A cover story for the ages.(Editor's Note)(Editorial)

IT WOULD BE DIFFICULT TO BELIEVE WHAT'S HAPPENED on the global scene over the last 16 years--my tenure as a member of the Bulletin staff--if we hadn't actually lived through it. Let's recap: From 1989 to 1991, as decades-old assumptions fell along with the Berlin Wall and then the Soviet Union, it looked as if things could not be going better--except, of course, for the carping of old Sovietologists, who began to feel the cold wind of unemployment. At the Bulletin we joked that they needed a retraining program. Or that at least the wonkiest of Cold Warriors (many of whose writings appeared at length in the magazine) should be carried off to "shorter writing" if not total reeducation centers.

But they, not we, prevailed. In 1991, Colin Powell not-so-subtly pointed out that it was not wrong to prepare to fight a single powerful enemy like the Soviets, but that at the moment the only available enemies were the likes of Kim Il Sung and other two-bit punks. Some said not to worry--there would be a Soviet comeback--but other, wiser heads knew the answer to the "lack of enemies" problem was to work with what they had--to build up the punks.

The Clinton years were spent fleshing out this theme, with white papers generated by the Pentagon and rightwing think tanks, with "special" reports commissioned by the congressional members of a single party, usually to the effect that the "threat" was greater than ever before. The drumbeat began: 35 countries were about to point missiles at the United States; North Korea had a massive, A-1 army readying to attack; because the United ...