"Over the next 50 years the earth's population will soar from 5.5 to more than 9 billion . Though the optimists have hopes for new resource technologies &
free market development in the global village, they fail to note that, as the National Academy of Sciences has pointed out, 95% of the population increase
will be in the poorest regions of the world where governments now - just look at Africa {...or Russia...} - show little ability to function, let alone implement even
marginal improvements." - Robert D.Kaplan. The Coming Anarchy : Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War (NY: Random House, c2000) p.22.
Not entirely shocking (given the title),
The Coming Anarchy by
Atlantic Monthly correspondent & author
Robert D. Kaplan is by times an
exceptionally chilling read, a plea for
realism, an indictment against sloppy thinking and a tragic reflection on the lessons of
history. The author has been a US
foreign policy commentator & war
reporter for over 20 years and (having traveled throughout the 1980s & 90s to some of the more remote and violent parts of the
planet) has now compiled a compelling grim mosaic of the planet's current state and possible future. Kaplan is a fierce critic of both
idealistic do-gooders (who, in
his experience, end up wasting tragically limited
humanitarian resources by aiming too high) and
neo- conservative isolationists (who believe the rest of the world
and its problems can be kept at bay if the walls of defense are high enough) who seem to him patently deluded about the true nature of the world's problems :
"...it is time to understand the environment for what it is : the national security issue of the early 21st century. The political & strategic impact of:
will be the core foreign policy challenge from which most others will ultimately emanate..." Ibid. p. 19-20.
In the end, Kaplan endorses a
pragmatic approach to the difficulties confronting the planet, one 'adopted by some Catholic theologians on certain vexing moral
issues, Proportionalism provides a useful approach to the
Third World...doing or accepting a certain amount of 'Evil' to make possible a proportionately greater
amount of 'Good'." (p. 122) He even quotes
Aristotle at one point, as a defense of
pragmatism, who wrote 'Whether the few or the many rule is incidental to
oligarchy and
democracy - the rich are few everywhere, the poor many."
Kaplan is a interesting advocate of environmental action
(being a traditional conservative
and neo-realist) and convincingly points out most pundits
1 on North American environmental & industrial policy have never even visited the Third World (with
the exception of a resort or two) and so have little idea of the true impact upon the lives of billions that
environmental degradation is actually having. He also frequently cites the work of
an expert in Environmental Conflict Studies at
UofT, by the name of
Thomas Homer-Dixon (author of
Environment, scarcity, and
violence-Princeton, 1999 &
The Ingenuity Gap- Knopf, 2000) who also has a way with cutting to the chase :
"Think of stretch limo on the streets of NYC, where homeless beggars live. Inside the limo are the air-conditioned, post-industrial regions of North America, Europe
and the emerging Pacific Rim, with their trade summitry and computer information highways. Outside is the rest of mankind, going in a completely different
direction."
The book itself focuses on the living conditions, quality of life and economic potential of the
under -developed world and challenges some fairly fundamental scared
cows of the
international development ethos, like, a) maybe most of the world isn't ready for
democracy and it's cruel to push it on them, b) maybe the whole
notion of national
sovereignty, easily-defined borders and the nation state in general are just quaint 18th European constructs which it is now time to turf, c)
literacy and
education2, not Western computers, not Western agriculture, not Western medicines or machines, but straight-forward education on a
people's own terms, is the only route to real,
stable democratic reform, and finally, the most disturbing, d) the argument that for much of the world's populace an
existence mobilized for war and a 'barracks existence' is a step up, rather than a step down (meaning that fighting is often the only chance to escape poverty for a
growing number of people on this planet). All these are realistic,
no-nonsense,
get-shit-done approaches, since Kaplan and his
neo-realist compatriots have little
time for
Good Intentions and
Sanctimonious promises, and Kaplan even goes so far as to quote
Henry Kissinger (of all people), who wrote 'The fundamental
problem of politics is not the control of
wickedness but the limitation of
righteousness...nothing is more dangerous than people convinced of their
moral
superiority." (p.135)
Amen.
Notes:
1 "A person raised in a middle or upper middle class suburban environment, a place ruled by
rationalism in the service of material progress, has
difficulty imagining the psychological state of affairs in a society where this is little or no memory of hard work achieving its just reward, and where life inside a gang
or drafty army barracks constitute an improvement in material and emotional security." (p.157)
2 "...what really separated the rulers from the ruled in the ancient world was
literacy : the illiterate
masses were subject to the elites' interpretation of
documents and law. Analogous gulfs between the rulers and the ruled may soon emerge not because of differing abilities to process information and master
technology but because of globalization itself. Already barely literate Mexicans on the US border, working in dangerous
Dickensian conditions to produce our VCRs,
computers, jeans and toasters, earn less than 50ยข/hr., with no benefits or rights. Is than
Western democracy, or Ancient style Greek
oligarchy?" (p.97)