Chris Patten's views of what the world should be is a well conceptualised thesis
In this futurological enterprise Chris Patten, European commissioner, one time governor of Hong Kong, and long time career diplomat, essays his hand at analysing the principal issues he think will inform the world his grandchildren will inherit when they are of age. He lays down the agenda for present and future geopolitical discourse, in the light of what he calls a "liberal internationalist" perspective. This is something that we come to recognise in the course of his voluminous work, as representing the position of the right thinking individual in any part of the world, who, having been exposed to the high culture of the advanced west, is naturally in a strategic position to guide the rest of the world to sensible ends.
The issues that Patten discusses include capsule histories of the independent existence of various African states, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, water geopolitics, the state of the small arms trade in the world today, the status of the international drug trade, climate change and epidemic and endemic diseases. Along the way are scattered interesting personal anecdotes of his interactions with major players in this arena, and much recommendation on the proper way the key areas of conflict in these arenas might be addressed.
Patten makes much of "internationalism", a term interchangeable with globalisation, as it is now known. His personal experience spans every continent, and he speaks with knowledge of visits to Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and China among many other places. He has interacted with the decision making elites in all these territories, thus giving his insights a close to the ground feel. And his message is an important one.
He begins his study by a brief history of the evolution of the western nation state, tracing this to the pivotal event of the Peace of Westphalia at the end of the Thirty Years War. This then is the conception of the nation as we know it. Internationalism results from the phenomena listed above, that cross national boundaries and affect groups of nations or whole continents, as for instance, Africa.
The problems listed above, namely the international trade in arms or the drug trade, are seen to be the result of interactions between western interests and local aspiring ruling classes.
Drugs, for instance, are produced in failed or failing states like Afghanistan and Burma, or mainly from the countries of the Golden Triangle (Burma and Laos) and Golden Crescent (Afghanistan and its neighbours). They are then transported by various means, not the least of which are conventional shipping containers, into the markets in the affluent west. The US is the biggest consumer of illicit drugs. The author notes that the street price of drugs such as cocaine and heroin has been dropping in the recent past. However, he does not go as far as to endorse the legalisation of drugs, instead opting to recommend treating the problem as a public health issue. Such a treatment "could put whole armies of bad guys out of work inside the hour; the states-within-states that run chunks of South and Central America would collapse; the bottom would fall out of the small arms trade[…]."
This small arms trade is intimately linked to the drug trade, with rebel groups in South America often trading one for the other. Both the IRA and Basque ETA have been involved in trafficking drugs as well as arms. In Colombia, the FARC rebels earn most of their revenues from sales of cocaine which are pushed into the US via the Mexican border.
As a case study in small arms trafficking, the author gives us the Mano basin (Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea). Resource rich Liberia –diamonds, gold, timber, cocoa and coffee-was founded as an independent republic in 1847 by 300 black settler families from the US. It was for a hundred years controlled by the same small group of families. The last of the Americo-Liberian presidents was the grandson of freed South Carolina slaves, one William Tolbert. This gentleman and his family made a sizeable fortune from rubber, iron ore, and the registration of ships. He was overthrown in a coup by Samuel Doe in 1980. Doe tyrannised the country for 10 years through 38 attempted coups, being mainly supported by the US, who disbursed $500 million of aid over the 10 years.
Charles Taylor, educated in the US and trained by Colonel Qaddafi, put together an army, and invaded Liberia in 1989. The civil war that Taylor launched was to end up claiming 250,000 lives. Taylor murdered Doe, and quickly took over Liberia, signing contracts with various foreign companies for timber, iron ore and rubber. With the $200 million thus obtained, Taylor then funded the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) a rebel organisation led by one Foday Sankoh, to foment rebellion in neighbouring Sierra Leone. This led to bloody war in Sierra Leone, coveted for its wealth in diamonds. Ultimately over a decade of fighting, Sankoh seized the diamond fields, bauxite and titanium mines. Having ravaged Sierra Leone, Taylor then turned his sights on destabilising Cote d'Ivoire. His attempt to unseat the president of Guinea backfired, and Liberia was invaded by a rebel group backed by Guinea.
Eventually, Charles Taylor was put on trial in The Hague for crimes against humanity in 2007. Patten then goes on to explain that the damage that warlords like Taylor did, could not have been accomplished but for a flow of arms to them. Most of the weapons used were Chinese made AK-47s, machine guns, rocket propelled grenades and armour piercing incendiary rounds. Payments for these were made from the resources locally controlled. The state timber company Oriental Timber Corporation acted as a channel to Taylor's business managers who were paying the rebels in Sierra Leone. Money from diamonds and logging was also paid into Zurich and Burkina Faso bank accounts.
There is much more in the book about the loot of Africa, specifically the Congo, but the tale is simply too depressing for a detailed narration, and the inquiring reader is urged to go to the source. Instead, we will turn to the vexed question of water.
The world's population (relates Patten) has, during the last century, quadrupled, but demand for water has gone up seven times. The bare minimum per head requirement for direct consumption is 20 to 50 litres per day, but the food required to give us a daily calorific intake of 3000 calories needs 3,500 litres of water to produce it. Thus irrigation and agriculture are the largest sinks of water. The author identifies four regions where tensions over water are high, and could possibly lead to conflict. These are the Jordan valley, the Nile, central Asia, and the Punjab. The Six-Day War between Israel and Syria was partly precipitated (if you will pardon the pun) by the issue of water. The tussle over the Nile is between downstream Egypt and upstream Sudan. The shrinking of the Aral Sea will probably discompose the post-Soviet states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. It is only in the Punjab, that the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 has succeeded in dividing water between India and Pakistan peacefully, and is held up by the author as a model for conflict resolution.
On that positive note, one may attempt a summary of the broad themes that envelop the multitude of issues the author has chosen to deal with. His self described liberal and internationalist position implies that he does not believe narrowly nationalistic solutions will work in a world connected by many global (climate change) and regional (water, drugs, human trafficking, migration) influences. Patten assiduously chronicles the progress of supra-national, specifically UN, legislation in each problem area as witness to global and international attacks on these multitudinous and closely interrelated issues (climate change or global warming will affect water resources which in turn will affect migrations of local populations which, in turn, will affect border relations, smuggling, arms trade to effect conflict resolution, and so on in complicated and self perpetuating loops.)
The author is also acutely conscious of the responsibility of the developed West in leading and guiding conflict resolution, especially in the developing world. His is a voice of the moderate, a family man who would like peace and prosperity to prevail. Yet, to someone in the developing world, this might appear as just more of the colonial hangover in disguised form. In setting the agenda for future debate, the author appropriates the advantage, just more of the same imperial tendency that his country has so successfully negotiated before.
Furthermore, to assume that the panoptic, highly policed states of the West are a universal model that all the world aspires to is simply a huge leap of faith. Yet one must admit, the authorial voice is impeccably sane and rational.
The author works for Research Interface, a market research firm in Bangalore. He holds a Ph.D in Economics and advanced degrees in Economics from University of Mumbai and New York University.
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