Year of the Bombs

1983 was one of the most violent years in decades, a jolting reminder of the precarious state of the world today.

As we enter 1984, Multinational Monitor takes its annual look at the major events and trends of the past year as they affected multinational corporations and banks, the Third World, and the U.S. labor movement, reviews the policies of the Reagan Administration, and highlights the important 1983 campaigns of public interest activists. The review begins on page 10.

1983 was a year that brought strong echoes of Vietnam and past U.S. interventions overseas. During the year, the U.S. expanded its military role in Central America, the Caribbean, and the Middle East. In October President Reagan ordered over 6,000 Army and Marine troops to invade and occupy the tiny island nation of Grenada. A day earlier in Beirut, more than 200 Marines died in a gruesome explosion, increasing the calls for a removal of U.S. forces from the area. By the end of the year, U.S. warships were patrolling waters off the coast of Lebanon and pounding Syrian and other Moslem anti-aircraft gun placements with heavy fire.

Three violent events in Asia highlighted the dangerous tensions in that region. In August, Philippine opposition leader Benigno Aquino was gunned down the moment he stepped off his plane after returning to Manila after years of exile. Aquino's death-and charges that the Marcos government had master-minded the shooting-led to an unprecedented wave of demonstrations against the Marcos regime, further weakening that country's precarious economic situation. Then, in October, a bomb explosion in Burma allegedly set by North Korean agents wiped out four key members of the South Korean cabinet, raising questions about South Korea's future economic policies and bringing tensions to the breaking point in that volatile peninsula.

Behind these incidents lurked the dangers of nuclear confrontation. In November, after months of protests and several years of negotiations with the Soviet Union, the U.S. finally began its deployment of medium range nuclear missiles in Europe. Angry over these moves, the Soviets cut off further arms talks, raising fears of an endless arms race and the total destruction a nuclear confrontation would bring.

Meanwhile, another bomb in the form of Third World debt kept ticking away-a bomb with the potential of blowing away the world's financial and trading system. In the last year and a half, 42 countries came to the IMF and the major banks, begging for a reprieve from their overwhelming burden of debt and the threat of social unrest. As the big debtors-Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Venezuela, and the Philippines - renegotiated their loans, public protests spread over the austerity programs demanded by the banks in return for the loan agreements. A few countries raised the idea of forming "debt cartels" that would negotiate with the banks, using the banks' fears of default to win concessions.

As debt problems in the Third World persisted, production began to pick up in the U.S., Japan, and Western Europe, primarily in service, electronics, and defense -related industries. But as traditional industries in these countries continued to shrink, voices in government, labor, and some corporations called for protection from imports from developing countries-moves that could further impede the ability of Third World countries to pay back their loans. In the U.S., ideas about economic restructuring and industrial policies promised to become major topics of discussion during the 1984 election year.

After the harsh realities of 1983, we can only hope that George Orwell was wrong about what's coming up in 1984.