Internationalists and isolationists

There are a number of reasons why we may today be standing at the cusp of the greatest opportunity for the region in a generation.

The first one is that the biggest obstacle to regional unity -- the antagonistic relationship between its two biggest and most influential member states, India and Pakistan -- has thawed considerably in recent years, setting the stage for further cooperation.

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But the main reason seems to be perhaps a belated recognition that lack of regional unity has held South Asia back the last half century, and that if the region is to advance and solve its problems of under-development and unfulfilled potential, that unity is the only game in town.

It is becoming apparent, even to the most obtuse, that the days when countries could look inward and remain insular and at the same time thrive and prosper are over. Today we live in the age of globalisation in which economic liberalism and the opening up of economies is the order of the day. The times are such that we could not return to a protected economy (such as we had in Bangladesh before the 1990s) even if we wanted to. The forces of change, both in terms of the expectations of the general public and the political imperatives of the community of nations, make this an impossibility.

Hand in hand with opening up, almost the entire world -- be it Mercosur or Asean or the EU or Nafta -- seems to be reaping the benefits that can be attained through the formation of regional trading blocs. The fact that expanding one's market to encompass an entire region and at the same time leveraging one another's areas of comparative advantage is a win-win proposition for all countries concerned is Economics 101.

South Asia has hitherto remained something of an exception to this rule. To this day, less than five percent of the region's total volume of trade is intra-regional, and less than five percent of total foreign direct investment is intra-regional. As a point of comparison, EU members do 60 per cent of their trade with each other, and Asean members 28 percent.

There can be little doubt that the relatively anemic rate of development in South Asia over the past half century is in part due to the fact that we have been slow to capitalise on the benefits that could have accrued from greater regional cooperation. South Asia, with approximately 1.5 billion people, holds roughly a quarter of the world's population, but is home to around forty percent of the world's poor, and accounts for only about two percent of the world's total wealth.

The simple truth is that the disunity of the member states has been a significant contributory factor to the South Asia's continuous cycle of under-development. Furthermore, it now needs to be openly acknowledged that many of the problems we face individually as nations, such as security and energy, can only really be adequately tackled at a regional level.

The most obvious sectors that would benefit immensely from a regional framework drawn up to facilitate cooperation are of course trade and investment. Even a modest boost to intra-regional trade and investment flows could be expected to have a beneficial impact on national income and employment. In addition, opening up the transportation network to enhance intra-regional connectivity and to fully integrate the entire South Asian region with the rest of the world would yield an abundance of direct and indirect benefits to both the countries granted access and the countries granting access.

Indeed, the benefits of greater regional cooperation are so manifold that the question must be asked as to why at this late stage the process is still in its infancy.

The answer lies in the short-sightedness of our leaders, who have preferred to pursue and perpetuate petty and small-minded differences and conflicts with their neighbours for their own short-term political gain to instituting polices that would be in the interest of the general public.

The most obvious example of this is the Kashmir issue, which has long been held hostage to security hawks on either side of the Indo-Pak border, but if we examine other intra-regional relations, for instance relations between Bangladesh and India, we see that all the countries of the region, to a certain extent, can be implicated by this lack of statesmanship and unwillingness to compromise for the common good. Some more than others.

The unhappy truth is that prejudice, xenophobia, and cheap nationalism have stood in our way. Too many politicians in each of our countries have made their careers on demonising one or the other of the countries in the region to score political points, and the fact that such demonisation has been inimical to each country's long-term goals has not held them back.

Today we stand at the brink of the 13th Saarc summit and everyone knows what needs to be done to pull South Asia onto the fast-track to development and prosperity.

Everyone knows that Safta needs to be made operational. Everyone knows that we need a regional energy cooperation policy to leverage economies of scale and complementarities. Everyone knows that we need some kind of pan-regional security arrangement. Everyone knows that we need an integrated transportation and communication network.

The question is whether the political will to accomplish all this can be summoned and what are the stumbling blocks that stand in the way of what would appear to be elementary common sense public policy.

The main thing that we need to understand is that when it comes to the question of international relations there are essentially two species of politicians: internationalists and isolationists.

Internationalists understand the direction in which the world is heading and can comprehend the benefit of integrating one's country with the global community of nations. Internationalists define national self-interest in expansive terms which also consider the interests of the other countries in the region and the world as a whole. Internationalists understand that in the long run we are all in this together and that any attempt to go it alone on a national basis is folly.

On the other side we have the isolationists. Isolationists view affairs of state only through the prism of their own narrow national self-interest (see, e.g., Bush, President) and they refuse to compromise or cooperate for the greater common good. The irony is that this kind of xenophobic hyper-nationalism often works to the detriment of the very national self-interest that the isolationist professes to be protecting (see, e.g., Iraq, invasion of).

There are many ways to dress up the isolationist sentiment. The typical guise that the isolationist dons is that of the patriot, the nationalist, protecting the nation's sovereignty and culture from the onslaught of the outside world, from the impersonal forces of globalisation.

Do not be fooled. The only thing that these people fear is loss of control, of their own power. The only thing they are protecting are their own fiefdoms. Isolationists do not want the people to be either empowered or enriched or for them to be exposed to ideas and influences from outside. The only way for isolationists to retain their own privilege and authority is to keep the nation as closed to the outside world as possible.

Let us make no bones about it. There is no room for isolationists in today's polity. The battle today is the battle to overcome these reactionary forces standing in the way of compromise and cooperation.

In each country there are reactionaries, and in each country the reactionaries provide the impetus to reactionaries in other countries. Reactionaries in Pakistan strengthen the hand of reactionaries in India, and vice versa. This is true for every country in the region. The advantage internationalists have over isolationists is that isolationists from one country cannot, by definition, work together with isolationists from another country.

Internationalists, on the other hand, can and must work together. Internationalists across the region need to work together to shore up support for the idea of regional unity and cooperation. This is what the 13th Saarc summit is all about. The isolationists have had their day. They have held sway for the last half century. But now is the time to move beyond the self-defeating policies of the past and embrace a future of progress and prosperity. The opportunity of a generation stands before us, all we need to do is take it.

Zafar Sobhan is Assistant Editor of The Daily Star.