Global agenda shifts in a new era
by PROFESSOR VERNON D. JOHNSON

International issues probably have not been so prominent in the presidential campaign since the elections of 1968 and '72, when the anti-Vietnam War movement was in its heyday. This is because the Bush administration is pursuing a reckless course in the realm of foreign policy.

What the anti-war movement already understood in the '70s was that the Cold War was imposing extreme hardship on many developing countries that became pawns in the global competition between East and West. As the East-West conflict between capitalism and communism was occurring, the fissures between the rich countries of the global North and the newly independent states of the global South were also unfolding.

The South sought sovereignty and social development, but during the Cold War what they got was external meddling ranging from destabilization to the engineering of "regime changes" that were not the product of the organic development of their domestic politics.

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