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(posted December 30, 2003)
Notes on Understanding the New World Disorder:
"May you live in interesting times." (an ancient Chinese curse)
by
Guntram Werther Ph.D.
When the Soviet Union collapsed around 1990, many people congratulated
themselves with the thought that a new era of peace, prosperity, and of rapidly
spreading democracy and free market capitalism - indeed, a "new world
order" - was at hand. I was not one of those voices and tragically,
subsequent events have proved us skeptics correct. Not a few people, and many
experts are among them, wish for the simpler days of the "Cold War"
where animosities and alliances were clearer, and futures more predictable.
Today this is a very difficult world to see forward in, and for this reason I
have been asked to regularly provide my perspective and opinion through a series
of brief essays - more notes really - that attempt to clarify some complex
international issues and trends that my interested neighbors may wonder about.
It seems fitting to briefly introduce myself, and set the broad outlines of my
overall approach and goals in this initial note.
I hold the doctorate in comparative politics from Washington University in St.
Louis, and have taught at senior executive levels worldwide for about a decade.
I was, for example, the keynote speaker at the Opening Ceremonies of Lucent
Technologies speaking on emerging international trends (I told them it wouldn't
be pretty, and why that was so), and have regularly addressed Fortune 500
executive and government audiences on issues of "Doing Business in the New
World Disorder", "Emerging International Trends", and "The
Effective Analysis of Change within International Environments."
These talks have included senior executive audiences from China, Russia,
Ukraine, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Brazil, Mexico, portions of the Middle
East, as well as those from throughout Europe (both East and West) and North
America.
If I can suggest one central consideration to help us better understand the
international environment and how it is changing, it is that useful speculations
must be holistically integrative, hence be comparative, multi-disciplinary, and
consider matters from multiple perspectives, including those not our own. My
work life approach is NOT one of advocating ANY particular perspective, but of
reasoning outward from them - "critical thinking from the perspective of
the other" or "thinking within bias" as I have elsewhere framed
it - and also of understanding the dynamic simultaneous interactions of
different societies within the international sphere, where they typically see
the same events and conditions differently and so react to them differently.
In my work, I call this kind of an analysis effort "profiling international
change processes", and the outcome - when things work well - is that we can
often predict emerging international trends (and country or regional
"futures") with considerable accuracy. That is FAR too complex an
effort for these notes, but I wanted to introduce my general approach and
preferences to understanding international events before suggesting a lesser
task. I want to clarify, in a relatively holistic way, some fundamental
international affairs issues that will help interested citizens better
understand current international events.
We used to do holistic thinking more. It was called the Renaissance and the Age
of Enlightenment, and educated persons of that period took it as axiomatic that
societal and international change was a complex thing not to be understood at a
singular glance or through the primacy of any single discipline. Consequently,
they waltzed across what are today academic disciplinary boundaries such as
economics, sociology, political science, and so forth as though they did not
exist. Jefferson, Goethe, Galileao, and Franklin (within the Western tradition)
were of that mindset. This is not commonly so with scholars, professionals, or
citizens today; to our considerable cost in my opinion.
A second thing that I can usefully say at the outset is that it is not necessary
that we like the conclusions we arrive at. It is hard to like that fact that
ethnic and religious conflict is common, but there it is. We may prefer a
particular ethical, political, or economic outcome, and yet conclude that it is
not likely under prevailing circumstances.
With that preamble, let me introduce some core aspects of our "interesting
times." At a Ministry of Defense-level conference in Hungary I asked
officers from throughout Europe and North America there assembled what they most
needed in their officer corps. The concensus answer was more foreign language
and culture skills. The perception was that these militaries were in for many
irregular and asymmetric conflicts, and for numerous non-traditional duties
where knowing a culture was more important than knowing how to fix a tank (for
example). The problem is that it is easier to teach someone to fix a tank that
to understand a language and culture; the latter being the work of years and
decades.
>From other venues, it was easy to establish that neither corporations nor
governments are much good at predicting which countries would
"develop" and which would not; or how they would do so. The World
Bank, IMF, and other international organizations have been trying to
"develop" Africa, Latin America, and other regions for decades. There
have been some development successes (even great successes), but often the
"assisted" countries are as badly off (or worse) than when we started
these efforts. In many cases we got outcomes - too often horrible outcomes -
that were certainly not desired. We can draw several conclusions from these
broad observations. First, development change is hard to do, generally it is
epochal, we are usually not much good at doing it (we don't really know how in
most cases), and unanticipated outcomes are the norm.
This explains not only why "globalization" and
"democratization" has not proceeded as smoothly or as far as many
hoped, but also why we are likely in for many more of the kinds of ethnic,
religious, lifestyle, and other conflicts for which the world's militaries are
preparing. At a less pugilistic level, we will be living with this kind of
international complexity and conflict for a long time to come because
development change happens slowly and not infrequently with reference to the
"law of unintended consequences" (ie: be very careful what you wish
for).
Among the conclusions that flow from this kind of an understanding of the nature
of the current and likely future international environment - if I am correct -
is that understanding how things actually work in other places is a primary need
and skill, and is time well spent. To business audiences, I often remark that
they need to be as good at understanding the international environment in which
they hope to succeed as they are at producing their core service or product -
BOTH are core competencies. I believe this to be equally true of effective
citizenry's also. Facilitating this is the primary purpose of these notes.
Next: Modern "Tribalism" and International Development
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