John Fanning writes: Trump 2 arrives at a time when a new world order, or disorder, as it has been called, is already well under way. If Britain ruled the waves, and a good part of the land, in the nineteenth century and America took over the reins in the twentieth we now seem to be faced with a riderless, rudderless world. America is still in charge but China, champing at the bit, is narrowing the gap. Much of the analysis of the race is couched in apocalyptic terms assuming that a major conflict between the US and China is unavoidable. Martin Pottinger , a US security analyst who served in Trump 1 believes that ‘we are now at the foothills of a great power hot war’. Chinese leader Xi has ordered the Peoples Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. A new book, Westlessness, presents a more balanced view of our times, its catchy title suggesting that the West will be less, that this will result in a certain amount of restlessness, but that Armageddon can be avoided if calm heads prevail. The well-qualified author, Dr Samir Puri, has worked for the Rand Corporation in the US, the Foreign Office in London and a think tank in Singapore. He was a war studies lecturer at King’s College and is an assistant Fellow at Chatham House. His breadth of experience is evident in this wide-ranging book which aptly fulfils its objective; to ‘provide the inspiration, the data and the intellectual scaffolding to support your mental framework for understanding a less western world’. His basic thesis is that the West is not facing collapse but readjustment while accepting that previously dominant powers find readjustment very difficult. Just look at Britain: the disaster that is Brexit stems from a failure to readjust to reality after a whole century of decline.
Perhaps Puri’s most important contribution to the current state of the world is his comprehensive analysis of how the West was won, and in particular its cavalier treatment of the rest of the world during this process. He starts by reminding us that in the great scheme of things the West is only an upstart: for centuries prior to 1500 it was a barbarous backwater. Economically and intellectually, the East was ahead of the rest up to the sixteenth century. Then, enriched by New World wealth, Spain became a superpower. Other European countries followed suit by plundering the African and Asian continents. Intense rivalry between competing European powers ensued but by the nineteenth century Britain emerged as the dominant power. Europe’s military superiority resulted in cavalier treatment of the rest of the world, but China endured ‘a century of humiliation’ from roughly the 1860s to the 1960s after the British cynically induced mass addiction to opium to further their own commercial interests. From the mid-nineteenth century China was reduced to a state of dependency on Japan and a number of Western countries and although it was not formally colonised to the Chinese it felt like it. Little wonder they are so determined that this will never happen again which explains their Belt and Road initiative designed to extend their influence in the Global South and why they have become South America’s biggest trading partner. While oil replaced coal as the most important source of energy in the early twentieth century, lithium, the ultimate energy storage material essential for powering electric cars, laptops and smartphones, will be crucial for economic success in the twenty-first century and the world’s biggest reserves are in the South American ‘lithium triangle’: Chile, Bolivia, Argentina.
But the West’s, and in particular the US’s, challenges are not confined to China. Puri points out that while China, as well as Russia and Iran, are defiant, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are disobedient, and India and Indonesia are ambivalent. But he is careful to emphasise that instead of a grand victory for one side ‘we are entering a period of shared winnings between a myriad of western, western aligned, western-sceptic and anti-western centres of power and influence all co-existing for the foreseeable future – it is most unlikely we will see the triumph of one system over another’.
Puri believes that the biggest challenge we will face in the future will be managing residual world pride. In particular, the US will need to develop a much greater appreciation of Chinese history and culture to understand their justified sense of resentment. They will need to be careful not to repeat the inexcusable arrogance and ignorance that categorised their approach to Iraq twenty years ago and display greater awareness that we now live in a multi-polar world which is rapidly descending into a Hobbesian nightmare of unrestrained selfishness and undiminished competition
As one of the most globalised countries in the world we also need to study the implications of this book very carefully. In some respects, the old Boston versus Berlin debate is now even more relevant. Since it was first aired our influence in both domains has declined. Joe Biden is likely to be the last American-Irish pol with any real interest in the old sod and we have failed to replace a previous generation of Irish civil servants at the heart of the EU. Our success in attracting Foreign Direct Investment, particularly from America, has damaged our relationship with both Boston and Berlin but we have no real option but to continue to attract as much mobile investment as we can. In the meantime, we might seek to strengthen our involvement in Hansa, a new version of the old Hanseatic League which we joined with little fanfare in 2018. In addition to ourselves the new group includes Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania the Netherlands and Sweden.
Mark Henry’s exhaustive statistical study of Ireland’s progress during the first hundred years of independence showed that there had been a steady move in our behaviour and attitudes towards Nordic as opposed to Anglo-American norms. A determined effort to hasten the pace of that journey might be our best defence against a solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short future.
Westlessness, by Samir Puri, is published by Hodder & Stoughton.
8/12/2024
