about, always. It was a just fact of life: the wrong words could land them in a world of trouble. But the strongest impression I had was just how insular lives were. Travel was controlled and rare. Party, neighbourhood and occupational structures minimized social networks. News and education were obviously tightly filtered.
http://intensedebate.com/people/jolyon jolyon

I can't believe it has been 20 years since fall of Berlin Wall. I was in first year university then and I was taking a modern history course with a prof who was from Germany but had emigrated and he had connections in West German consulate in Ottawa. Prof basically canceled course, rightfully so, and focused on what was happening in Berlin instead.

As to Cohen's article, I think big dividing line between countries is if they embraced The Enlightenment.

Orson Bean

Well yes. And another spin on the difference is: it's not like China or Iran has neighbours immediately abutting it which are both ethnically and culturally kindred AND home to vibrant, wealthy, functional, advanced democracies. I think it makes one helluva difference that, e.g., East Germany had West Germany right next door, the Czechs and Hungarians had a long history of being bonded to Austria via the Habsburg empire, etc.

http://intensedebate.com/people/jolyon jolyon

"has neighbours immediately abutting it which are both ethnically and culturally kindred AND home to vibrant, wealthy, functional, advanced democracies."

That's interesting. I lived in South Korea for two years and I wonder how much influence it has on North Korea. My impression is not that much because North Koreans are cut off from world and don't really know they are deprived.

Orson Bean

Yeah, and geography probably has something to do with the isolation of your average North Korean vs. what East Germans, Czechs, Poles and Hungarians had. The latter countries had multiple borders, diverse neighbours (including neighbours also suffering under the Soviet yoke) and more natural contact with outsiders than North Korea. North Korea has the DMZ, land mines and all kinds of other nasty stuff to the south, water/sea to the east and west and China to the north. Way easier to isolate those people.

CAPS

1989! the number another summer (get down)
Sound of the funky drummer
Music hittin' your heart cause I know you got sould
(Brothers and sisters hey)
Listen if you're missin' y'all
Swingin' while I'm singin'
Givin' whatcha gettin'
Knowin' what I know
While the Black bands sweatin'
And the rhythm rhymes rollin'
Got to give us what we want
Gotta give us what we need
Our freedom of speech is freedom or death
We got to fight the powers that be
Lemme hear you say
Fight the power

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PaoLy7PHwk

Wasn't History supposed to end in 1989?
KevinA

Cohen sort of glosses over one fact (two, really):

1. The protests in Iran have not died (esp. in universities), and tomorrow, Nov. 4, is going to be another protest.

2. A related point: Iranians like to say, "chess, not checkers." In essence, big things don't happen overnight. The final verdict has yet to be given
David Doubilet

If you think Roger Cohen is perceptive, please read this blog:http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.com/
hosertohoosier

Why do we automatically assume that democracy has widespread support in China? China has a system that works, where few before it have succeeded. In both 1989 and today, the Chinese government could accurately claim that it has delivered the goods. There is law and order, and there is rapid economic growth. Both could easily be jeopardized by democratization – particularly if it unleashed the kind of centrifugal forces that have periodically sundered Chinese civilization through history.

In general I think it is a mistake to view the IT revolution as inherently liberating. What has happened since sometime in the 80's is an explosion of the amount of information and expansion in the ease of communication. A North Korean approach may be largely impossible, but that doesn't mean that dictatorships cannot evolve. It is true that citizens can get lots of information about the big wide world, but governments, should they desire, can get lots more information about their citizens, should they so choose. Things like flash-mobs, which played a big role in the orange revolution, could just as easily be used by a powerful minority with many members that stand to benefit from maintaining the status quo. Look at the tea-bag movement in the US – new organizing techniques help extremists get their message out, rather than anything like majority will.

Moreover, the international community – not that it can do much to impact democratization anyway – will never challenge a nuclear-armed China, and rightly so.
Orson Bean

"There is law and order, and there is rapid economic growth. Both could easily be jeopardized by democratization – particularly if it unleashed the kind of centrifugal forces that have periodically sundered Chinese civilization through history. "

I think you're right that this fear of chaos, disruption and the attendant historical humiliations that the Chinese see themselves to have suffered in the past — those are a huge motivating force in Chinese politics and public policy. And the Chinese leadership knows this and plays the Chinese population like a violin to that effect. In a way, it's China's collective neurosis, just the way that most nationalities have their unique neurosis about something or other.
http://intensedebate.com/people/jolyon jolyon

"Why do we automatically assume that democracy has widespread support in China?"

Don't many of us living in democracies believe everyone values freedom even though there is little evidence for this belief? I would argue most people value order over freedom.

"China has a system that works"

We don't know if ChiComs system works, not yet at least. Chinese seem to think in centuries and this new system has only been in action for less than 30 years. Until they establish property rights, ChiComs market reforms will have limited effect.
CAPS

Had many friends in class who were either Chinese nationals or Canadian citizens recently immigrated from there and for more than a few that was a dominating theme of wanting to avoid chaos that had occured in the past (e.g. – the Cultural Revolution).