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A World Transformed...Well, maybe not quite as intended.
"Habit is no small thing" - Plato
by
Guntram Werther Ph.D.
5 February 2005
I suppose that the average American business person would be surprised to
learn that China - that dream international market you just have to be in - had
an average of 160 mass demonstrations PER DAY (just under 60,000 in 2003), that
about 70,000,000 Chinese farmers are both landless and poor, and that an
estimated 400,000,000 Chinese (of the 900 million poor people not benefitting
much from China's growth thus far) will move to cities within the next 25 years
(New York Times, December 31, 2004 and January 22, 2005 editions). At the same
time, China - or more properly, particular coastal and urban regions within
China - is booming. Welcome to China.
In that other current darling of international investors, India, during last
week's three-state regional elections, six policemen were killed in a land mine
attack by Maoist rebels while three paramilitary soldiers and four rebels were
killed in another attack (BBC News Feb. 3, 2005). To quote, "About 40,000
paramilitary soldiers were deployed in two states besides tens of thousands of
local police. Voting has been spread over three phases...on account of the
security situation" (BBC News Feb. 3, 2005). At the same time, India - or more
properly, particular urban regions within India - is booming. Welcome to India.
It is a little known and less reported fact that India refocused defense and
intelligence spending more inward (as a percentage of total) a few years ago due
to rising internal unrest. Today, sixteen states now have active Maoist cadres
(known as Naxalites) which, according to one report, have members in most
families within many of those sixteen states. India does not advertise this much
- it scares people.
Meanwhile India's neighbor, Nepal, just had a Monarchal coup this week in an
attempt to better secure Nepal against a growing Maoist rebellion that has
killed about 20,000 people in the past few years (BBC News Feb. 1, 2005). Indian
military and intelligence interests are invested in Nepal.
More to the point, last year India's conservative pro-business BJP (Bharatiya
Janata Party) government - the architect of India's recent spectacularly
successful pro-business transformation and decade-long record of 7% annual
growth - was defeated by a Congress Party-Socialist-Communist alliance
representing mainly the poor of India. India doesn't advertise that much either.
Simultaneously, BOTH countries continue to grow rapidly (7-9% annual growth) but
ever more unevenly, have a plethora of other major internal and external
challenges, are attracting a great deal of international foreign direct
investment, are becoming military, strategic, and economic regional powers that
sometimes countervail USA influence in the world (particularly within Asia and
the Middle East), and BOTH countries are - if I may draw the analogy - the new
"Mexico's" of the international investment world. They are the place you just
'have to be' if you are in business....because, it is almost universally assumed
that they are going to grow rapidly in the future.
Meanwhile, in Mexico, that past and faded darling of 1994 NAFTA fame (you
remember the news stories about how Mexico would boom and the middle class would
grow and...); well, today the fastest growing political party in Mexico is the
PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution = Socialists) while the pro-business PAN
(National Action Party) of President Fox is having a rather difficult time of
it. In fact, just about every country in Latin America has shifted leftward in
the past few years; a matter much ignored in American business and governmental
circles as we "do" Iraq. Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, and Uruguay have all
elected socialist or social-democratic (left-Peronist for Argentina) governments
recently. Throughout, American interests are being challenged; sometimes
directly as in Venezuela and Bolivia, though mostly indirectly through changes
by regional governments.
The Andean Rim - if you followed my various lectures of the past few years - has
destabilized about as predicted due largely, in my view, to growing
"indigenization" of the country's politics linked to growing anti-free trade and
pro-socialist shifts; although I must admit to very wrongly predicting overt
conflict and a political collapse for Bolivia last year. President Mesa was
unexpectedly masterful: He called a referendum election regarding whether
Bolivian natural gas ought to be sold on the world market, and if so, how. This
forestalled growing conflict.
Consider this event more fully for a moment as a measure in itself of the state
of Bolivian "capitalism" and society. Can anyone envision an American national
election to determine whether we ought to sell or merely keep a commodity?
Another major issue under debate in Bolivia involves whether water ought to be
priced versus being free; an issue which sunk both Bechtel's plans for building
a national water system two years ago and collapsed the government. Welcome to
Bolivia.
Thankfully (for my prognostication record, though likely not for the people of
Bolivia) a recent international news analysis concluded "Underlying social
tensions in Bolivia are now overt and stand out in bold relief, with the
integrity of the state in question...At the very least, civil conflict is a
likely scenario in the three core (Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia) Andean states"
(Power and Interest News Report, Jan. 31, 2005). Although I disagree with the
mechanism of change proposed and its justification as detailed in this report, I
am not particularly at odds with the broad conclusion. The general and active
involvement in national politics of the Andean Rim nation's indigenous peoples
after decades of relative quiescence is transformational. It is a qualitative
shift.
I also want to point out with respect to the above discussions that East Asia,
South Asia, and Latin America are considered the best growth areas within the
less developed world. We really do not want to look too closely at what is
happening in Africa, in much of the Middle East, and elsewhere if good cheer is
our aim.
These and similar outcomes are the reason meetings of the World Trade
Organization - as conservative, "free-trade oriented, and pro "globalization" a
convocation of economists, business people, and government officials as ever was
- are lately focused predominantly on social issues within the LDC's (not
exclusively on "global" free trade per se), why the G-7 has agreed to negotiate
100% debt relief for the poorest nations (BBC News, Feb. 6, 2005), and why India
calls for "fair trade" rules to alter the current "terms of integration" (BBC
News, Feb. 6, 2005).
People discuss what concerns them. "Every movement reveals us", as Montaigne
said (see The Complete Works of Montaigne @ page 215).
What is going on here?
Plato's observation becomes useful here: "Habit is no small thing."
Globalization, development, and "free trade" are fundamentally about change;
most particularly about almost constant internal and external country
responsiveness to transformational change. This change is today more, but not
totally, market-driven within an international development structure of emerging
trade rules and supporting institutions whose job it will be to manage the whole
thing.
Previous efforts at "managed" change through the World Bank and IMF have not
succeeded in eliminating poverty or developing poor nations over the past half
century. Today the idea is that "free trade" as managed by this host of
international institutions plus democracy will largely do the development job.
This thrust toward inclusion on thusly "managed" terms is coming mainly from
self-identified "conservative" governments -meaning rather more often very
activist, anti welfare state governments - within the developed world. And this
is where a core difficulty becomes apparent.
Oddly, the main thrust of historic conservative thought is that human initiated
and particularly human managed change is a dangerous thing; indeed a thing to be
avoided. There was in conservative thought an aversion to destruction of old
patterns of life; natural change is better. "Easy does it" thinking was the rule
(Kirk, R. 1987. The Conservative Mind @ page153). This prejudice gave
conservative thought its here-to-fore status quo orientation.
As Russell Kirk quotes F. J. C. Hearnshaw, "It is commonly sufficient for
practical purposes if conservatives, without saying anything, just sit and
think, or even if they merely sit" (quoted in Kirk, R. 1987. The Conservative
Mind @ page 3). See, conservatives can be funny.
Change then, ought be slow and natural. As John Randolph of Roanoke famously
framed it, "it is always unwise - yes - highly unwise, to disturb a thing that
is at rest" and he said also "change is not reform" (Randolph quoted in Kirk @
166-67)."
His principal reason was concern about instability to come and, more seriously,
the inability of mortal, imperfect man to control the eventual outcome. "When a
people begin to think they can improve society infinitely by incessant
alteration of positive law...[they] soon presume themselves to be omnicompetent,
and the further their affairs fall into confusion, the more enthusiastic they
become for some legislative panacea which promises to cut all knots in Gordian
fashion." (Kirk on Randolph @ page 159).
Granted that there were and are a great problems within many societies,
including many surely brought about by earlier ideologically driven Socialist
tinkering, but in my view - ironically - a now almost messianic and thoroughly
Procrustean application of "free trade" rules to all and sundry augured the
opposite difficulty - and so it has turned out.
Rather than the humble moderation of "Easy does it", we had in the early stages
of "globalization" particularly (remember rapid change in Russia, Argentine, and
Mexico) a kind of ideologically driven full speed ahead orientation to IPE
change and societal transformations.
Difficulties were sure to follow.
This, among other concerns involving views about how societies do and do not
change, led me, starting in the early 1990's, to lecture worldwide on "Doing
Business in the New World Disorder", and to explore better ways to predict
change outcomes and processes in different countries.
There have been many perverse and unintended outcomes in our quest thus far to
transform the world through positive actions. They scream caution.
Which returns us, I think, to Plato's observation on the formative and
motivational effect of "habit" in human affairs.
Understanding "habit", which when broadly conceived is the practical summation
of values, norms, and ways of relating to the world, is a way of injecting
stable - hence relatively predictable - considerations into the question of how
change will develop and emerge within particular societies.
It is thus at the foundation of my approach to "Profiling change processes"
within international environments; whether relating to international
political-economic, strategic, or conflict based change prediction. It is the
foundation from which one moves and from which one considers the world as it
responds to change pressures; as every person and every society must. Individual
and societal "reason" is in my view channeled within "habit" more than it is
not.
Understanding "habit" in human actions, especially the particular paths "reason"
and action follows within society and among societies with respect to their
established habits is therefore a fundamentally better starting point to
understanding eventual outcomes as they ACTUALLY occur in the world.
It is this orientation that led me to lecture some time ago that Argentina's new
government would emerge "left Peronist", that the "indigenization" of the Andean
Rim meant trouble (but trouble to be seen changing in particular and predictable
ways), and so forth. This orientation and the various analytical frameworks that
can be constructed from its proper consideration are not perfect; but they seem
better. One can often "see" emerging changes and patterns of change that others
seem to miss.
It is toward both the global and the particular national / regional IPE,
strategic, and security implications of this way of understanding change
pressures, processes, and change outcomes that I drew your attention within this
brief essay.
Thank you.
Dr. Werther is on the graduate faculty of international business at Ottawa
University (online and Phoenix), on the military studies graduate faculty
(online only) at Knightsbridge University, Denmark, and consults at senior
executive levels with Fortune 100 firms; mainly in the telecommunications and
defense industries. Details are available on this site.
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