One World, Many Peaces

Hot Off the Press-- 2009: The Year in Review from One World, Many Peaces with Antony Adolf

 

 

What was 2009 all about — or was but you didn’t hear about it? How will 2010 and beyond take shape? 2009: The Year in Review is One World, Many Peaces’ answer. Antony Adolf, author of Peace: A World History, shares the stories he covered throughout the year as “Current Events Creating the Future” — Ours.

Includes three new essays by Antony Adolf published together for the first time:

•Buyers and Buy-Nots: The New Economics of Poverty and Affluence
•Post-Islamophobia: How Cultural Integration Can Prevent Terrorism and Build Peace
•A Missile Shield by Any Other Name: Is Obama's Global Military Strategy Taking Shape in Eastern Europe?

One World, Many Peaces: The Blog and Podcast will start anew on January 5. Thank you for a great year and have a safe and happy New Year!

 

Rise of the East, Reluctantly Rushed: The Decade in Review, Part Four

 

China and India are in the curious position of wanting to remain known as developing countries just as they begin to take center stage in global affairs, economically and politically. Over the course of the year, One World, Many Peaces has highlighted key trends and events relating to the rise of the East. However, not one in itself completely captures the paradox of this rise in terms of how reluctant these two superpowers are in taking their inevitable place, and how  rushed others are to have them do so. The bottom line is that having half the world's populations makes Asia as a whole more than important and less than avoidable.

 

But the rise of the East is not limited to China and India, although they are already starting to act like magnets of power, especially China. Japan has since the end of the Cold War turned into the greatest of Western allies in Asia and a powerhouse unto itself until the crisis of the 1990s, from which it is still recovering. The way to do so, its new premier seems to think, may be shifting primary its allegiance Eastwards. South Korea seems to be shaping up to be the country that will stick with the West come hell or high water, but even this is doubtful when it realizes the potentials of shifting. Each of these situations reinforces one thing: that the rise of the East is more reluctant than rushed.

 

The most peculiar case in the rise of the East remains Vietnam. It has been said that the U.S. belatedly won its war there when capitalism took over. The most dangerous case is still North Korea, where a military-first policy is in place. Pakistan's terrorist troubles are also a worrying destabilizing force, with the Kashmir region likely to be Balkanized. But it is precisely this complexity which brings to the East a dynamism which the West seems to have lost by falling in to the left-right pendulum swinging trap that leads nowhere but the past. To create the future, the world beginning with me and you must finds ways to take the rise of the East into account.

 

This conlcudes One World, Many Peaces' four-part weekly series "The Decade in Review," offering provocative closing and opening thoughts on the years 2000-2009. We will return on January 5, happy holidays and best New Year wishes!

 

The Future of International Relations and Global Negotiations: Lessons from Copenhagen

What was at stake in Copenhagen was not only the ecological future of our planet, but in many ways the future of how nation-states will and will not find ways to meet their needs, seek compromise and achieve common goals. The contentious round of climate change negotiations at Copenhagen, which have resulted in a "better than nothing" treaty, are a strong indication of how topic-based negotiations on a global level may take place in the 21st century. For better and worse. Is this one step away or closer to a world government?

Even though the conference took place under the auspices of the UNFCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), hardly anyone-- participants or media pundits-- have mentioned the United Nations in its regards. Whether or not this more than hints that the U.N. may be very close to expiration date, as a standing-forum the U.N. shares many of the shortcomings of its League of Nations predecessor. Task-focused, results- oriented meetings like Copenhagen may be new wave of international relations, making it a laboratory for how unequal participants can (or cannot) reach a multilateral agreement instead of the bilateral agreements that have dominated world affairs since the 1990s. Ironically, the conference's sponsors include BMW and Honda.

Imagine if, after working out the major procedural kinks and staying vigilant to other ones, the Copenhagen process was used to address issues like world hunger, the global economy, disarmament, regional security and so on. Such ad-hoc, topical conventions could be compared to the Hague Conferences of the early 20th century, which were at least partially effective. They would not by definition constitute a world government, but if doing so is more effective, does it really matter? Perhaps the Copenhagen paradigm is the future and we are the current events creating it.

 

For more on the Copenhagen conference, visit their official site.

For more on the UNFCC, visit their official site.

Food First, Everything Else Next: The Decade in Review, Part Three

Being eager to "save the planet" in its Copenhagen form is noble and necessary and all, but it remains more than a bit relevant to ask: who are you saving it for? The single most stunning piece of news this decade is, for me, that one billion people in the world are hungry. One billion, roughly one in six: think of your favorite five people in the world and, with yourself, one of them is hungry with little to hope for but still too weak to do anything else.

 

 

That the news came out halfway through 2009 only makes clear to what extent the situation has been building for years, if not decades. In Peace: A World History, I show that nutrition as the most basic component of corporeal peace is the basis for all other peaces. Far from the first to say so, food forms the basis of peace since time immemorial: Ancient Chinese sages and Ancient Greek philosophers each attested to the primacy of food in peace (and everything else, for that matter).

 

 

That hunger should persist as a worldwide problem is as atrocious as state-sanctioned slavery lasting till the late 19th century, and in other forms today. As is well known, the world's hungry are kept that way for lack of proper distribution, not production. Americans, we found out recently, waste about forty percent of their high-calorie diets on average. That's enough for about half the world's hungry, with the rest coming from removing the red tape and skimming in food aid, and sustainable local farming.  Easier said than done, of course, but worldwide hunger is worth more concerted effort and news coverage as a current event creating the absence of a future.

 

This decade's closing in two short weeks gives occaision to reflect upon it as well that which is about to open. In honor of this arbitrariness, One World, Many Peaces will run a four-part weekly series on Thursdays, "The Decade in Review," to offer provocative closing and opening. thoughts.

Two New Articles by Antony Adolf: 'Post-Islamophobia' and 'A Missile Shield by Any Other Name'

Two renowned news and commentary outlets have recently published articles by Antony Adolf, author of Peace: A World History, publisher and host of One World, Many Peaces: The Blog and The Podcast.

The first, George Mason University's History  News Network (HNN) released "Post-Islamophobia: How Cultural Integration can Prevent Terrorism and Build Peace." The second, Global Americana Institute's President Juan Cole's Informed Comment, released "A Missile Shield by Any Other Name: Is Obama's Global Military Strategy Taking Shape in Eastern Europe?" As current events, these article are aimed at shaping a better informed and more peaceful world. Here are excerpts from them and links.

"Post-Islamophobia: How Cultural Integration can Prevent Terrorism and Build Peace." On the History  News Network (HNN).

...Competing versions of local, regional, national and international histories can for example be reworked to be more inclusive, potentially stemming violence originating in the experience of exclusion. South Africa has probably taken the most proactive steps in this respect in recent times. Institutions like museums, galleries, sporting events, parades and holidays have for as long as we’ve known been consciously used in nation-building. The ethnic parades in Northern Ireland that have decreased in bloodshed and the religious monuments in Jerusalem that have increased in tensions are two cases in point. That they and the narratives they institutionalize and canonize can also be used in peacebuilding should be less of an innovation than it is. The opportunities for cultural integration they collectively offer exposes the minaret debate for its deliberate exclusivity. Perhaps the first step in systematizing and practicing cultural integration as a means of preventing terrorism and build peace at local, regional and global levels is to separate the nation and the state, just as John Locke did for religion and the state three centuries ago...

"A Missile Shield by Any Other Name: Is Obama's Global Military Strategy Taking Shape in Eastern Europe?" in Informed Comment.

...An agreement was announced by both Polish and U.S. high officials about the types, quantities and locations of advanced missile launchers and projectiles to be stationed in Poland. But they left two lecherously lingering questions about President Obama's global military goals as compared to his predecessor, particularly as to how different or similar they actually are and are likely to be. Campaign rhetoric and first Presidential steps are seemingly turning into a bait and switch. Having inked a SOFA deal with Poland, the Czech republic will be next, according to official sources, with the environmental summit in Copenhagen acting as an inconvenient cover. Romania’s contested elections make for fertile grounds for intervention, if they are not already the result...

Beware the Rise of Regionalism: The Decade in Review, Part Two

The past ten years have seen a staggering rise in what is now being called, rather benignly, regionalism: groups of geographically proximate countries that unite in an organization or agreement to pursue common goals. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? It is in one way, but in another regionalism is exactly what George Orwell warns us of in 1984. He turned out to be quite accurate in his depiction of totalitarian communism, how feasible is it for his nightmare to come true in our waking dreams?

 

 
Much more so than not, I would argue. Just weeks ago Asian nations agreed to extend the existing ASEAN organization (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) of ten nations into a much larger powerhouse including China. They are self-consciously taking as their model the European Union (EU) which has been operating on ever larger scales for decades. What these two organizations have in common is that their most basic goals are economic, with foreign policy and internal governance important too, but secondary. Of course, security trumps all at least in name.

 

 

In South America, the Organization of American States (OAS) of 35 chartered member-states has as its slogan "democracy for peace, security and development," more than hinting at its origins as a U.S.-instigated group aimed at stemming communist influence in the region during the Cold War. I guess the OAS won, except for Venezuela. Two regional organizations that have not fared so well in being ineffective are the African Union (AU) and the Arab League. The AU, unlike the EU and ASEAN, set out to be a political organization first and an economic and security one second. It hasn't worked. The Arab League's sole purpose was to destroy Israel, and that hasn’t worked either.

 

The only comparable arrangement in North America is the North American Free Trade Agreement between the U.S., Canada and Mexico, which does form the economic kernel that has lead to success in other cases of regionalism. So far, all these organizations (except the Arab League at first) have been too preoccupied with internal squabbles to think of actively targeting their rivals. As current events, these regional bodies which have taken an ever larger part of the world stage may in the future take it over, and run alongside rather than against the multipolar paradigm we encountered last Thursday.

 

This decade's closing in three short weeks gives occaision to reflect upon it as well that which is about to open. In honor of this arbitrariness, One World, Many Peaces will run a four-part weekly series on Thursdays, "The Decade in Review," to offer provocative closing and opening. thoughts

The Most Powerful People in the World-- You've Probably Never Heard Of

The list of the 67 most powerful people in the world-- ten per billion inhabitants or so-- has recently been released by Forbes. While the top ten are quite predictable (see the complete list below), there are a few names not so much further down that are surprising for how unrecognizable they are. Here are the top five most powerful people in the world you’ve never heard of  (notice where all but one is from):

Li Changchun. Controls what 1.3 billion Chinese see, hear, speak as the Communist Party's Propaganda Minister. Keeps "unhealthy information" (Dalai Lama, Tiananmen Square, Falun Gong) from world's largest Internet user population, estimated at 340 million. Controls CCTV, China's leading television network. Together with China Mobile, state-controlled mobile service company, switched customers' cellphone ring-back tones to patriotic beats for country's 60th birthday. Lyrics: "Only when we have a strong country can we have a prosperous family."

Li Ka-shing. Yes, his name is "Ka-shing." So-called "Superman's" net worth down $10 billion in past year as Cheung Kong and Hutchison Whampoa stock tumbled. Upside, still world's largest operator of container terminals, major health and beauty retailer, supplier of electricity to Hong Kong and lucrative real estate developer. Generous: calls philanthropy "third son," plans to give one-third of wealth to charity. Athletic too: plays golf every day; reportedly sank his 15th hole-in-one in September.

Jean-Claude Trichet. Responsible for monetary policy in world's second-largest economic area as EU Centrank Chief; 16 member states of Eurozone now contribute some 15% of world GDP. Unlike U.S. Fed, European Central Bank traditionally has focused on controlling inflation rather than spurring economic growth, a bias fiercely challenged by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Lou Jiwei. Runs China's $200 billion sovereign wealth fund. Took heavy hits from big bets on Morgan Stanley ($5 billion), Blackstone ($3 billion). But recovery whetting appetite: took $850 million stake in commodities trading company Noble Group to shore up agricultural commodities, following 2008 global food crisis.

 

Ratan Tata. The 71-year-old head of the Tata Group—conglomerate with interests in everything from tea to steel—is India's best brand ambassador. His 2007 acquisition of Anglo-Dutch steel maker Corus and auto brands Jaguar, Land Rover signaled global ambitions. In 2008, made automotive history debuting $2,500 Tata Nano, the world's cheapest auto. Calls Nano "The People's Car"; in nation of a billion, environmentalists call it eco-disaster.

Yes, four out of five of them are from Asia, China and India. And expect to see more in years to come. Why? Because Asia is a bigger current event collectively than anywhere else on the planet, and is in the process of becoming the primary agent creating the future of the world, for better or worse.

And the 67 are...

1.  Barack Obama

2.  Hu Jintao

3.  Vladimir Putin

4.  Ben S. Bernanke

5.  Sergey Brin and Larry Page

6.  Carlos Slim Helu

7.  Rupert Murdoch

8.  Michael T. Duke

9.  Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al Saud

10.  William Gates III

11.  Pope Benedict XVI

12.  Silvio Berlusconi

13.  Jeffrey R. Immelt

14.  Warren Buffett

15.  Angela Merkel

16.  Laurence D. Fink

17.  Hillary Clinton

18.  Lloyd C. Blankfein

19.  Li Changchun

20.  Michael Bloomberg

21.  Timothy Geithner

22.  Rex W. Tillerson

23.  Li Ka-shing

24.  Kim Jong Il

25.  Jean-Claude Trichet

26.  Masaaki Shirakawa

27.  Sheikh Ahmed bin Zayed al Nahyan

28.  Akio Toyoda

29.  Gordon Brown

30.  James S. Dimon

31.  Bill Clinton

32.  William H. Gross

33.  Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva

34.  Lou Jiwei

35.  Yukio Hatoyama

36.  Manmohan Singh

37.  Osama bin Laden

38.  Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani

39.  Tenzin Gyatso

40.  Ali Hoseini-Khamenei

41.  Joaquin Guzman

42.  Igor Sechin

43.  Dmitry Medvedev

44.  Mukesh Ambani

45.  Oprah Winfrey

46.  Benjamin Netanyahu

47.  Dominique Strauss-Kahn

48.  Zhou Xiaochuan

49.  John Roberts Jr.

50.  Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar

51.  William Keller

52.  Bernard Arnault

53.  Joseph S. Blatter

54.  Wadah Khanfar

55.  Lakshmi Mittal

56.  Nicolas Sarkozy

57.  Steve Jobs

58.  Fujio Mitarai

59.  Ratan Tata

60.  Jacques Rogge

61.  Li Rongrong

62.  Blairo Maggi

63.  Robert B. Zoellick

64.  Antonio Guterres

65.  Mark John Thompson

66.  Klaus Schwab

67.  Hugo Chavez

Baby Steps Towards a Multipolar World: The Decade in Review, Part One

This decade's closing in three short weeks gives occaision to reflect upon it as well that which is about to open. In honor of this arbitrariness, One World, Many Peaces will run a four-part weekly series on Thursdays, "The Decade in Review," to offer provocative closing and opening thoughts.

Among the few certainties of 2000-2009 is, as last month's commemorative events of 1989 make clear, that the world is finally yet still slowly shifting away from the Cold War/ Superpower paradigm that was artificially sustained by the Bush regime under the banner of the "New World Order."

The U.S. still has some 800 bases and 1 million troops around the world, but these may be more to protect what's left of the American Empire than feasibly extending it further, as compellingly argued by Chalmers Johnson in Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic. So where are we heading?
 

Actually, the directions the tides of history are pushing us towards are not without precedent. From an imperial oligarchy in the 19th century, to a bipolarity in the 20th, to an imagined monopoly in the very early 21st, the rest of our century is likely to take up a form that has survived the lat two.

Not NATO, the militarism of which purportedly precludes it (or should) from playing a major role in non-military world affairs. Nor the U.N., which has been beaten into impotence by the U.S., the Security Council and its own structural flaws, namely a debilitating dependence on the sovereignty and dues of its members coupled with the lack of enforceable international law.

Rather, as I show in Peace: A World History and have proposed several times here, the Non-alligned Movement offers the best (and perhaps only workable) model for how states with different political, religious, cultural and other systems can build on common interests to achieve shared objectives.
 

 

The term "multipolarity" (as in Dilip Hiro's forthcoming After Empire: The Birth of a Multipolar World) has sometimes been used to describe the post-Cold War world, meaning that power is sufficiently dispersed around the globe to have superseeded the bipolarity of the previous period. I would argue that the symbolic gestures which have confirmed the underlying actualities were only put on global display when President Obama visited China and hosted the Indian premier just days ago.

The import of such signs is that they bear meanings which their bearers can only partially control. So in denying  what top experts predicted soon after the Cold War (unquestioned and unending American dominance), and confirming what their opponents had been saying all along (that American dominance is already imploding), a new paradigm based on current events is shaping the future. Call it multipolarity, "One World, Many Peaces," or just a world in which we have to learn to work with each other as we are before becoming something else together.