EMBRACING EMERGING REALITY

By Kazi Anwarul Masud (former Secretary and ambassador)

ARTICLE FOR PUBLICATION ON SUNDAY THE 25^TH APRIL 2010

Arvind Virmani, Executive Director  of IMF speaks of a tripolar world from the short lived unipolar world consisting of China, India and the US by 2040( From Unipolar to Tripolar World-Academic Foundation, New Delhi) . Virmani index relies on population, GDP and military might of the countries of the world. Virmani examines per capita income separately through GDP and population. He evaluates GDP in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP). Through this method the US   accounts for 22% of the global GDP but  has less than five per cent of global population, while China with 12 per cent of the GDP accounts for 21 per cent of the global population and India with six percent of the global GDP has 17 percent of the world’s population. Virmani estimates that in a few decades per capita income of China and India would increase much faster than that of the US and the three combined would account for a fifth of the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Under this scenario neither Japan nor Russia or the European Union would come any where near the three. Virmani also predicts that given the possibility of growing US perception of China as an adversary India and the US, already bound in strategic relationship, would come closer. Such a scenario conflicts with the traditional procedure of ranking global powers. Harvard Professor  Joseph Nye Jr (The Paradox of American Power) has already discounted possibility of any power coming close to challenge the US supremacy in the Twenty First century given the US’ defense expenditure and its huge economy, the current discomfort notwithstanding. Because of the unprecedented technological improvement in human history termed by Thomas Friedman as Flat Earth Walt Rostow’s prescription of stages of economic development necessary for the upliftment of human welfare from agricultural to manufacturing to technology in stages spaced out in many  years and trickle down effect from developed to underdeveloped nations have been abridged  considerably. As a result it is within the realm of possibility that countries like China and India branded as impoverished nations can supersede nations that ruled the world till the demise of colonialism in the mid twentieth century. Albeit neo-conservatives like Robert Kagan termed the loss of colonies by European nations as the greatest contraction of power in the history of the world and consequent loss of centrality of Europe in global power game. Yet one has to accept that Charles Kindelberger’s Hegemony Theory of the need of a hyper power  to regulate the global politico-economic conditions is not an acceptable thesis in a world, where despite derogation from Westphalian concept of sovereignty, nation states are acutely jealous and zealous to safeguard their national interests. The US entanglement in Afghanistan and Iraq, despite global endorsement at the beginning, is giving life to Samuel Huntington’s clash of civilization theory and partly to Bernard Lewis’ diatribe against Islam and the Muslims though only a fringe consisting of  Islamic extremists believe in violent confrontation with the West strengthening Isaiah Berlin’s famous lecture on “Historical Inevitability” in which he condemns as immoral and cowardly the belief that vast impersonal forces like geography, environment and ethnicity determine the direction of world politics. True that the damage done by George Bush to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison’s American values, emulated by the liberal world, may be salvaged by Barak Obama but a lot will depend on the extrication with honor of US forces from Afghanistan and Iraq within the stipulated time frame. Michael Cohen (New America Foundation-Myth of a kinder gentler war) expresses serious doubt about the success of population-centric counter insurgency (COIN) of Generals Petreus and McCrystal to embrace the population and by sparing in the use of fire power. He finds that historically such approach has not been successful in US counterinsurgency in the Philippines, British operations in Malaya and Kenya, French efforts in Algeria, American experience in Vietnam.  In all cases the so-called Roman method of unrestrained violence to suppress the rebellion had been resorted to  making a wasteland to call it peace.   In this melee of chaos has been added the global financial crisis seen by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd as “a crisis which is individual, national and global…which is at once institutional, intellectual and ideological. Referring to Alan Greenspan’s concession that his ideological viewpoint was flawed and that in 2007 five biggest Wall Street firms paid bonuses of a staggering $ 39 billion Kevin Rudd pleads to “advance the case that social-democratic state offers the best guarantee of preserving the productive capacity of properly regulated competitive markets, while ensuring that the government is the regulator, is the funder or the provider of public goods and that the government offsets the inevitable inequalities of the market with a commitment of fairness for all”. That the global economy will come out of this mess is not in doubt.  But in the process a new global structure is likely to emerge with Asia playing a decisive role.  The Indian economy, for example, is set to become four times its current size in the decade to 2020, with the gross domestic product (GDP) spurting to over $4 trillion ( at present exchange rate) and per capita income rising to $3,213 from $1,017 now.  Countries like Bangladesh will be well advised to face the emerging reality and shed off decades old mindset to embrace regional cooperation to further the well being of the people