Lessons from World History

By MADHUKAR S.J.B.RANA

Having accepted the SAARC Chamber's invitation in early May to speak on the topic 'trade and investment in services' for the very well organized Islamabad Round Table on 'SAFTA and South Asian Economic Union', sponsored by the Commonwealth Business Council, one came across economic historian William Woodruff's 'A Concise History of the Modern World' selling in the magnificently spacious Karachi Airport.

What a delightful intellectual treat it turned out to be reading it in the stunning ambiance and quiet of the Karachi airport. It is a magisterial endeavor that convinces us policy makers that learning from history is a must in order to understand the present and sense the future.

It is a provocative paperback that delves into 500 years in the life of humanity and examines how the modern world (up to 2004; Nepal getting citations in 4 pages of the 414 pages of main text) has come to be what it is today with fascinating turns and twists in the global power structures.

It is a story written with a broad stroke, like a master painter, that illuminates how Asia dominated the world in the 16 th century; how Europe took over with its imperial order founded on the 'white man's superiority' beliefs and values and ruthless colonization of 4 continents, which eventually led to its own self-destruction through the two world wars; the rise of America as the sole super power and as the new vanguard of the West and its civilization; and how the pendulum of global power is swinging back with Asia emerging as a new global power house and, Islam as the world's fastest growing religion.

Yes, reading this great masterpiece in Islamic Pakistan itself --in the bustling mega city of Karachi with 13 million inhabitants with hardly a traffic jam; in the architecturally imposing and delightfully lit and landscaped Islamabad, and in the serenely beautiful Lahore-- fosters new insights to the trials and tribulations being faced by Pakistan: As it struggles to modernize as a moderate Islamic nation living in peace with itself amidst the terror, militancy and pressures from all around its immediate neighborhood and beyond.

Woodruff seems to implicitly recognize that with the restoration of democracy in 1990 in Nepal the republican movement has been growing culminating in the victory by the pro-republican parties in the election of 1994. One may hypothesize, on hindsight, that this victory for the republicans brought the Royalists, Democrats and Republicans as three centers of power all seeking to exploit the loopholes in the constitution to gain ascendancy. While, not seeing any hope of power under the present Constitution, the Maoists rejected it outright in 1996 with the declaration of a "people's war" on the State. He predicts that in this tussle for power "If all order breaks down, either India (which arms and trains the Nepalese army) or China will likely intervene" (Ibid: P355).

While the prediction is valid, pre-emptive efforts have been under way in Indian diplomacy, most stridently since 2002, with the implicit concurrence (and perhaps joint strategy-formulation) of the USA and UK to blatantly intervene in Nepal's internal affairs to prop up the democratic forces by curtailing the powers of both the King and Maoists.

Insightfully, says Woodruff "An arms race is underway in China , India , and Pakistan … Japan is in the process of abandoning the pacifist doctrine imposed by the USA after the Second World War." (Ibid: P395). It is precisely this most dangerous arms race between 3 nuclear states that has forced India to resort to overt power play to assert its regional hegemony so as to keep Nepal tightly having achieved that with Bhutan , Maldives and Sri Lanka .

No doubt, the global order is going to be a multi-polar world. What is unpredictable and threatening to the smaller powers is the evolution of what Dr Karan Singh referred to (at a recent New Delhi seminar on 'Emergent Asia and South Asia ' ) as the "multi-polarity in Asia within the multi-polar world". We are witnessing the pangs of this complexity as India seeks to assert its regional hegemony with the open support of the West that has sidelined China .

The Indian strategy over Nepal could backfire as law and order breaks down, elections fail to materialize, the economy does not pick up but slides backwards instead with rampant graft and corruption, and the rising expectations of the youth are vaingloriously dashed with mounting unemployment causing the non-democratic forces to resort to 'revolutionary nationalism' which, believes Woodruff, is an intangible force that threatens world piece owing to the vast disparity between the global rich and poor. Here witness the phenomenon taking shape in Peru , Bolivia and Venezuela on the very door steps of the USA . 'Revolutionary nationalism' could imperil India too with the national aspirations of the Sikhs, Bengalis, Kashmiris, Tamils (Ibid: P405) and, one may add, Nepalese and Assamese sharing the Union but not really psychologically belonging to it.

Further, the secular, rationalist humanism that has nourished the West is on the decline as "the world is witnessing a new search for meaning, for consolation, for refuge, for a total perspective, which can not be found in the materialism of communism, nationalism or Western modernism" (Ibid:P401). Judaism, Hinduism, Shintoism, Buddhism, Jainism, Christianity, Islam, and Sikhism and the power of the spiritual world is in its ascendancy. Witness the world wide popularity of the Dalai Lama, the Hindu Maharishis and Rishis and their enunciation of the 'art of living' philosophy and principles.

Dostoevsky said " if everything on earth were rational, nothing would happen". The quest for the soul, passion, emotion, pride, prejudice, sexual gratification and search for individual identity are more powerful attributes of the human being than simply reason and logic. Not to mention events that are outside our control as acts of God or Nature which change the course of human history dramatically.

Religion is a global force to be reckoned with and will definitely impact the national politics of Nepal with unimagined foreign intervention as it seeks to debate its status as the world's sole Hindu state.

The very fact that the non-secular Vatican state welcomed the proclamation of secularism by the parliament is as ironical as it is revealing. From now on we shall be, as in India , not "casting votes but voting castes" as remarked by Lt General Dr B.S.Malik, President of CSIRD, in the robust e-debate on ' India as a Great Power' (www.ipcs.org/newDebatePage1).

The world's power balance is highly unstable and has yet to find its new equilibrium in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet empire. The pending decline of America as a super power will add to the disequilibrium with the graying of Japan in the wake of the spectacular rise of rise of China and soon enough India , and possibly a unified Korea too, as new geo-political and geo-economic actors of great importance on the world stage. Not to mention the likes of the Islamic countries struggling, on the sidelines, to emerge as major powers pursued by Africa and South America, if they are able to unite as continental powers, to act as countervailing forces in the emerging multi-polar world.

'Live and let live' seems to be the best motto for world and regional peace .That should be found on Mahatma Gandhi's eternal values of peace and truth -- ahimsa and satyagrah—nurtured by reconciliation and compromise to give space to all beings.

The world currently endangered by nuclearization, religious fundamentalism, inequality, ethno-nationalism, arms rivalry, and the unimaginable rise in criminal behavior through the parallel global economy (as manifest in money laundering, trafficking in drugs, arms and peoples, smuggling and counterfeiting of currency) with a possible scenario of a 'new class war' resulting from the digital divide in the information age portends a scenario of continuing crisis and conflict as a commonplace phenomena of international relations in the 21 st century with persistent threat of global anarchy.

A philosophy of live and let live means to recognize that one begins to, in Woodruff's words " also questions whether Western forms of democracy should be thought of as universal … (as) Democracy is not something that can be imposed from the outside by wishful thinking. If it is not to end in violence, it must be preceded by education and economic, legal and social change. It is not the vote that matters but the institutions that precede it, such as the rule of law, a stable infrastructure, social stability and security. The ballot box alone might end up with the rule of the mob led by a demagogue" (Ibid: P411) "…There will be no peace among us as long as we refuse to accept the fact that no nation, no continent, no race has a monopoly of truth; that all societies, all human institutions, have relative strengths and weaknesses that cannot be judged universally. It is wrong and dangerous for any nation to claim to know what everybody in all parts of the world ought to do…..The world is going to have to tolerate different concepts of God, nature, morality, economics, government and society" (Ibid: P414).

What is so majestic about William Woodruff one might ask? The extensive quotes should provide insights. Nevertheless, to this author, it his vision that global politics impacts national politics particularly in the information age underscored by economic globalization. His supreme wisdom is borne out of 500 years of historical analysis which, in summary, says that international politics is all about real politic.

That the struggle for power whether military, money, intellectual or spiritual is what dictates the course of human history. An understanding of what is unfolding in Nepal is incomplete without an appreciation of the totality of the real politic being played out in the region and the world at large. Given this reality, we must all be alert to the fact that weak states invite aggression, especially a weak buffer state that is in the throes of anarchy and intellectual confusion.

(Rana is a former finance minister)