All the world’s in turmoil, and all the world leaders merely players

by Rajan Philips

( July 16, 2016, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Suddenly July has become the cruellest month, competing with April. Change of season and springs of action are anathema to the depressed and that’s what made TS Elliot call April, the month of spring, the cruellest month. July this year began in the wake of Brexit win in the United Kingdom, upending British politics and causing a grave midlife crisis for the European Union. Then it was time for the periodical police shooting and counter shooting in the US, leaving a distraught President Obama to once again play the role of America’s – not Commander in Chief but Comforter in Chief. For sports lovers, the Euro-Cup and Wimbledon may have brought some respite, but even they have become distant memories swept away by a tractor trailer mowing down a promenade full of revelers celebrating Bastilles Day in Nice, France. Rounding off the week is the news about a failed military coup attempt and more killings in Turkey.Turkey’s democratically elected strongman, President Erdogan, has prevailed and has vowed punitive action against the coup clique in the army.

In between, Theresa May became Tory leader by acclamation and Prime Minister David Cameron did not wait a moment longer before vacating his post and residence for the new PM. To show the world that western unity is still intact, Brexit notwithstanding, the leaders of NATO countries, including David Cameron, assembled in – of all places – Warsaw to make a statement for Russia’s benefit. It is both the perception and the reality of western encirclement of Russia that drives Vladimir Putin crazy. But he is being unusually quiet this week, and seems to have left name calling to China after an international tribunal (the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague) rejected Chinese claims to “historical rights” over the resource-rich and hotly disputed waters of the South China Sea. The Hague hearing was caused not by any western power but by the Philippines in 2013, after Filipino fishermen were prevented by Chinese ships from reaching an oceanic outcrop (the Scarborough Shoal) that is 600 kilometres closer to the Philippines than to China. Beijing boycotted the hearing, disputing its jurisdiction over what is in China’s view a purely bilateral matter. After the ruling, the Chinese government has called the tribunal “a puppet” of external forces and made up of non-Asian judges.

The world was a different place when Warsaw was the epicentre of a different alliance. The Cold War world order of that era fell apart after one of the two Superpowers that sustained it proved to be internally unsustainable. The fall of the Berlin Wall that was the start of the end of the Cold War has also been called as the starting point of globalization, now the universal lightning rod for every political malcontent. But just as the Soviet Union fell apart, China burst on the world scene not for any socialist conquest but for conquering the world market without diminishing the absolute political power of the Communist Party. India cut itself loose from the shackles of state socialism and entered the market without abandoning any of the complications of being the world’s most populous democracy. Britain’s Brexit is now acclaimed as the assertion of people power against the elitism of globalization. Pope John Paul II was also famously weary about globalization. He wanted communism gone but abhorred the market consumerization of his beloved Poland, like the Brexit folks now hoping for a new European osmosis that would have only Britain enjoying all the fruits of free trading in goods and none of the hassles of the free movement of people.

Decency and optimism

The Polish Pope was also weary of democracy and would have interpreted the British referendum accordingly. In contrast, Pope Francis, the Jesuit from Argentina, is more in tune with the challenges of our times than either of his two immediate predecessors. On the secular front, Barak Obama is the lone ranger in the global battle over ideas and ideologies. Germany’s Angela Merkel, perhaps given her Chemical Engineering background, is rational and decisive but is not cut out for eloquent expositions. Both are exceptional but they also derive their eminence, as John Stuart Mill said of his contemporaries in the 19th century, from the plains that surround them. It is a sign of what the American people are missing in their politics and public life that they are giving Barak Obama approval ratings that are exceptionally high for an outgoing President. His international ratings are even higher. The Obama presidency will be reviewed both for its disappointments and its achievements, its controversies as well as its concurrences. But what many will miss most when he leaves the White House, as New York Times right-wing columnist David Brooks put it, is the basic decency of the man and his family. His detractors have questioned his birth, disparaged him for his race, and mocked his intellectual aloofness, but they could not land a speck of scandal on him. Quite exceptional, for the White House, in a long time.

Exceptional as well is Obama’s optimism in the face of encircling challenges. The great orator he is, he would rather be waxing eloquent in festive ceremonies and not delivering eulogies at public memorials after mass shootings – eleven of them in eight years. In the last of them, in Dallas, last week, he sought and found words in the Old Testament and sources in the treasure of American positive experiences to inspire his people not to despair and give in to erecting walls, but to keep breaking down barriers and building bridges. At a more rational level, he is one of the few leaders who argue that the baby of globalization should not be thrown out with its bathwater. Based on American statistics, he has argued that automation in industry has been a bigger cause of job losses than globalization. What he has also acknowledged is the general failure of governments to identify the negative impacts of globalization and develop specific programs to attend to those who become victims of those impacts. That task cannot be left to market forces, which by definition are not at all helpful to those who fall behind through no fault of their own.

Obama is also the fortuitous historical beneficiary of becoming president after the Iraq war launched by his predecessor had gone terribly awry. The Chilcot report in Britain is another crushing confirmation of the misgivings many had about the Iraq war jointly launched by President Bush and Prime Minister Blair. Obama came into office criticizing the Iraq war as a stupid war, but has not been able to achieve much in cleaning up the mess created by it. His efforts to change directions in American foreign policy have had few cheers at home and have been by and large ineffectual abroad. He is assailed at home for not doing enough to destroy ICIS in the Middle East, but there is no magical way to stop ICIS from taking its battles to western cities even if its territorial control in the Middle East is totally eliminated. The problem is now much more complicated and even finding a viable solution to the Palestinian question is likely to put an immediate end to ISIS misadventures. Unlike other world leaders and in the face of condemnation by his American critics, President Obama has steadfastly refused to call ISIS as a manifestation of radical Islam, insisting that doing so would be to give an unwarranted religious cover to a motley bunch of thugs and murderers. His logic is formally impeccable, but the practicality of defeating ICIS requires a great deal more than formal logic. It requires not only military crackdowns in the Middle East but also political and social inclusions of different communities in the West, especially in Europe and including Britain.