Murphy’s law states that “if anything can go wrong it will” but Stein’s law (Herbert Stein was the economic adviser of President Nixon) states, “what cannot go forever will eventually stop”. The “can go wrong” part of Murphy’s law is interesting because it is the way we handle a problem that eventually results in how it can or cannot go wrong. As America’s biggest project of the 20th Century — the war on terror — finally culminates with its withdrawal from Afghanistan, one can easily say “what had to go wrong has gone wrong”. American withdrawal from Afghanistan is clearly marking an end of a world era and our focus should not be in how this biggest American project has ended but how quickly we can shift to a “what nextism” mode. But first a quick reflection on the eras gone by just to jumpstart our political imagination about what might be the challenges that we may confront as we enter the next era as a smart world.
The World is Flat: A brief History of 21st Century is a famous book by Thomas Friedman in which he gives us his concept of a shrinking world. He assumes that the world remained large for a very long time and started shrinking only when the Vasco da Gamas and the Columbuses of this world ventured out on their famous naval voyages and discovered the yet-undiscovered world. So, for him the first shrinking of the world is extended to a period from 1492 to 1800 — an era spanning 308 years in which the world shrank from being large to medium. Besides steam engine and horse power he considers religion, imperialism and colonialism as the key agents of change in this era.
He shrinks the world from medium to small in the second era spread over 200 years from 1800 to 2000. He considers multinational companies, railroad, air travel, cables, PC and satellites as this era’s key agents of change. He further shrinks the world from small to tiny in an era that began in 2000 and continues till now. Living through this era we know how the process of globalisation has created a smart world and levelled the playing field through android technology and browsing which have actually stood out as the key agents of change in this era. Despite the social disruption this era has caused for the developing countries, life has become better for countries like China and India which utilising the offered opportunities by this era pulled out many of their people living under the poverty line.
In the tiny world the possibility of economic growth reached out to every part of the globalised world and the results for poverty reduction were very satisfying as the number of people in extreme poverty fell from nearly 1.9 billion to about 650 million in 2018. I would like to sum up the third era and fix it for 20 years from 2000 to 2021 when the American withdrawal from Afghanistan takes place. A 20-year era in which America, as a great power, tried to preside over a unilateral world and abused its power.
American strategic mistake of this 20-year-long era has been that in a tiny world they allowed huge space to China to rise and challenge it as the dominant power of the world. Would this have been possible if America was not consumed by its focus on fighting the war on terror and engaging in unnecessary wars around the world? The day the last American soldier will leave Afghanistan (probably by 31st August 2021) it will benchmark the beginning of the next era — which I will prefer to call the ‘no limits era’.
In this ‘no limits era’, characterised by the end of ‘forever wars’, continued rise of other powers, growth of artificial intelligence, multi-polarity and the growing Sino-Russia partnership the world will increasingly regionalise and will go to any limits to defend the interests of this regionalisation. The world may still continue to pivot around the American leadership but terrorism will stop being the most significant bilateral or multilateral issue. Which issue will then be the most significant issue in the ‘no limits era’ of the world? The most important challenge in the no-limits world will be the challenge of governance. The pace of change will become greater with further acceleration and those countries which will fail to keep pace with the change will be engulfed with more and more political turmoil.
Edmund Burke (1766-1794) was an Irish statesman, economist and a philosopher. He argued that “enlightenment and its effects of replacing tradition and religion with reason is the ultimate source of the world’s problems.” Western world’s transformation from traditional Christianity to secular humanism took place in the eras when the world was large and medium. During this transition period the western world was as barbarian as some of the existing traditional Islamic world looks that fights for retaining its space against its contest with secular humanism. In a large and medium world western barbarism can only be read and found in the pages of history. The problem with the current contest of Islamic traditionalism against secular humanism is that it is taking place in a tiny world right before our eyes, in a world in which the smallest rocks are turned over and there is hardly anything left to hide.
In the ‘no-limits era’ excessive individualism in the developing world will maximise and individuals will constantly try to liberate themselves from the traditional and social structures — exactly on the similar lines as what happened with the western society in the medium and large world eras. They will stand up to break the rules that are unjust, outdated and irrelevant; and this contest for seeking personal freedom would mean more movements for freedom and liberty and more political turmoil in the developing countries. This turmoil will be for creating better democracies in ways quite similar to what Alexis de Tocqueville 150 years ago explained: “without investment in the social capital there can be no civil society and without civil society there can be no democracy.”
Why I quoted Stein’s law (what cannot go forever will eventually stop) at the outset was because all the social disruption that has taken place in the tiny world is because of having an unjust international system in which people in the ‘lesser world’ have suffered and those in the ‘developed world’ have had everything. Like people the international system also has both a body and a soul. We know what happens to a person who only feeds his body and not the soul — he gets into trouble.
In the coming ‘no-limits era’, regionalism will contest with America’s created world order of unjust liberal internationalism. Rising powers like Russia and China will go to any limits to defend their interests in the region and let the Americans keep the leadership of the world and handle the problems that come with it.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 29th, 2021.
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