Warren Murphy: Bidding War

Talk of a new world order had all but faded from the international stage. In the brief period after the collapse of the East Bloc and the thawing of the Cold War, there had been much discussion of a new world order, with the United Nations as its headquarters.

Such notions had shattered in the flash-point hells of the world—Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda and elsewhere. No one talked optimistically of new world orders or of UN peacekeeping anymore.

Except Anwar Anwar-Sadat in the privacy of his UN situation room.

Only in the highly politicized UN command structure could a man who had never worn his country's uniform or carried a rifle in defense of his nation rise in the diplomatic ranks until he commanded UN troops. Anwar Anwar-Sadat had.

Technically the secretary general of the United Nations didn't command UN peacekeepers. That was the trouble. There was no clear command-and-control hierarchy in the UN. Soldiers from some seventy UN member nations were deployed in over seventeen peacekeeping missions. U.S. troops assigned to peacekeeping insisted upon being under U.S. control. And so on.

Anwar Anwar-Sadat looked forward to the day all Hint changed.

Many blamed the recent failures of the United Nations on his grandiose peacekeeping and nation-building efforts. But as Anwar Anwar-Sadat saw it, the current system of UN multinational forces—one lie pointedly insisted he had only inherited—was too ad-hoc. What the United Nations—and thus the world—really needed was a permanent quick-reaction force entirely under United Nations control. Which meant it would be under the control of no less trustworthy a person than Anwar Anwar-Sadat.

Once he had that, the secretary general knew he could weld the fractious nations of the earth more firmly together and remake the global community in his own grandiose vision.

But that was for the future. This was today. He had a speech to give to the General Assembly about a very nagging problem and was loath to start the workday without a visit to his situation room.

As his liquid eyes scanned the global situation map, he was pleased to see so many nations colored in UN blue. On other maps these nations were colored red to denote their status as troublesome hot spots. But to Anwar Anwar-Sadat, blue meant they were under UN influence. Here were his peacekeepers. In Haiti, along the Iran-Iraq border. Why, the entire continent of Africa seemed to be rimmed in blue. The Horn of Africa was especially blue this year.

As he looked over the sphere of his influence, Anwar Anwar-Sadat could almost see an entire world colored a peaceful, quelling blue. Even the United States one day. He could easily see UN blue helmets patrolling Manhattan, Detroit, Miami and other high-crime areas. The vision had come to him during a midnight stroll through Times Square, which had been interrupted by unsavory persons who offered to let him keep his life in return for his wallet but struck him on the head when the contents of his billfold proved insufficient for their immediate needs.

The factotum handed him a clipboard. Anwar Anwar-Sadat glanced at it brusquely. He was a brusque man. The international media criticized him for that, too. Said he was too autocratic for the job. Had no business meddling in Africa especially, where his own country had interests and concerns. His penchant for sending in UN troops on the flimsiest pretext had earned him the nickname "Generalissimo War-War."

But Anwar Anwar-Sadat prided himself on being above the local concerns of his native Egypt. He had his eyes on the entire world.

Right now he had his eyes on the clipboard. "I see the flame war over Macedonia is heating up again," he muttered.

"They are exceedingly contentious today," agreed the aide.

"I will look into it," said Anwar Anwar-Sadat.

The order reports were perfunctory. UNIIMOG, monitoring the Iran-Iraq border, was quiet. As was UNMIH, in Haiti, and UNIKOM, the Iraq-Kuwait buffer force. The token force wedged between the two Koreas was likewise secure. Nothing would happen there. Not as long as the U.S. Eighth Army was permanently camped there. Korea had been the first UN action and to date the only war successfully prosecuted by UN forces. That forty years later an armed truce existed instead of a true peace bothered Anwar Anwar-Sadat not in the least.

Handing the clipboard back to his aide, Anwar Anwar-Sadat said, "Bring up alt.macedonia.is.greece forme."

"At once, Mr. General."

And the secretary general leaned back in his Moroccan leather chair as the factotum bent over and input the computer commands that launched him onto the Internet.

This was a very interesting development, he reflected. The entire world now communicated with itself via computer links. Scholars at Swinburne University in Australia spoke with Swedes at Uppsala University or Americans at Carnegie Mellon or with ordinary persons in the privacy of their homes. The one-world order was swiftly becoming a reality in impalpable cyberspace.

If only it were so easy on the ground, he thought ruefully.

And if only the computer manufacturers would design their machines so that one could simply flip a switch or ask the machine to perform the desired function. Try as he might, Anwar Anwar-Sadat never could master the arcane art of logging on and finding his way around the Internet.

When the alt. newsgroup list came up, the functionary typed in the search command and then the cryptic string "alt.macedonia.is.greece."

Up came the list of topics. Anwar Anwar-Sadat could see just from the subject heads that the two sides were having a particularly angry day.

alt.macedonia.is.greece

1

+

Why Greeks are such loosers

Zoran Slavko

2

+

PATHETICA!

Delchev@mut.edu

3

+

Stupid Fanatic

Spiro A.

4

+

Alexander The Great is Macedonian

Zoran Slavko

5

+

ALEXANDER IS

C. Mitsotakis

GREEK!!

6

+

Still Nonsences from Velikovski

P. Papoulious

7

+

Makedonsko ime nema da zagine!

Zan Zankowski

8

+

New name for Slav-Macedonia: Pseudomakedon

Evangelos V.

9

+

Velikovski is a idiot!

P. Papoulious

10

+

Papoulious must die!

V. Velikovski

11

+

Greece does NOT exist!!

Kiro@Mak.gov

12

+

Skopje is only capital

Branko

of Macedonia

@mut.edu

13

+

More Greek Lies

Zan Zankowski

14

+

Bulgar Stupidities Continue

Peter Lazov

15

+

This is Macedonia Banging

Zoran Slavko

16

+

GREEKS ARE CULTURE THEBES

Zan Zankowski

The dispute was a microcosm of current world troubles, down to the shouting, historical inaccuracies and gross misspellings.

When Yugoslavia broke up, a section of it had peacefully seceded, avoiding the bloodshed of Bosnia, Croatia and Greater Serbia. This section took for itself the name Macedonia, which had angered the Greeks. Hot words flew. Threats. Sanctions. But no bullets.

The dispute had festered for several years now, and while there was no sign of a diplomatic resolution, neither was war imminent.

Months would go by and the Macedonia question didn't make the news. But every day of every week adherents and partisans on both sides flamed one another with insults, twisted history lessons and open threats in a propaganda war largely unwitnessed by the greater world.

Here, Anwar Anwar-Sadat firmly believed, lay the future of the United Nations. When there was one great peacekeeper, international disputes would be argued and settled in cyberspace. It was unpleasant in its coarse language, messy in its facts. But no widows were created or children orphaned.