What is Happening to the World?

(Anyone who's ever bothered reading this blog will have, I'm sure, wondered where the cynical 9/11 post went. Well, here it is...sort of.)

What is happening to the world?

Today's generation just on the brink of entering the workforce is frequently accused of having no sense of focus, no strength that can be likened to the Greatest Generation's or even that of the Baby Boomers, though it's their problems we inherit. College students in particular are blamed of wasting time, enjoying themselves excessively...but hello? Twenty years ago, you might have become a great scientist without a graduate degree. Today, it's impossible to get anywhere without at least a Master's, and that means at least four more extra years of school than the majority of previous generation's youth.

Why is this happening?

I think the answer, though complicated, is pretty straightforward. In the early 20th century, power was divided between various European states and their alliances. By the end of World War II, two major centers of power had coalesced--the United States and the U.S.S.R., the First World and the Second World.

But with the final demise of the U.S.S.R. and its alliances (it's obvious today--have you ever heard of a Second World in recent years?) came a problem: power was now concentrated in the hands, and the missiles, of one country--America, a country that had already begun to interfere in world affairs, doing everything to stop the spread of communism, allying itself with unpopular shahs in Iran and future dictators like Hussein and ignoring genocides in places like Cambodia (Khmer Rouge, anyone? They were on the UN Security Council during the genocide).

September 11 made this particularly clear. The greatest (and one of the very, very few) foreign-based attack on American soil could not be targeted to a specific organization or a specific country, hence Bush's declaration of war on the rather nebulous "terror". A 'pre-emptive strike', the likes of which were totally unheard of until 2001, was launched on Afghanistan and then Iraq, overriding the UN (remember Hans Blix?). This attack attempted to put a face, or at least a name, on terrorism: Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein (and the Taliban to a lesser extent) are immortalized as the perpetrators of this attack--yet Hussein, shamed through violations of the Geneva Convention, languishes in a world prison, bin Laden is nowhere to be found, and terrorism continues in the Middle East.

Out of this mess, a new world order is slowly coagulating. The real center of it is not the Middle East, nor is it America--it is the far East, in particular countries like China, India, and Japan (though the four Mini-Dragons of Asia deserve consideration), and it is not based upon military might and colonial presence as it was in the past, it is based upon the ability to utilize manpower to build a strong economy.

America is already heavily dependent on China for its cheap goods--were the government to attempt to cut ties and halt the sending of weapons to China, a hundred million angry Americans would complain about the sudden rise in prices and the sudden disappearance of goods from the market. Europe is declining, its new population mainly supplied by immigrants. Africa--Africa has a thousand problems to clear, the number one being its inability to utilize its resources due to inefficient governments that are vestiges of the UN's original mission--and which have nothing to do with the map of the actual people living there.

>So in the end, we have to pay attention to Asia. Even if its people leave for the Western world and Western culture is absorbed, they're finally learning how to syncretize their traditions with the technological innovations of today. And even if we're able to interfere with other countries through military might and the utilization of intelligence departments, particularly the Israeli one, we'll never be able to do anything to Asia.

The U.S.--and the rest of the Western world--need Asia far too much to ignore the economy's gradual shift. It's time that leaders recognize the declining value of brute strength in a world where trade stands first. No longer are we in a mercantilist society.

Booklist, November 2005-'06

x The Street of Crocodiles
x Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
x God Knows
x The Kite Runner
x A Game of Thrones
x Midwives
x The Metamorphosis
x A Child Called "It"
x What Dreams May Come
x Wicked
x Invisible Cities
x American Indian Myths and Legends
x Breakfast of Champions
x Beloved
x The Master and Margarita
x Dolores (Algernon Swinburne)
x Freakonomics
x Alcestis
x Hippolytus
x Iphigenia in Tauris
x The Metamorphoses of Ovid
x I'm Eve
x Sybil
x Flatland
x Memoirs of a Geisha
x At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales (Lovecraft)
x Myths of the Norsemen
x Doctor Faustus
x Dracula
x Swedish Folktales and Legends
x Abu Jmeel's Daughter and Other Arab Folktales
x Lazy Dragon
x Interview with the Vampire
x Sister Carrie
x The Leopard

Why Democracy?

If I've posted this before, posting it again just shows how desperate of an issue it is. Or, rather, how desperate of an issue it should be.

First World countries and the UN (mainly via resolutions) are more than happy to give lip service to the ideals of democracy, with powerful countries (namely Britain and the U.S.) actually going out of their way to ensure a democratic succession. Examples include the U.S. support of Fidel Castro, bin Laden, the Taliban, and various regimes in South America and Southeast Asia, and indirect actions that led to the rise of the Kuomintang, Ayatollah Khomeini, etc. The U.S. loved them initially because they spoke out against communism and hates them today because they have clearly revealed themselves as non-democratic.

But I want to know: why is democracy so important? It seems like we've had the Cold War and McCarthy morals so deeply ingrained into our persona as a country that we've forgotten not every country in the world necessarily approves of our system of government, nor is our system of government the best one for all countries.

America itself forgets its origins as a mercantilist colony dependent on the benefices of Great Britain, able to eventually break free because of its strong financial foundation in trade and, of course, France's deep hatred of everything that might help Britain.

We didn't jump straight to democracy. It took us the Articles of Confederation's disastrous freedoms and shadowy threats of reabsorption into another European state, as well as a guarantee of the kind of rights most Westerners place first, to force the passage of the Constitution.

Today, however, we--alright, the government--honestly believe(s) that, by supervising the fomentation of a democratic system in other countries, their future security and growth into a First World country--and ally of the U.S.--is ensured.

And yet all we needed was some time with the great philosophical conclusions of the Age of Enlightenment and a little help from France....

Why is the U.S. so determined to see democracy form immediately in countries like Iraq and Iran (and U.S. actions in the 1950s are actually to blame for the current Islamic regime)? Such a destiny is not to be seen in any Western countries, nor is it a sort of development native to the ancient region of Mesopotamia. Throughout the 1700s and 1800s, Slavophiles insisted that Russia, because of its unique placement between the West and the East, had to develop in a uniquely Russian way. And now, the United States wants to deny this same right to the Middle East, holder of the Silk Road and frequent enemy of the West since the Roman Empire.

WTF?