by ALEX CALLINICOS
We are approaching the tenth anniversary of the revolutions that swept away Stalinism in Eastern Europe and brought the Cold War to an end.
As we do, evidence is mounting that the world is an even more dangerous and unstable place than it was before 1989. The crisis in East Timor illustrates this fact.
Western governments saw the military regime in Indonesia as a bulwark of stability during the Cold War. That is why they supported General Suharto's coup in 1965 and encouraged his seizure of East Timor after the collapse of Portuguese colonialism in 1975.
After the Cold War, however, Suharto no longer seemed so indispensable. When the Asian financial crisis shattered the Indonesian economy, Bill Clinton and the International Monetary Fund jointly imposed on Jakarta a politically humiliating package of market "reforms".
Economic slump fed the mass uprising that brought a weakened Suharto down in May last year. Washington and its allies are now struggling to put back together what they helped to pull apart.
A stable Indonesia remains the overwhelming priority of Western policy in the region. As the Indonesian military mounted its reign of terror in East Timor a month ago, the New York Times quoted "senior officials" in Washington saying, "The administration has made the calculation that the United States must put its relations with Indonesia, a mineral rich nation of more than 200 million people, ahead of the political fate of East Timor."
Douglas Taal, president of the Asia Pacific Policy Centre, bluntly told the Washington Post, "Timor is a speed bump on the road to dealing with Jakarta, and we've got to get over it safely. Indonesia is such a big place and so central to the stability of the region."
So the US took a back seat in the United Nations' military intervention in East Timor.
Instead Australia has taken the lead. Australian big business is so desperate to get access to the vast oil and gas reserves around East Timor that the Australian government, alone in the UN, recognised Suharto's seizure of the territory.
Fronting the intervention in East Timor is, however, a risky strategy for the Australian ruling class.
For the past two decades it has sought closer economic and political integration with the booming industrial economies of East Asia. They relied on economic prosperity and US military power to provide a stable framework for the Asia-Pacific region. Recent events have, however, shattered these assumptions.
The financial crash sent the East Asian economy into slump.
Meanwhile, the growing tensions between China and Taiwan and between the two Koreas show the potential for regional military conflict.
The turmoil in Indonesia threatens the security of the sea lane through which Australia's trade with South East Asia and China is routed.
So if the US government was not going to act to contain the crisis in East Timor, Canberra had to. After his troops entered Dili, the right wing prime minister, John Howard, announced a new "Doctrine", under which a militarily strengthened Australia will act as the US "deputy" in the region.
This strategy faces significant difficulties.
In East Timor itself the UN force may find itself bogged down in a guerilla war with Indonesian backed forces based across the border in West Timor.
Moreover, the Howard Doctrine requires much higher military spending. Australia currently devotes less than two percent of national income to defence, and, in particular, currently has too small a navy to play a bigger regional role.
Government leaks suggest that spending on health and education will be frozen to find the extra money.
Worse still, acting as Washington's "deputy" could bring Australia into conflict with China. As the US intelligence consultant Stratfor put it, "Although China has not yet responded to Howard's statements, it is safe to say that the improved Australian-US relationship implicit in his words is something China definitely does not want to see."
The reverberations of East Timor go even further. The Japanese prime minister, Keizo Obuchi, said a few weeks ago that his government was thinking of amending the law to allow Japanese troops to serve there.
This represents another step in the gradual process through which Japan sheds the restraints of the pacifist constitution imposed after the Second World War and re-emerges as a major military power in its own right.
Asia is becoming the main arena of conflict among the Great Powers.