Opinion Sur
Summary:
A geopolitical world without a center risks anomic dispersion and violent disorder. Our previous US “star,” flawed as it was, is now fading. A new negotiated balance needs to emerge, or chaos will ensue.
It is perhaps appropriate to start this note of opinion with the much-quoted first half of a famous poem by William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming (1919):
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
In my previous article, I promised to offer some reflections on the deep causes of the current weak leadership around the world, which is not fortuitous but not for that reason less worrisome. In degraded democracies, the selection of leaders favors a short-term concern for a finicky popular mood, which is one of distrust and cynicism toward the political class. Politicians are accused of lack of sincerity, subjection to partial and spurious interests, that they frequently conceal behind ritualistic formulas, hollow statements and inter-sectorial fights, which usually translate into government deadlock, thus neglecting regional and global problems.
All over the world citizens feel empowered to challenge the existing state of affairs. The new social media act as a multiplier of this mood. But the grievances are different, and the status quo they are protesting is extremely diverse. The result is bewildering, with political reversals of very different sign.
In the Americas the political reversals have a lot to do with two things: the end of the commodity super-cycle (the long “tail wind” of exports), and the prolonged tenure of hitherto existing governments, which used such tailwinds to finance their policies and maintain popular support. Where the status quo had leaned to the left, the reaction against it leans to the right. Such is the case in a number of South American countries. Where the status quo was conservative, the reaction is pro-liberal. That is the case of Canada. In almost all cases, the popular reaction is against complacency, arrogance of power, and real or suspected corruption (a suspicion that growths with the length of tenure of any government). The pendulum swings, surprising observers and upending predictions. Just as facile growth is a balm for power holders, stagnation is the bane of incumbents. In the United States a threatened minority of whites has hijacked the political system and effectively paralyzed it.
This distrust frequently translates into a demand for simplistic solutions and unexamined hopes of returning to an idealized past stability. Some established governments seek to manage the crisis of confidence with an old bag of tricks: blaming some convenient escape goats, ratcheting up tensions with other nations, fomenting fears of all kinds, or simply war mongering. When they do not succeed with such distractions, the citizens are inclined to give a chance to other candidates that “do not fear to say what we think.” Yet “what we think” is also a fearful reaction to change, a distinct xenophobia, and all sorts of prejudices. Those who dare “say” these truisms stir excitement for the sake of an alleged “authenticity.” However, the “authentic” nationalists, secessionists, racists, and xenophobes only add fuel to the fire and increase chaos. Instead of authenticity what they should ask for is a new sincerity and proposals to address the dangers and disequilibria that the whole planet is facing today. A new type of leadership is urgently needed. Luckily models exist and there we should go looking for them, sometimes in unsuspected areas.
On a fine autumn day, as I thought about this note and walked in New York’s Washington Square, I looked up at the Arch designed by Stanford White which stands on the North side of the Park at the very beginning of Fifth Avenue, and read an apposite quote from the first president of the United States. In 1787 George Washington was president of the Constitutional Convention. Of 55 delegates, 39 men signed the final document of the Constitution. Often the men disagreed strongly, and this gave rise to many compromise suggestions. It is recorded that George Washington seldom participated in the debates. But one day, after compromisers had diluted several suggestions in an effort to avoid gridlock, he rose to his feet and, according to observers, changed the course of history.
”If, to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterward defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair; the event is in the hand of God.”
I have not heard any of today’s leaders rise with the same courage of conviction to the challenge of the many crises that afflict the planet–-only the Pope.
Let us now proceed by parts –geopolitical part by geopolitical part. We start with Europe. As we have presented repeatedly in the pages of Opinion Sur, the European Union was a worthwhile but flawed project that was unraveled by a triple crisis before it could consolidate. As long as crises were neither momentous nor simultaneous, they actually jolted a sluggish organization to take a few necessary steps towards integration even against the wishes of some members. But as the economic crisis became more acute, and the Union applied the same mistaken recipe (i.e. austerity) to all countries alike, it found out that some of them sank into depression, bound as they were bound by a single currency (a sort of giant equivalent of the ill fated Argentine currency board, or uno-a-uno). The monetary union became a trap for them. And just as the Greek disaster threatened to evict a member of that fragile club, its bland but rapid expansion in membership towards the East (with NATO as a spearhead) met a strong Russian response. It was predictable, but the temporarily “triumphant” West (after the Cold War) did not notice. As Russian aggression surprised the Europeans, the sociopolitical unraveling of the Middle East brought wave after wave of refugees to European shores. I shall not dwell on these overlapping crises because we have dealt with them in these pages quite extensively. The sum total of these challenges revealed a Union that was an association of the unequal, without a sovereign center of decision-making. Instead of solidarity what emerged were an attitude of beggar-thy-neighbor and a tide of popular fear about losing what had hitherto been a privileged life. The most powerful nation in the set –Germany—tried to cope with the crises in the name of the whole and with a larger view. But its policies suffered from a stubborn and almost punitive approach to weaker members on the economic front, and fueled the diffidence of the German population about the alleged sacrifices they were asked to make on their behalf. On the demographic front, the decline in population in the wealthiest countries made them more “policy receptive” towards an immigrant labor force, but the very magnitude of the refugee arrivals triggered fears of an ethnic and cultural “invasion” in the heartland of comfortable prosperity. When the German Chancellor tried to “raise a standard to which the wise and honest could repair” she risked losing her power and had to beat a retreat “to please the people” and offer what she herself disapproved. Her George Washington moment did not last long.
In other wealthy European nations –Sweden excepted– such cautious attempt at true leadership did not even take place. As Pamela Druckerman writes in The New York Times (“France, Paradise Lost,” November 3, 2015) “At this point, the French even seem unhappy about how negative they’ve become. A positive approach to refugees would probably energize them. As it stands, France can no longer claim to have a universal message. These days, it’s just a flawed, ordinary country that mostly thinks for itself.” The Enlightenment, les droits de l’homme, and France terre d’asile, are words the French don’t utter any more. As for the Dutch, the Belgians, or the Finns, among the rich, selfishness comes easier: they never had the bold aspirations of the French. And as for the recent Eastern arrivals to the European Club, they just show their true, old, and nasty colors. In them the ghosts of a fascist and a communist past rise again.
The original European project is moribund, but the EU will not collapse. The EU will still pay for light and heat in its buildings and disburse the many salaries of its functionaries and employees. But it will continue to exist only as a façade: a Potemkin village or a movie set.
At the other end of the world, the “Middle Kingdom” is poised to reassume its ancient place as the center of human affairs. But not yet. China has become the second largest economy and is rapidly preparing itself for superpower status, therefore challenging the United States. The US maintains its position as the preeminent military power, but it is no longer the undisputed arbiter of international affairs, the guarantor of global order.
Becoming a world power as well as protecting their sea lanes for transport of needed commodities drives the Chinese to develop a blue water navy with a far and wide strategy. The Chinese are following the teachings of American Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan (the foremost geostrategist at the end of the nineteenth century and once president of the Naval War College) and have taken to heart his theory that who controls the sea lanes controls his destiny as well as the destiny of the world (The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1890). For the moment China advances while America retreats, but there are enough convergent interests for this rebalancing not to lead to war.
Frictions however are inevitable and require diplomatic finesse and prudence on both sides, something that Henry Kissinger has both advocated and practiced in his long career but that is not automatically guaranteed. In his book on China and its relationship with the US (On China, 2011), Kissinger asserts that each country has a sense of manifest destiny, but “American exceptionalism is missionary,” he says. “It holds that the United States has an obligation to spread its values to every part of the world.” China’s exceptionalism, in contrast, is cultural: China does not proselytize or claim that its institutions “are relevant outside China,” yet it tends to grade “all other states as various levels of tributaries based on their approximation to Chinese cultural and political forms.”
America is centrifugal; China is centripetal. Will these two forces clash or will they compromise and collaborate? Today Chinese leadership is more collegiate than autocratic. It is cautious, systematic, and pays attention to the long run, as opposed to the shorter aims of other democratic nations. Yet no one would claim that it is inspirational on the world stage.
As its influence wanes, American missionary exceptionalism takes its leaders into a double bind: if the US does not intervene wherever there is trouble, it is perceived as weak. If it intervenes, it provokes wars that it cannot win. It is damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t. In other words, the United States is in a strategic impasse. Its predicament is well symbolized by its choice of drones and high-tech automated warfare: airplanes without pilots are fighting battles without a plan. No wonder then that other lesser powers take tactical advantage of this strategic impasse. American missionary zeal is contested today by two rivals in its own game: the missionary zeal of political Islam, and the resurgent nationalism of Russia.
To understand the current chaotic situation in the Middle East it is useful to review a bit of European history. It can help us comprehend the dangerous and unpredictable conflicts that today spread across the region. The devastation that has befallen Iraq and Syria reminds us of the atrocities of Europe’s Thirty Years’ War that started after the Reformation and came to an end with the Treatise of Westphalia in 1648. During those three horrible decades Catholics massacred Protestants and Protestants returned the favor.
Today, the Alawites that control the Syrian government (or what is left of it) destroy entire cities where Sunni rebels defy the power of Assad. The Sunnis challenge the Shia rulers of Iraq with all means at their disposal. In Yemen the Wahhabi Saudis destroy beautiful cities –schools and hospitals included—from the air. The Saudi kings resemble the absolute monarchs of France. Echoing the political rivalries of 17th century Europe, Saudi Arabia and Iran vie for regional hegemony through proxy wars. Sectarian purity and persecution are the currency of these realms.
The French wars of religion are a good comparative match for the present conflicts within Islam. In the end, the religious conflicts of early modern Europe gave rise to a system of states that stabilized the situation by replacing sectarian war with rival states that competed with each other in a more “civilized” way. Given this analogy we might expect the current troubles in the Middle East to last for several decades before mutual tolerance and a dampening of missionary zeal is achieved the hard way. The price in human suffering is and will be immense. The waves of the displaced spill over (mostly arbitrary) national boundaries and profoundly disturb the complacency of developed nations.
Yet even in this chaos there is the shimmer of a ghost of hope. It is important to recall that Islam, with brief exceptions, was not a persecuting religion during and after its great period of conquest and expansion. It was more tolerant in A.D. 730 than it is today. Perhaps its current revival will rediscover these roots of tolerance (Maria Rosa Menocal, The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain, 2002) and proper development might resume in the Middle East.
Among the powers that seek to profit from the hesitations of the American hegemon Russia is first and foremost. The collapse of the Soviet system reduced this former superpower to the status of an authoritarian petro-state. The democratization process stopped on its tracks, as befitted a nation without an adequate pre-existing institutional framework (Friedson, M., Bolden, L., and Corradi, J., “Before the Natural Resource Boon: State-Civil Society Relations and Democracy in Resource Rich Societies,” Journal of Third World Studies, 2011). This put Russia in the category of the euphemistically called “emerging nations” subject to the vagaries of export commodities. Under the “democratic” dictatorship of Vladimir Putin, the declining economic fortunes were compensated by an aggressive nationalistic and militaristic posture, responding to Western malign neglect and seeking to exploit the perceived weaknesses of NATO, Europe, and the US.
President Putin is not a strategic genius, but he is a very clever geopolitical tactician. He acts decisively, seizing the initiative in Ukraine, the Baltic, and in Syria, and he creates facts on the ground, to the great consternation of a hesitant Western alliance. As Michael McFaul states, “Mr. Putin is adept at short-term tactical responses to setbacks, but less talented at long-term strategy” (“The Myth of Putin Strategic Genius,” The New York Times, October 23, 2015). Western leaders have been no match for his martial-arts antics, or, if you prefer, for Russian excellence at the game of chess.
Calling Russia’s bluff will be a dangerous exercise. The new chief of operations of the American navy, Admiral Richardson, puts it plainly: “How are we going to posture our forces to make sure that we maintain the appropriate balance and are suitably engaged?” (Quoted in the Financial Times, 2 November 2015). “Suitably engaged” from the Black Sea and the Mediterranean to the Pacific could be a recipe for a new world war.
As we advance in the second decade of the century, it becomes clear that the heliocentric universe in which we lived since 1990, where America was the sun, has given way to a vacuum, with each planet moving by itself, going nobody knows where. In geopolitical terms we are back to the precarious “balance of power” between regional centers and loose actors. It is high time for a new hard realism, visionary but sincere leadership, and the capacity to improvise without taking undue risks.
At the age of 91, Henry Kissinger said that much in his last book World Order (2014). Like the eight that precede it, the book defends a way of balancing power among sovereign states that he claims has given the world whatever order it has had since the 17th century. Consistent though he has been in justifying the premises and protocols of this so-called Westphalian system of states, he worries that this time they’re really coming apart. He wants to persuade Americans to take the new threats seriously, and to uphold the power-balancing he and earlier Western foreign ministers — Richelieu, Wallenstein, Talleyrand, Palmerston, Metternich, Chou en Lai — strove for three centuries to sustain, instead of championing conservative crusades and blindly fighting insurgencies. The alternative is somber: Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle (Every Man for Himself and God Against All). The expression is the title of a haunting film by German director Werner Herzog (in English The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser, 1974), and is taken from a sentence in the novel Macunaíma by Brazilian writer Mário de Andrade. May that sentence not come to pass.
