Flashpoints: Promise and Peril in a New World

Two leading authorities on international affairs project the political, economic, and technological landscape of the 1990s, envisioning a postmodern era in which four or five powers will hold sway

With the decline of Cold War confrontation, the world is plunging headlong into "an age of galloping localism" even as it becomes more economically interdependent. That paradox runs like a thread through this provocative, sobering, very readable look at our possible future in the '90s and beyond. Wright ( Sacred Rage ) and McManus ( Landslide: The Unmaking of the President, 1984-1988 ) envision a "multipolar" world in which no single power can gain the upper hand. In their scenario, the Soviet Union, China and Canada will each dissolve to form new entities, while Turkestan, a new nation or confederation, could unite millions of Muslims from Europe to China. Ironically, even as the Cold Warriors talk peace, arms proliferation, rising terrorism and a wave of ethnic and nationalistic conflict spell an uncertain future in a world increasingly polarized between the industrialized and underdeveloped nations. The authors interviewed street people and heads of state on six continents for this sweeping probe.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The predictable world of the 1980s has fallen to the wave of change and uncertainty of the 1990s, and all this roiling and boiling in the international arena has generated a spate of books on the topic. Wright and McManus spent two years circling the globe interviewing dozens of people in high places and low. Ranging from politics, to battlefields, to the effect of AIDS (our new version of the Black Death) on future generations, the authors have provided a well written and tightly presented summary of our present condition as a global family, and what our future may hold. The authors point to the spread of democracy (in whatever guise) as representing a special challenge for the First and Second worlds, as the Third World seeks its place in the sun. This book and Jeffrey Bergner's New World Order ( LJ 9/1/91) provide solid analyses of this important subject. Recommended.
- Ed Goedeken, Purdue Univ. Libs., West Lafayette, Ind.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.