Going Deeper
Bangladesh in a non-polar world
IN the light of the Anglo-American opposition to military rule in Bangladesh one cannot but be reminded of Ambassador Richard Hass's essay on The Age of Non-Polar World (May/June Foreign Affairs) in which he tries to analyze the pros and cons of the present state of global affairs in the absence of "hegemonic stability."
While the US's hard power has not lessened (indeed it is unlikely to be reduced in the foreseeable future given the $500 billion dollars earmarked for defense expenditure in this fiscal year), American influence in global affairs certainly has gone down.
Richard Haas recalls columnist Charles Krauthammer's prophetic designation of the "US uni-polar moment" that lasted for about twenty years because gauging by historical standards twenty odd years is nothing but a moment.
But then, the passing away of the US uni-polar moment was inevitable, as Harvard professor Joseph Nye pointed out in his book The Paradox of American Power, that history teaches us that hegemony, however consensual it may be, is always faced with competing entities who despite being in accordance with the values of the hegemon feel threatened by its overwhelming influence, be it hard or soft power or both, that would ultimately dictate the course of its future actions.
Richard Haas points out that in the light of increasing influence of China and India, through the infusion of new members in the European Union and Nato, and the continuing presence of Japan, Russia and the US inevitably gives the world a multi-polar complexion. Apart from nation-states who are losing monopoly of power the roles played by the UN, the Bretton Wood Institutions, Asean, Saarc, African Union, OAS, Opec, WHO, FAO, WTO, etc are increasingly having greater impact in global affairs.
Effectively, the global connectivity in politico-economic relations is increasing every day as multi-national companies with their transnational presence dictate the quantum of the wealth of nations, many of whose net worth is more than the GDP of some developing countries. The "corporate conscience" of these multi-nationals have to be beefed up and then enforced if the world is to live in peace amidst multi-racial, multi-religious, and multi-ethnic conflicts that are basically reflections of poverty engulfing the Third World countries due to asymmetric distribution of the wealth and power among different poles.
Richard Haas is not off the mark in his assessment that "the principal characteristic of the 21st century international relations is turning out to be non-polarity: a world dominated not by one or two or several states but rather by dozens of actors possessing and exercising various kinds of power."
This account would accord with Immanuel Walerstein's World System in which the world economy, integrated through the market rather than a political center in which some polities are interdependent due to play of market forces for basic necessities while other polities compete with one another for political dominance without resulting in the emergence of one permanent power center. But then would it be logical to be oblivious to what Wallerstein calls a "multi-cultural territorial division of labor" between the core and the peripherythe core focusing on capital intensive production and the periphery on labor intensive production as a by-product of colonialism that has passed us by?
Belief in post-colonialism and even post-modernism is an accepted discourse for cultivation. But if we give credence to Edward Said's distinction of "imperialism" being the practice, the theory, and the attitude of a dominating metropolitan center ruling a distant territory while "colonialism," a consequence of imperialism, is the implanting of a settlement in a distant land is contestable in the present day context, but can we ignore the thesis that there has been a historical categorisation in which certain societies are being considered "inferior" and others as "superior"?
Why else do we use the terms the North/Developed/First World and the South/ Developing/Third World? Despite Edward Said's contention that the West and the Orient had always been intellectual contestants in the innermost recess of our hearts we do believe that technological knowledge has become the preserve of a particular part of the world from which we have to borrow and trade with to enhance our prosperity.
"Democratic Peace Theory" is therefore a natural development that holds that mature democracies do not go to war with one another and thus give intellectual backing to a division of the world into democratic friends and non-democratic foes. US Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns candidly remarked: "We treat law abiding democratic countries that are friends of ours differently than law breaking authoritarian governments." Unsurprisingly, therefore, Australian government's interest in developing facilities to enrich uranium for export and/or for domestic use has total American support because "Australia is viewed as a totally reliable and trustworthy country."
Bangladesh has to live in this world that as yet is not quite historian Niall Ferguson's chaotic world where the prosperous countries have to live in seclusion and guard against militants and marauders of different hue. That doomsday scenario was painted as a possible global meltdown that would force the developed country to adopt a fortress mentality.
In South Asia the Nepalese situation appears to be heading towards a solution as the Maoists have won the elections in a democratic way under international supervision. In Bangladesh we are yet to demonstrate our maturity as a nation. Unfortunately due to the misdeeds of some politicians that invited January 11 transition, albeit supported by the people (the donor funded Election Working Group found in February 2007 that over 90% of Bangladeshis saw the emergency declaration as essential to end the lawlessness let loose by Iajuddin government), we are going through a period that is unique in our history.
But the expectation of the people from the interim government still remains to be fulfilled. Brussels based International Crisis Group assesses that the interim government's "achievements have been patchy, and relations with the major political parties are acrimonious. Efforts to sideline the two prime ministers of the post-1990 democratic period have faltered and the government has become bogged down in its attempts to clean up corruption and reshape democratic politics. Even if elections are held on schedule, there is no guarantee that reforms will be sustainable … Its poor handling of the economy and natural disasters has aggravated underlying skepticism over its real intentions."
Despite ICG's critical appreciation of the situation in Bangladesh most of the people still believe that elections will be held as promised, and a representative government, shedding its character of doing business as usual as done in the past, will now concentrate on doing what they are elected to do and not consider themselves to be above the law.
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