Editorial: Year with world on the brink

On any world view, 2002 is likely to be seen in the shadow of the previous year.

The aftershocks of September 11, 2001, though, were much absorbed by the war in Afghanistan that had removed the Taleban by the turn of the year.

Early in the new year, when President George W. Bush turned his sights on Iraq, not many of his allies in Afghanistan were convinced of the cause.

The year is notable, in fact, for the longest bout of brinkmanship most people can remember. For almost this entire year the US has been sounding an alarm about the regime in Baghdad and threatening to remove Saddam Hussein by force.

In the US the cause seemed to be clear. September 11 had made Americans conscious of their vulnerability to determined enemies and they understood the President's desire to take pre-emptive measures. But among the major powers, only British Prime Minister Tony Blair echoed the bellicose rhetoric from the White House.

Mr Blair, though, was playing a more subtle role. He managed to stand firmly with Mr Bush, ensuring the US would not act alone, but always couched his support as an appeal to the United Nations security council.

He helped Secretary of State Colin Powell to overcome the unilateralists at the Pentagon and make sure the US gave Iraq one more chance to submit to UN weapons inspections.

If this time Saddam is convincingly disarmed, it will be thanks to the credibility of US intentions. But what then of North Korea, another of Mr Bush's "axis of evil", which declared its own nuclear intentions this year? And what of India and Pakistan, which seemed perilously close to a nuclear exchange at times?

What indeed of Israel, which has defied as many UN resolutions as Iraq? Ariel Sharon's forces systematically destroyed the remains of the Palestinian authority in 2002, assassinating chosen figures and sparing Yasser Arafat only at US insistence.

If it is Mr Bush's mission to root out terrorism and "rogue" regimes with weapons of mass destruction, he made little progress this year. Terrorist incidents reached a peak in October with bombings of a French vessel off Yemen, of bars in Bali packed mostly with Australian tourists, the threatened slaughter of a Moscow theatre audience taken hostage by Chechens demanding independence of Russia, and attacks in Kenya on an Israeli-owned hotel and an Israeli airliner.

Osama bin Laden, on the evidence of another recorded message, is still alive a year after his escape from Afghanistan. If al Qaeda was not behind all the terrorism of 2002, most of it involved Islamic militants in common cause against Western symbols and citizens.

That was the dominating story of 2002, but not the only one. Antagonism to immigration infected elections in France, Denmark and Holland, though responsible governments emerged in the end.

The European Union welcomed Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and other former communist states to the fold. China's ruling communist party partially and peacefully changed its leadership and maintained the country's burgeoning capitalist growth.

The UN held a global conference on sustainable development, 10 years after the Rio Earth Summit, but poverty rather than greenery was the prime concern this time.

Trade, it accepted, was preferable to aid, but not much progress was apparent in the multilateral round launched at Doha the previous year.

President Bush, with authority conferred by Congress, seemed more interested in free trade agreements with strategic allies. It was another year in which global security considerations overshadowed all others, a year on the brink.