by Alex Evans | Feb 8, 2008 | Europe and Central Asia
Jared Diamond argued in Guns, Germs and Steel that it was to do with geography and biodiversity; David Landes, in The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, that it was all about culture and values. Now, reports Adam Kirsch in the New York Sun, a new book – After Tamerlane, by John Darwin – sets out a more ambiguous case:
Mr. Darwin wants to show that Europe’s hegemony, which began in the late 18th century and crumbled after World War II, was the result of a contingent historical process, not the manifestation of some superior essence. Invoking Edward Said, Mr. Darwin attacks the “orientalist” assumptions behind Western historiography. “The European path to the modern world should no longer be treated as natural or ‘normal,’ the standard against which historical change in other parts of the world should always be measured,” he writes. “Europeans had forged their own kind of modernity, but there were other modernities — indeed, many modernities.”
Yet reading “After Tamerlane,” with its panoramic yet fine-grained view of six centuries of world history, it is by no means clear that Mr. Darwin has achieved his revisionist purpose. The clearest lesson of “After Tamerlane,” in fact, is that there were not “other modernities,” equally valid competitors with the West’s, which might have resulted in a different, more equal distribution of global power. On the contrary, it is precisely because modernity was Western — because it came flying the flag of England or France or America or Germany or even Russia — that it was so challenging and unsettling to the rest of the world. Non-Western civilizations were never at leisure to formulate their own visions of modernity, because they were desperately trying to stay afloat in the whirlpool caused by the West’s rapid progress. As even Mr. Darwin writes, “Being modern was not an absolute state, but a comparative one,” and it was Europe that always offered the term of comparison.
For Darwin, Kirsch says, history is all about empires. “Our current assumption that empires are “abnormal,” Mr. Darwin writes — that only the nation-state is a really valid form of government — must be discarded if we are to understand the history of Europe and Asia.”
Crucially, Mr. Darwin helps us to see European expansion as a dynamic system, in which commerce, politics, and culture reinforced one another. Non-Western empires were faced with an impossible dilemma. To join the modern world system meant ceding political autonomy to Europe, accepting a subsidiary place in the global economy, and jeopardizing local structures of authority and belief. On the other hand, refusing to join meant facing financial coercion or armed force from the European powers. Over the 19th century, the British in particular managed to strongarm their way into positions of dominance around the world, whether as outright colonial sovereigns, as in Africa and India; de facto rulers, as in Egypt, or bullying profiteers, as in China. Attempts to resist were met with concentrated fury: When the Islamic “Mahdist” movement rebelled against British rule in Egypt, in the 1880s, the British commander Lord Kitchener not only crushed the rebels, he disinterred their leader’s corpse and threw it into the Nile. “A word from Queen Victoria,” Mr. Darwin writes, “was needed to stop him using … the skull as an ashtray.”
So what brought Europe’s imperial hegemony to an end? For Darwin, the answer in a word is: disunity.
“The most vital prop of Europe’s primacy in Eurasia,” Mr. Darwin argues, “had been [the European powers’] determination not to fight each other.” When that determination failed, so too did the financial and cultural premises of European imperialism. In telling the story of the last 50 years, Mr. Darwin is on more familiar ground, and his analysis of the Cold War is fairly conventional. He ends “After Tamerlane” on a cautious note: Despite the current unipolarity of American power, he writes, history demonstrates “Eurasia’s resistance to a uniform system, a single great ruler, or one set of rules.” This final judgment — so general as to be a truism, yet fruitful as a reminder of the diversity of history — reflects both the strengths and the weaknesses of Mr. Darwin’s book.
by Alex Evans | Feb 2, 2008 | Conflict and security, Europe and Central Asia
I did a straw poll this morning of the 70 or so participants at Wilton Park’s European Security in 2020 conference (mainly policymakers from foreign and defence ministries, and researchers at think tanks and universities – drawn from a good 20 or so mainly European countries). The questions asked went like this:
1. If you could assemble a group of world leaders of your choice, and get them to make a global deal on one issue, what would that issue be?
2. Which countries / blocs (min. 2, max. 20) would be needed in order to forge that deal?
3. Which international institution or forum could best host such a negotiation? If none, which is currently closest to what we would need?
4. Which country or region will be Europe’s single most important bilateral relationship in 2020?
5. What will be the three most important subjects of discussion in that relationship?
6. What does that country / region want from us?
7. What will be Europe’s three biggest vulnerabilities in 2020?
8. What are the 3 key steps Europe could take now to reduce those vulnerabilities?
9. If the biggest unexpected shocks of the last 20 years were (for example) the fall of the Iron Curtain or 9/11, what do you imagine might be the biggest in the next 20?
The results were pretty interesting (click here for a pdf with graphs showing all answers to each of these questions).
Participants overwhelmingly saw climate change as the most important issue for a global deal (34% of responses, compared to 13% for the next highest priority). Surprisingly, though, the impacts of climate change did not figure heavily in perceptions of key European vulnerabilities: only 3% of votes cast were for climate impacts, placing the issue outside of the top ten vulnerabilities.
In terms of the countries needed to make the key global deal, the US and China shared joint first place, with 20 votes each out of a total of 131 (participants were allowed to name up to 20 countries or blocs). The EU itself was next, with 19 votes, followed by a fairly tight cluster of India, Russia and Brazil all of which scored more than 10 votes. After these countries, there was a significant drop-off; Japan, the next country to figure on the list, scored only 4 votes.
There was also an overwhelming consensus on the UN as the key forum for negotiating the global deal deemed to be most important: it scored 57% of the votes, though many of those included the caveat “with significant reform”. The G8 was next, with 21%; other forums cited tended to be issue specific, e.g. the NPT or UNFCCC.
Over 50% of participants saw the US remaining firmly in the top spot as Europe’s key bilateral partner in 2020. Interestingly, Russia – rather than China – came second, by a decisive margin: 22% voted for Russia as opposed to only 10% for China, although a further 8% of participants also voted for “Asia” as the key bilateral relationship.
Which issues would matter in the key bilateral relationship? Trade and economic relations came out decisively in front, with 22% of votes – followed by energy (16%), security / defence (13%), resource security (11%), climate change (8%) and crisis management / peacekeeping (7%).
By and large, perceptions of what Europe’s key partner would want from the EU were as could be expected: trade and market access and “a trusted partner” were the two most popular answers. Participants who cited Russia as Europe’s key partner tended to cite a desire for respect and geopolitical status as a particular consideration for Russia; this issue did not arise for any other countries cited as Europe’s key relationship. Where the US was cited, a willingness to use force or shoulder international responsibilities also scored significantly.
One of the surprises in the poll was the great diversity of responses on Europe’s key vulnerabilities in 2020. Energy dependency was the clear front runner – 17% of votes cast compared to 11% for immigration, the second highest – but the main story here was the ‘long tail’ of vulnerabilities identified by just one or two people, leading to 27 separate vulnerabilities being cited in total. Demographic issues in Europe, especially its ageing population, were the third highest scoring issue with 9% of votes.
Participants felt that the most important thing Europe could do to reduce its vulnerabilities was to invest in energy efficiency or alternative energy (14%). Immigration accounted for both the second and third highest scorers, but with an interesting nuance: better integration of immigrants came second (10%), while limiting immigration came third (8%). Investing in stability in Europe’s near neighbourhood also scored highly.
Finally, there was, predictably, a great range of ideas for unexpected wild card events between now and 2020. The most widely predicted shock was a nuclear exchange between states, followed by two different scenarios of Chinese collapse. (See the full results for the complete list of wild cards imagined.) Overall, participants proved rather pessimistic: 88% of ideas were gloomy rather than upbeat. Two participants imagined a democratic China, however – and one cheery colleague wondered whether we might witness the outbreak of world peace.
by David Steven | Feb 1, 2008 | Conflict and security
A third underwater data cable has now been severed:
A submarine cable in the Middle East has been snapped, adding to global net problems caused by breaks in two lines under the Mediterranean on Wednesday.
The Falcon cable, owned by a firm that operates one of the previously damaged cables, was snapped on Friday morning.
The cause of the latest break has not been confirmed but a repair ship has been deployed, said owner Flag Telecom.
Following the earlier break internet services were severely disrupted in Egypt, the Middle East and India.
There was disruption to 70% of the nationwide internet network in Egypt on Wednesday, while India suffered up to 60% disruption.
One’s tempted to quote Goldfinger: “”They have a saying in Chicago: Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.”
It’s probably just an accident, but repairs will will take a week or more and Richard Stiennon, who points out that “anchors have an uncanny way of finding cables just as backhoes are the bane of terrestrial fiber”, warns of possible cascading failure:
What if US oil and gas companies that have operations in the Mideast put some back up services there? What if another coincidence shuts down a data center in the US and the backups cannot occur in time because of unreachable storage devices? What about all the “Business Process Outsourcing” handled in India? Try telling Dell, or Microsoft, both companies that rely on Indian support services, that “most of our content is here”.
The US has had its own problems. Backhoes have taken out big chunks of the Internet. Routing flaps, bad route announcements, attacks on Cisco vulnerabilities could all impair our beloved Internet.
It’s one ‘Net now. Anyone relying on the Internet for their business has to be concerned about its inherent vulnerability and prepare for it as best they may.
Further reading: As I recall Space Wars: The First Hours of World War III starts out with a few severed undersea cables… things then get a lot worse.
by Alex Evans | Jan 30, 2008 | Conflict and security, Middle East and North Africa
Michael Totten‘s still pottering around Iraq and the Middle East, blogging as he goes. This week he’s in Fallujah, looking at police reform:
I sat down with Captain Stewart Glenn and his executive officer Lieutenant Chuck Miller at India Company’s train station FOB.
“The Marines were the catalyst for providing security,” Captain Glenn said. “But without guys like Colonel Faisal, Captain Jamal, and some of the leaders of the Iraqi Police, this never would have happened. The Marines had the idea of hiring a neighborhood watch, professionalizing the Iraqi Police, providing barriers so they have actual precincts which they can police. Instead of having a centralized station that goes out, they have small precincts now, which is also pretty common in the States. The idea came from the Marines, but the Iraqi Police took it, ran with it, and made it work.”
Fallujah’s current policing model did come from the Marines, and it’s based loosely on the American idea of community policing. Mayor Tom Potter — of my hometown Portland, Oregon — is credited by many for coming up with this method when he was our chief of police. When police officers live and work in their own neighborhoods, have relationships with key neighbors, and patrol small beats on foot as well as anonymously in police cars, trust and community cooperation with law enforcement increases.
by Alex Evans | Jan 28, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Global system
And so to a new report on soft (i.e. agricultural) commodities from Bidwells, the agribusiness property consultancy, noteworthy for its observations about water scarcity and the need for productivity on existing agricultural land to rise by as much as 50 per cent (!) by 2050 if we’re to feed 9 billion.
In particular, though, note this interesting remark in the context of a discussion of how to invest in agricultural land profitably:
Logistics need consideration. The distances to market will impact on the options available and can be vital in cost sensitive commodities where transport costs can easily make up 20% of their total value. Cheap land a long way from markets and infrastructure may only be profitably farmed at very high prices.
Translated: before we see serious investment in increasing available acreage, investors will want assurance that prices for crops are going to remain high, in order to avoid being stranded with massive sunk costs. Sound familiar? Why yes! It’s the same with oil: no-one’s going to invest in hugely expensive, infrastucture-intensive exploration and production in the middle of nowhere (probably in temperatures of -30 degrees C on a warm day) without assurance of the oil price remaining high.
Problem is, while confidence is rising that the long term trend in oil and crops is upwards, short run trends are likely to be notable primarily for their volatility. Until a few weeks ago, lots of investors were confident that demand in China, India and other emerging economies would hold things up – but the balance of consensus seems to be tipping towards Nouriel Roubini‘s much more bearish view, which says that emerging economies absolutely remain coupled to industrialised countries’ fortunes.
