For them globalisation, for us slowbalisation

Answering who is the greatest leader of the 20th century, Nadav Eyal in his international bestseller book Revolt – The Worldwide Uprising Against Globalization writes, “Only one twentieth century leader inherited a backward and poor country and in return gave back to its people a superpower.” His name is Deng Xiaoping. A vast majority of people may not agree with Eyal’s assessment but what this assessment brings to limelight is that illiberal world continues to compete with the liberal world for distinction, and liberal democracy may be the best form of government but is still not the only form of government that delivers. The ‘world of revolt’ that Nadav Eyal explains in his book is the world in which “the local is constantly under attack and under challenge by foreign powers that creates a sense of arbitrariness”.

What is this sense of arbitrariness? Is it being represented by our globalised international system where the strong is unrestrained and autocratic in the use of authority against the weak? Should the world not then be happy to have leaders like Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Tayyip Erdogan, Rodrigo Duterte, Mahathir Mohammad, etc to challenge this system which is arbitrary in use of its powers and authority?

Two great scholars in International Relations consistently wrote and theorised on how an environment with the potential of arbitrary violence can affect the imagination of any leadership and thus gives sustenance to an international system that creates less and less cooperation and more and more arbitrary violence and conflict. Samuel P Huntington in his clash of civilisation thesis predicted that people’s cultural and religious identities will become the primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War order. His student Francis Fukuyama theorised that with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, humanity reached the end of history – he called it the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution, thus suggesting that western liberal democracy has become the final form of human government. Considering that the illiberal world is not only competing but ably contesting the liberal world, how does the world of 21st century looks at these predictions? Civilisations clashing and ending? Or illiberal democracy keeping a liberal democracy with arbitrary powers and authority in check and balance?

Unfortunately, over the years liberal democracy has taken a more illiberal tone and while it was predicted that liberal democracy will take the world by storm – illiberal democracies not only prosper but are challenging the very concept of the ‘final form of government’ to take any real root. Singapore, Turkey, Russia and China are today’s examples of countries that are doing well despite not being liberal, some of them are not even democracies.

China’s share of the world GDP, which was 2% in 1979, is almost 20% today. People in China, almost 1.3 billion of them, have taken little note of ‘mankind’s ideological evolution’; and much against the Western world’s prediction, they haven’t democratised and the Chinese Communist Party led by President Xi has not only upheld the promises it made to its people, but has also advanced Chinese society’s material interests. Given the challenges that democracies around the world face, China’s success over the years suggests that democracy may not be the only right way forward – autocracy can also do well. As far as the clash of civilisations is concerned, in today’s globalised and challenging world, civilisations seem to be too busy trying to survive than fight. Globalisation has brought a new wave of hope to the people in how it made the world flat and in how it almost brought everything within the reach and grasp of the people. It brought a promise that people could get whatever they wanted. The globalised world promised to the people that they would be able to live their dreams. But was this true for everyone everywhere?

Globalisation has divided us more than it has united us and in doing that it has created two worlds – one that experienced globalisation and the other which only suffered what the economist call slowbalisation. Countries like Pakistan that have experienced slowbalisation had their children exposed to the globalised world and thus many of them willingly forsake their cultures to adopt the ‘dream cultures’ of the developed world. But the borders, walls and fences still divide and separate them from a very attractive outside world that many cannot be part of or visit. What globalisation has gifted the countries like Pakistan is more social disruption and a youth that is frustrated being part of a system that promises but doesn’t deliver.

It is in this context that one can laugh at the ‘collective action’ that American policymakers talk about as the remedy against the emerging threats that don’t respect any borders or walls that divide us. Clearly spelled in its ‘interim national security strategic guidance’, the US urges the world for a ‘collective action’ to meet these threats. But how can alienated communities or group of nations that are weak, frustrated, and experiencing more slowbalisation than globalization be part of this ‘collective action’? As things stand, weak and poor states will continue to remain targets and not part of developed world’s collective actions. Deprived of the fruits of globalisation, these weak communities, nations and states will continue to grow more instable and weaker and foster into nation states that may harbour such threats that may warrant ‘collective action’ by the developed world. So, should the US not focus more on turning to reality the ‘optimistic prophecies’ that the globalised world promised to these weak states? Or should it continue to invest in its partners and allies to prepare them for the ‘collective action’ against these weak, poor and instable countries?

Iran, North Korea, Syria and most of the countries that are the troubled states and that have no democracies or are practising illiberal democracies should not be labelled as the dark side of the globalised world. While the ‘bright side of the democracy’ may be doing well, the deprived and not so bright side will not stop competing in an arbitrary global system to persist and survive. If over one billion people have been lifted out of poverty in the world since 90s, about 700 million amongst them are from China which is more than 70% of the ‘bright world’s achievement’. This is undertaken not by a democratic but by an illiberal and undemocratic country. In the same country, if in 1978, seven out of every 10 Chinese worked in agriculture or related fields, today seven to eight Chinese work in nonagricultural fields, in trade, industry and services. China’s social, political, economic and military progress is creating history and challenging the very concept of ‘end of history’ and ‘end of ideological evolution’ slogans.

Practising ‘muscular liberalism’, the liberal international order of the globalised world, is arbitrary in its approach and is dominated and guided by the interests of the powerful and is being accepted only by the need of survival by the weak. The illiberal world seems least likely to bow down before the developed world’s ‘sense of arbitrariness’. Thus, it will not be the clash of civilisations or the ideological evolution and the final form of government that will dominate the remaining decades of the 21st century but most likely, the clash of the illiberal and liberal world.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 21^st, 2021.

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