Potential trouble for United States lurks worldwide

04/13/03 John Hassell The Plain Dealer-Newhouse News Service

International terrorism. Famine and AIDS in Africa. Nuclear brinkmanship in North Korea and Kashmir. Civil war in Colombia. Continuing clashes between Israelis and Palestinians.

Even if the United States was not at war in Iraq, the foreign-policy issues facing the Bush administration would loom as the most forbidding since the end of the Cold War, with potential crises lurking in nearly every corner of the globe. Try Our Classifieds

The likelihood that any one of these situations might explode, now that the attention of policy-makers and the news media is riveted on Baghdad, has only increased, according to retired U.S. diplomats and regional analysts.

"The foreign-policy agenda right now is overflowing, and there is great concern that important issues are not getting the attention they deserve," said Mark Schneider, senior vice president of the International Crisis Group, a think tank with headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. "These are issues that directly affect U.S. interests and security."

Asia

Perhaps the most serious challenge outside the Middle East is the situation in North Korea, where the regime of Kim Jong Il has announced its withdrawal from the international nuclear nonproliferation treaty and restarted a mothballed nuclear processing plant.

A nuclear-armed North Korea would pose several significant dangers, said Leon Sigal, director of the Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project at the Social Science Research Council in New York.

First, Pyongyang's action could set off a nuclear arms race in the region. Japan, Sigal said, is capable of producing a nuclear weapon within three months, given the large supply of plutonium generated by its domestic power plants. South Korea, which halted a nuclear program in the 1970s at U.S. urging, also could build a weapon in a hurry.

Also, Taiwan could seek to become a nuclear power - a move that almost certainly would provoke China and set the stage for a showdown between Beijing and Washington, Taiwan's close ally, Sigal said.

A nuclear North Korea also raises concerns about weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of terrorist groups like al-Qaida. Given the North Korean regime's dire financial straits and its implacable hatred of the United States, the sale of nuclear weapons to terrorists is a real threat, U.S. officials have said.

Another Asian hot spot is Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, where terrorists attacked two nightclubs in Bali last October. The invasion of Iraq, analysts say, has inflamed anti-American sentiment in Indonesia where the U.S.-friendly government of President Megawati Sukarnoputri faces serious problems.

Africa

Problems in Africa do not usually top foreign-policy priority lists in Washington. "If anything," says Princeton Lyman, a former U.S. ambassador to South Africa and Nigeria, "the continent is usually seen as a charity case."

The war on terror has changed that. Not only has the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq angered Muslim populations in northern Africa, but the continent's numerous failed or ailing states also provide fertile ground for terrorist groups.

Dealing with Africa's weaknesses, at least for the foreseeable future, will require grappling with a series of humanitarian disasters.

The most urgent is the famine that threatens the lives of about 30 million people. From southern Africa, where 14.4 million people face imminent starvation, to the African Horn, where another 10 million are at risk, "the need for humanitarian assistance is real and immediate," said Gwendolyn Mikell, a professor of sociology at Georgetown University and an expert on African politics and economics.

Causes of the famine include government mismanagement, climatic change and the devastation wrought by AIDS, which has destroyed the agricultural work force and left tens of millions of people weakened and more susceptible to hunger, Mikell said.

Europe

After several years of relative calm in the Balkans, the assassination of Serbia's reformist Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic on March 12 served notice to the world that the area remains unsettled. Djindjic's murder has been blamed on organized-crime figures loyal to former Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic.

The influence of organized-crime bosses in Serbia, coupled with the fact that elements of the military remain outside civilian control, poses a threat to the whole region, said Peter Palmer, a longtime Balkan analyst for the International Crisis Group. "The progress of reforms in Serbia has ramifications for Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Albania and beyond," he said.

Latin America

Closer to home, Washington faces a diplomatic test in dealing with the new wave of left-wing and center-left movements that have come to power in Venezuela and Brazil and gained strength in Argentina, Peru and Ecuador.

The phenomenon, analysts say, has been driven by economic collapse throughout much of Latin America.

The situation in Venezuela, where the populist president, Hugo Chavez, has presided over a debilitating national strike, is perhaps most worrisome, given that the country produces 15 percent of the oil consumed in the United States.

Venezuela's woes have helped drive fuel prices up as the Iraq war threatens Middle East production.