Struggling to lead our hectic world
By Philip Stephens
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Published: May 26 2011 21:52
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Look for an organising characteristic in today’s world and speed is among the top contenders. Whether it is technology, financial markets, popular discontent or global geopolitical upheaval everything now runs at fast forward.
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China’s progress to great power status has been in sight since the 1990s. But few western politicians or policymakers anticipated the breathtaking speed of its rise. At the opening of the present century China’s economy was about a quarter of the size of that of Japan. A decade on, China has overtaken its east Asian neighbour to occupy the world number two slot, remaking the international order along the way.
China’s progress to great power status has been in sight since the 1990s. But few western politicians or policymakers anticipated the breathtaking speed of its rise. At the opening of the present century China’s economy was about a quarter of the size of that of Japan. A decade on, China has overtaken its east Asian neighbour to occupy the world number two slot, remaking the international order along the way.
The coincidence of demographic change, rampant corruption, political repression and stifled economic opportunity in the Arab world was a fuse waiting for a match. Western diplomats insist without a blush that a popular explosion had long been among their policy assumptions. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. None predicted how quickly a flame lit in Tunisia would sweep across the Arab world.
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The other day I was chided by a senior US official for writing that Barack Obama had been slow to respond to the uprisings. Measured against Washington’s response to, say, the fall of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, Mr Obama had acted at the speed of light. This is true enough. But the world of the mid-1980s turned in slow motion.
Consider what’s been happening to politics in the rich democracies. At a moment when trends and events beyond their control demand urgent attention, governments are losing their capacity to act. The demand for a strategic perspective is colliding ever more frequently with the day-to-day pressures of domestic politics.
The disjunction is on show at the gathering of the Group of Eight nations in the town of Deauville. The public utterances emphasise support for the Arab spring. This is not a time for the west to look inwards, Mr Obama and David Cameron, the UK prime minister, chanted in unison this week. As far as it goes, they mean it. But even as they speak, these leaders are forever looking over their shoulders.
The challenge is to square the enlightened internationalism that slips easily into a communiqué with a mood among electorates that has been turning against the notion of global interdependence. My sense is that most Americans are not much interested in what is happening in the Middle East; and that most Europeans fear the consequences.
The tensions are at their most acute in Europe. If the European Union has contributed anything to the world during the past half-century it has been an understanding that states can pursue their national through their shared interests. The idea is summed up by the word “solidarity” – a readiness to bear the strains of interdependence in order to reap its rewards.
Solidarity is a scarce commodity in the Union nowadays. Talk to European politicians about the toppling of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak or the demonstrations against Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and they say all the right things. There is a moral imperative to support the freedom movements; Europe’s strategic self-interest quite clearly lies in supporting the journey to democracy of its southern neighbours.
What has most animated these politicians lately, however, has been a fear of the electoral consequences of uncontrolled migration from the south. So far the numbers crossing the Mediterranean have been small, but governments are already dancing to the tunes of the xenophobic right.
A move to close borders across the continent threatens the Union’s fundamental principle of free movement of people. Logic says the challenge from migration demands collective action. Populist politics are feeding the delusion that it can be shoved off on to someone else.
Another pillar of European integration, of course, is the single currency. Here we are watching what has begun to look like a slow dance to self-destruction. The economics of the eurozone’s sovereign debt crisis are difficult enough, but the existential threat lies in the politics.
It is hard to imagine a shared enterprise more dependent on solidarity than a monetary union. Yet one European central banker has been heard to remark that the bail-out conditions being imposed on Greece, Ireland and Portugal by their eurozone partners now resemble the reparations demanded of Germany by the Treaty of Versailles.
National politics have begun to trump European interests. We are not far from the point – and we may have passed it – at which it is impossible to reconcile Angela Merkel’s timid assessment of what German voters will stand for with the financial realities of the debtor economies.
Europe, of course, is not alone. At a meeting the other day of the UK-Japan 21st Century Group I was reminded of the extraordinary resilience shown by the Japanese after this year’s tsunami.
Beyond the heroism of recent months, however, lies a political system in stasis. Japanese prime ministers more often count their tenure in months than in years. The rise of China has been met in Japan by unconcealed alarm and political paralysis.
Nor is the US immune. Mr Obama looks stronger now than he has done for some time. The killing of Osama bin Laden has burnished his domestic credentials at a time when the Republicans are struggling to find a credible contender to field in 2012. But no one could claim the US is in an internationalist frame of mind. The preoccupation of American voters is with the state of the economy. From now until November 2012 the president will order his priorities accordingly.
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So as the world turns faster, politics slow the west’s response. It is tempting to say this is a natural consequence of the changing global order. Adjusting to relative decline was always going to be painful. And anyway politicians have always put their own voters first.
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That was before the world speeded up. Mr Obama spoke in London this week on the theme of adapting western leadership to new global realities. The thought occurred to me that before these politicians can exercise leadership abroad they must recover it at home.
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Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011
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