| Publication |
2009.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The end of the Cold War caught many people by surprise on both sides of the infamous Iron Curtain. It bred a euphoria that was not a substitute for sober analysis, which simply seemed to be uncalled for at the time. The awareness came much later that the world had entered an unprecedented transitional period in its development that would obviously result in an intellectual challenge. These moods were summarized in a call to formulate a shared vision of the new historical era. The crisis of U.S. foreign policy, boldly manifested in "war of choice" in Iraq, sent a signal of alarm. It seemed that a country that had emerged victorious from the Cold War should not undergo this crisis. Yet we are now seeing a global financial and economic crisis rooted in the ideologies and practices of how the U.S. financial sector functioned over the past two decades. It shows convincingly that one-sided solutions and actions cannot bring any of the so-called public goods to the international community. On the contrary, solutions are not being found to existing problems and new ones are springing up.
Presumably, the riddle of the current stage of global development cannot be solved unless one gleans the meaning of what happened at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. It would not be an overstatement to claim in this connection that the problem of what the future has in store for the U.S. - which has become the facade of the historical West - will be of key significance.
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